“When Discredited Nonsense Gets Recycled”: Be On The Lookout For Republicans Touting Heritage Foundation Talking Points Again
In the spring, when it was clear that comprehensive immigration reform would be the year’s biggest legislative fight in Congress, the Heritage Foundation wanted to give far-right lawmakers the ammunition they’d need to kill the bill. The group published a report conservative Republicans could ostensibly use to justify their reflexive opposition to the bipartisan proposal.
The result was a fiasco. First, the report itself was exposed as ridiculous, even by conservatives who often agree with Heritage, relying on lazy and incomplete scholarship. Second, one of the report’s co-authors was a guy by the name of Jason Richwine, who’s spent quite a bit of time arguing that white people are inherently more intelligent than people of color.
Soon after, Richwine resigned from Heritage and fair-minded people dismissed the group’s discredited report as nonsense. And yet, as my MSNBC colleague Benjy Sarlin reported yesterday, Heritage hasn’t given up on its document just yet.
Heritage may have distanced itself from its former scholar’s views on race, but not the study he did for their think tank. In a memo to Congressional staff obtained by msnbc, Heritage legislative strategist Tripp Baird said that while some supporters of reform on the Hill this week are “well meaning” in their concern for immigrants, “they’re being used to advance an amnesty policy that is far from conservative, and will cost trillions to American taxpayers.” Another talking point suggests that evangelical Christians supporting immigration reform “probably aren’t aware of the severe fiscal consequences of amnesty for American taxpayers.”
The “cost trillions” line echoes a report co-authored for Heritage by Robert Rector and Jason Richwine.
Yes, in May, Heritage’s report said immigration reform would cost over $6 trillion – a figure even many on the right found laughable. Soon after, independent analyses, including a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, found that the reform package would actually save hundreds of billions of dollars.
Stepping back, it appears the Heritage Foundation simply hopes lawmakers have forgotten what transpired six months ago. The group published its report, saw it quickly discredited, and largely stopped talking about it. That is, until now, when Heritage decided enough time has passed that it can start repeating the identical bogus claims all over again.
It’s difficult to imagine even the most craven lawmakers taking this seriously, but you never know. Be on the lookout for members touting Heritage talking points anyway.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 30, 2013
“Resolution To Disapprove”: By Voting Against Themselves, Republican’s Hope To Fool The Tea Party
On Tuesday, the Senate held a vote on a “resolution to disapprove” of raising the debt limit. The resolution failed 45-54. The 45 disapprovers were all Republicans. Twenty-seven of the Republicans voting to disapprove of raising the debt limit also voted, just a few weeks ago, to raise the debt limit. Do those 27 Republican senators disapprove of their own votes because raising the debt limit turned out to be a terrible mistake with disastrous consequences? No. They voted to disapprove of their own actions because a group of loud and angry people disapprove of their actions.
The face-saving “resolution to disapprove” measure seems to derive from a a 2011 McConnell idea that would have preserved the debt limit as a grandstanding ploy without actually risking default. In McConnell’s plan, the president would be allowed to increase the debt limit a little bit at a time, and Congress would then vote on whether to disapprove of the raises. It’s actually pretty brilliant politics, as it would have done two things:
- Forced President Obama to raise the debt limit, which is always politically unpopular, three times in one (election) year.
- Allowed every single Republican in Congress to vote against raising the debt limit without worrying that the U.S. would actually default.
Naturally, McConnell’s plan was declared rank RINOism and it went nowhere. This was in part because some conservatives believed that the plan removed the possibility of extracting massive concessions in exchange for raising the limit, but also because there simply are a lot of conservatives who oppose raising the limit at all, ever. The result of not listening to McConnell: Republicans had to vote to raise the debt limit anyway, conservatives now feel betrayed, right-wing Senate primary challenges are more likely, and non-far-right voters have more reason to be scared of allowing Republicans to govern.
Thus the meaningless symbolic vote of disapproval, in both chambers. The sorts of conservatives McConnell is hoping this stunt satisfies may be deluded enough to believe that breaching the debt ceiling wouldn’t be so bad, but they are not dumb enough to be impressed with this gesture. Most important, the people and organizations they get their information and take their cues from will not suddenly start praising these 27 senators, McConnell included, as True Conservatives.
At this point, it’s very easy to get on the wrong side of the activist conservative movement, and once you’re labeled a RINO, there’s almost nothing you can do to clear your name. John Boehner had to let the extremists take the whole country on Mr. Ted’s Wild Ride for a few weeks just to keep his job, and most Tea Party types still hate him. Sen. John Cornyn is in trouble for taking his signature off a petition.
And look at the sad tale of Marco Rubio, who, not long ago, was supposed to be a major contender for the “true conservative” vote in the 2016 Republican primaries. Then Rubio, like an idiot, actually listened to people more concerned with the long-term survival of the GOP than short-term symbolic victories and attached himself to the comprehensive immigration reform project. Activist conservatives hate immigration reform nearly as much as they hate Obamacare. Now, Rubio has abandoned his bill. He’s praised Cruz to the heavens and joined the vote against the deal to reopen the government, but the damage is done. Rubio has been tainted as a cooperator. In March, Rubio came in a close second to Rand Paul in the CPAC straw poll. In October, he received 5 percent — 35 votes out of 762 — in the Values Voters straw poll.
Symbolic gestures, like McConnell’s, and outright flip-flops, like Rubio’s, aren’t going to quiet or stop the conservative revolt. They might at least provide some sort of model for getting through this next year without it doing too much more damage. The government will have to fund itself. The debt ceiling will need to be raised again distressingly soon. The “resolution to disapprove” could be the way Congress passes everything from now on. Pass some sort of minor budget deal, then vote on the resolution disapproving of it. Pass the farm bill, hold the vote disapproving of it. Maybe try immigration reform again with a disapproval vote attached?
None of this will fool Erick Erickson and Heritage Action and the Senate Conservatives Fund and Freedomworks, but it might just allow terrified Republicans to convince themselves that it’s OK to take votes leadership wants them to take. You get to have a backsies!
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, October 30, 2013
“The Uproar Over Insurance “Cancellation” Letters”: Offering Terrible Products To Desperate People Is No Longer Acceptable
Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary, took a lot of grief this morning from Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who were outraged that some people’s individual insurance policies had been “cancelled” because of health care reform.
Some of the rants bordered on the comical. Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, brandished his “cancellation” letter and demanded that Ms. Sebelius nullify the health law for all residents of his congressional district.
Most lawmakers mentioned President Obama’s unfortunate blanket statement that all Americans would be allowed to keep their insurance policies if they liked them. He failed to make an exception for inadequate policies that don’t meet the new minimum standards.
But in between lashings, Ms. Sebelius managed to make an important point. Yes, some people will be forced to upgrade their policies, she said. But that’s preferable to the status quo before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, when insurers could cancel policies on a whim.
“The individual market in Kansas and anywhere in the country has never had consumer protections,” she testified at the hearing. “People are on their own. They could be locked out, priced out, dumped out. And that happened each and every day. So this will finally provide the kind of protections that we all enjoy in our health care plans.”
A true cancellation is when someone gets a letter saying that she’s losing her insurance and cannot renew. That was common practice in the individual market for people with expensive conditions. Under the new law, no one will ever get a letter like that again. They cannot be turned down for insurance.
The so-called cancellation letters waved around at yesterday’s hearing were simply notices that policies would have to be upgraded or changed. Some of those old policies were so full of holes that they didn’t include hospitalization, or maternity care, or coverage of other serious conditions.
Republicans were apparently furious that government would dare intrude on an insurance company’s freedom to offer a terrible product to desperate people.
“Some people like to drive a Ford, not a Ferrari,” said Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. “And some people like to drink out of a red Solo cup, not a crystal stem. You’re taking away their choice.”
Luckily, a comprehensive and affordable insurance policy is no longer a Ferrari; it is now a basic right. In the face of absurd comments and analogies like this one, Ms. Sebelius never lost her cool in three-and-a-half hours of testimony, perhaps because she knows that once the computer problems and the bellowing die down, the country will be far better off.
By: David Firestone, Editors Blog, The New York Times, October 30, 2013
“Obamacare Witch Hunt”: Republican Halloween Witch Trials About Obamacare Avoid The Facts
Watch out for the hobgoblins! The knives are out. The hearings are on. The charges are flying. Obamacare is on the hot seat … again!
The sad result is that as we get these unconfirmed anecdotes, these stories about problems with insurance companies, these people who face hardship supposedly because of Obamacare, few Republicans think back to pre-2010. Then the costs of health care were skyrocketing – from $1,000 per person in 1980 to about $3,000 in 1990 to $4,000 in 2000 to nearly $8,000 before the Affordable Care Act was passed. The next highest nation for cost: Norway at $5,352.
According to the Commonwealth Fund, 49.9 million Americans were without health insurance in 2009, up 13 million from 2000. Houston, we have a problem.
And remember the stories of pre-existing conditions? Getting kicked off your health insurance or unable to get coverage? How about caps on your care? Or huge deductibles, especially for women? Horror story after horror story.
The facts are clear: 17 million Americans had pre-existing conditions; 34 percent lacked coverage for mental health; 62 percent lacked maternity coverage.
How soon we forget the problems that the ACA was written to solve. Right now, only 5 percent of Americans are covered by individual plans – if you had your plan prior to 2010, you are grandfathered in and can keep it. If the insurance companies want to kick you off they have to alter your plan, but they can no longer kick you off because of a pre-existing condition or because you cost them too much.
Most of these individual plans are renewed yearly and, according to current figures, 48 percent of those with individual plans would get a tax credit under the Affordable Care Act. The average “rebate” would be $5,500, not exactly chump change. Nearly half of those who believe they are suffering sticker shock from their insurance companies would get better coverage for less money.
So, before more and more people are dragged up before Republican-led congressional committees and berated, maybe it is time to get the facts. Maybe it is also time to work to fix what problems may exist and to offer solutions and not engage in more Salem-like witch trials just before Halloween.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, October 30, 2013
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