“Florida’s Rick Scott Files Bizarre New ACA Lawsuit”: Scott Only Wants A Check ‘That Doesn’t Have Obamacare Cooties’
It was just last week when Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) completed a rarely seen flip-flop-flip, denouncing Medicaid expansion, then embracing it, and then condemning it. The consequences matter: 800,000 low-income Floridians were poised to have access to medical care, but they’ll now go without.
And while the governor’s decision seemed like the end of the story, it was actually the start of a more ridiculous turn of events.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott announced Thursday that he will sue the federal government for allegedly coercing Florida to expand Medicaid.
“It is appalling that President Obama would cut off federal healthcare dollars to Florida in an effort to force our state further into Obamacare,” Scott said in a statement.
By late yesterday, the far-right governor was reduced to comparing the White House to the mafia. “This is the Sopranos,” Scott said. “[Administration officials] are using bullying tactics to attack our state. It’s wrong. It’s outrageous they are doing this.”
This is actually one of the more amazing political fights in the country right now, and it’s worth appreciating why.
Back in 2006, the Bush/Cheney administration created a Medicaid pilot project intended to provide funds to help hospitals treat the uninsured. The policy was called “Low Income Pools” (LIP) and Florida received some money through the initiative.
Not surprisingly, the Affordable Care Act made the LIP project unnecessary, and began phasing out the policy.
In Florida, Scott seized on this in the most bizarre way possible – if federal officials are willing to scrap LIP funding, the governor said, then maybe they won’t fund Medicaid. The Republican found a convenient excuse to reject billions in federal funds and a lifeline to 800,000 of his struggling constituents.
Yesterday, the governor took this one step further, announcing a lawsuit to force Washington to give Florida federal funds for a program that will no longer exist. Scott wants money from the Obama administration to help Floridians (through LIP), but at the same time, he also doesn’t want money from the Obama administration to help Floridians (through the ACA).
Joan McCarter joked that Scott only wants a check “that doesn’t have Obamacare cooties.” Greg Sargent added that the governor could very easily clean up this mess by re-embracing Medicaid expansion through the ACA and simply claiming “it isn’t Obamacare.”
Even the Republican president of the Florida state Senate acknowledged yesterday that Scott’s lawsuit doesn’t make any sense
The bottom line in this little farce is that Rick Scott is going to extraordinary lengths – embracing and rejecting money, pitting the GOP-led state House against the GOP-led state Senate, dividing his allies, ignoring the needs of hundreds of thousands of his constituents, undermining his own state budget, even turning down tax cuts – because he finds it necessary to be against “Obamacare.” There’s no real substance to any of this, so much as there’s a partisan principle that the Republican governor is choosing to put at the top of his priority list.
The consequences are predictably absurd.
Brian Beutler’s take on this is exactly right: Scott is “suing the federal government to bail him out of a self-made crisis.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 17, 2015
“An Attack On Retired Poor And Middle-Class People”: The Real Reason Social Security Is The Third Rail Of American Politics
Chris Christie still harbors hopes of becoming the Republican nominee for president, and in search of a way to convince conservatives that he’s one of them—and reinforce the idea that he’s a bold truth-teller who doesn’t care whose feathers he ruffles, and you might not agree with him but you’ll always know he’s telling it like it is—Christie has announced a plan to cut Social Security benefits. He would do it in two ways. First, he would means-test benefits, reducing them for those who have over $80,000 in income and phasing them out entirely past $200,000 in income. Second, he would raise the retirement age to 69 (it’s currently 66 and will soon rise to 67).
As Matt Yglesias explains, the cut in upper-income benefits is getting most of the attention, which works to Christie’s benefit because it sounds like his plan hurts rich people. But in fact, the number of people affected would be fairly small, while increasing the retirement age would be devastating to people of modest incomes. That’s particularly true of people who do manual labor, which in your late 60s becomes increasingly difficult. So Christie is proposing a plan that is actually an attack on retired poor and middle-class people, but it’s being described as an attack on the rich.
I should point out that even means-testing benefits can be a clever way to undermine the program as a whole. It eliminates the understanding that it’s a program for everyone and instead changes it to a program just for people of modest incomes, which then opens it up to further cuts and changes in the future. This is why most liberals oppose means-testing, even though it sounds like something they would support.
In any case, I want to return to this idea that Chris Christie is willing to tell the hard truths. Every story about Social Security mentions that it is the “third rail of American politics,” meaning you can’t touch it without being zapped. Anyone who would do so naturally deserves praise for their courage and for doing what’s right despite the risk. But why is touching Social Security dangerous?
It isn’t because of some magical incantation that FDR spoke over the bill as he signed it. It’s because, with the possible exception of Medicare, Social Security is the most successful and therefore beloved social program in American history. Before Social Security, aging was almost a guarantee of falling into poverty. If you’re below a certain age, you’ve probably never heard the cliché of old ladies eating cat food to survive, but at one time in America that was an actual thing.
But don’t we need to do something before Social Security goes broke? No. Social Security is not going broke, and if we want to fix the funding problems that we will confront a few decades from now there are relatively easy ways to do it; I discussed that years ago in this piece, and not much has changed since.
But back to Christie: Is it courageous to propose a policy change that would be tremendously cruel to millions of Americans? I guess it is in a way. But that doesn’t make it praiseworthy.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The Merican Prospect, April 16, 2015
“Demand A Higher Wage, People!”: The Status Quo Of Wage Injustice And Greed-Driven Inequality Relies On Our Complicity
Chasten Florence was on his lunch break when he decided to join a protest outside a McDonald’s in New York City on Wednesday. To be honest, Florence wasn’t really sure what he was helping protest. But as he lay his body down on the sidewalk at a die-in of low-wage workers demanding a $15 wage and a union, Florence simply explained, “These are my people.”
Didn’t Florence need to eat lunch? Sure, but he could spare five minutes. Working concrete on construction jobs, Florence earns more than $15 an hour and thinks everyone else should, too. “I don’t know how you can raise a household on less,” said Florence. And he’s right. You can’t.
On April 15, workers from McDonald’s, Walmart and other low-wage employers were joined by college students and adjunct faculty, domestic workers and leaders from the Black Lives Matter movement. In all, tens of thousands participated in protests in 200 cities across the United States to demand a $15 minimum wage and a union. The #FightFor15 is unconventional in that, instead of focusing on Congress to raise wages, workers and advocates are pressuring employers and also the general public—trying to foster awareness about dismal wages and working conditions and create a groundswell of support for change.
The nationwide protests were organized on Tax Day, April 15, because 4/15 is a short-hand for the campaign’s wage demands. But it was also meant to highlight the fact that the poverty wages paid by fast food restaurants and employers are so low that many low-wage workers are forced to rely on public assistance benefits to get by. In fact, almost three-quarters of Americans who depend on public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid are members of a family headed by someone who has a job.
In other words, in America today, many people are poor not because they don’t have a job but because they have a job that pays poverty wages. If the minimum wage had grown at the same rate as overall productivity since 1968, then the minimum wage would now be $18.50 an hour—instead of $7.25, the current federal minimum wage. In fact, adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage has actually dropped. In 2014 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was equal to $9.54 an hour.
The stagnation of working class wages cannot be explained by a lack of hard work or skills. Low-wage workers have more education than their 1968 counterparts—and yet are still being paid less. And as this graph from Mother Jones shows, while worker productivity has steadily risen over the past several decades, overall wages have not grown at the same pace—even though the income of the top 1% has spiked dramatically.
As taxpayers, we foot the bill for greedy employers who pay poverty wages. For instance, because McDonald’s won’t pay its workers a living wage, taxpayers are paying $1.2 billion per year in food stamp costs and other public assistance just for McDonald’s workers alone. That’s like our tax dollars subsidizing McDonald’s profit—and greed.
Recently McDonald’s announced it would raise wages by $1.00 an hour for workers in its corporate-owned stores, which since most McDonald’s are franchise operations, means the raise will affect less than 10 percent of McDonald’s workers. Beth Schaffer, who works at a McDonald’s in Charleston, South Carolina, and came to New York for the protests, shrugged her shoulders about the raise. After all, every single McDonald’s in South Carolina is a franchise not covered by the $1.00-an-hour increase. “My customers show me more respect than my employer,” said Schaffer. As her tone made clear, that’s not saying much.
As I left the Fight for $15 protest, one of several staged throughout New York on Wednesday, Chasten Florence walked one way back to his construction site and I walked the other way. I passed the tony restaurants of New York’s Upper West Side, on what seemed like one of the first real days of spring, men and women in business suits sitting at tables on the sidewalk, taking in the sun. Most were probably spending more on lunch than the workers at the protest earn in a week. Myself included.
And there’s nothing wrong with that, with wealth and success and enjoying what comes with it. The question is, are we paying enough attention to the costs? I wondered whether the people eating their expensive lunches knew that the bussers taking their plates can barely afford to feed their own families, that the workers at their children’s daycares don’t have health insurance, that the cheap stuff they order conveniently on Amazon.com is definitely comes at a high cost to the workers who make and ship those goods.
The construction worker who joined the Fight for $15 protest didn’t know that much about the issues or the protest demands, either. But he was going out of his way to learn, and to be supportive. “These are my people,” he said. Yes, they’re all of our people. It’s time we all wake up, pay attention, be angry and stand with our fellow human beings to do something about it. The status quo of wage injustice and greed-driven inequality relies on our complicity, whether by silence or ignorance. But it cannot survive if we all stand up together and fight.
By: Sally Kohn,
“Heightening Inequality To Even More Astronomical Levels”: If Inequality Worries Republicans, Why Do They Keep Making It Worse?
You can tell things have gotten very bad when the issue of economic inequality — a serious national problem mostly ignored for more than three decades — is suddenly in political vogue. And you can be sure things have gotten very, very bad when Republicans — who usually insist that inequality is natural, inevitable, even beneficial — suddenly claim they’re worried about it, too.
As the 2016 contenders officially declare their intentions, all of them seem aware that voters want to restore a vestige of fairness to the American economy. Regardless of personal ideology or political reliance on plutocratic billionaires, every presidential candidate must, at the very least, display concern for working families, single mothers, indebted students, and everyone struggling to achieve or maintain a decent living.
Yet how concerned are they, really? In the video that announced her candidacy, Hillary Clinton spoke briefly but bluntly: “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.” The only Democrat in the race so far, Clinton realizes that a populist agenda will be required to excite her party base — and to answer those who regard her as too wealthy and too well connected to empathize with the downtrodden.
That unflattering portrait omits many relevant facts about Clinton’s life, from her own modest origins to her many years of advocacy for the disadvantaged, especially women and children. She spoke out publicly about economic fairness long before doing so became politically fashionable, both as a United States senator and during her last presidential campaign. Now the skeptics can listen and decide for themselves.
But voters should also listen closely to the Republicans who mock Clinton’s populism and assert that they are the true spokesmen for the working class. What do they propose to address inequality? And how “authentic” is their concern?
At least two of the Republican candidates, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), want to institute a so-called flat tax — which would severely exacerbate inequality by reducing tax levies on the wealthy and increasing the burden on everyone else. Such plans would cost the Treasury an annual amount estimated between $700 billion and $1 trillion. Yet Paul and Cruz insist that they will simultaneously slash taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget — and so does Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who proposes his own regressive tax breaks for the rich.
Those promises are mathematically impossible — unless, perhaps, the federal government permanently ended all discretionary spending on student aid, unemployment insurance, health care, veterans benefits, environmental protection, food safety, and dozens of other programs necessary to working- and middle-class families. Somehow they never mention that part.
While decrying economic inequality, Republicans tend not to emphasize their other proposed giveaways that would benefit wealthy donors, such as Paul’s plan to end capital gains taxes, or Rubio’s plan to end not only all taxes on capital gains but on interest and inherited estates, too — leaving only wage earners to be taxed. Schemes like this delight the Koch brothers precisely because they would heighten inequality to an even more astronomical level.
Although Republicans often mention the “right to rise,” as Jeb Bush would put it, they’re hostile to any measure that would actually elevate the incomes of those at the bottom — for example, increasing the minimum wage. Indeed, they tend to be opposed to the very idea of a legislated wage floor because, as Rubio once said, “I don’t think a minimum-wage law works.”
The Florida senator’s economic knowledge is as weak as his budgetary arithmetic. The most recent studies show that in states without a minimum- wage law, inequality is considerably worse than in states with a minimum wage that is at least a dollar above the federal minimum.
But don’t worry, Rubio says he knows a better way to reduce inequality than either higher wages or fairer taxes. Instead, for people languishing in low-wage jobs, government should “incentivize the creation of innovations in education that are accessible.”
So he offers something for everyone: The wealthy get still more big tax cuts; and the not-so-wealthy get a few phrases of incomprehensible, pseudo-wonkish jargon.
By: Joe Conason, Editer in Chief, The National Memo, April 18, 2015
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