“Rand Paul’s Crazy Word Salad On Obamacare”: A Symbol Of GOP’s Larger Mess
Sen. Rand Paul made national news this weekend when he refused to say precisely whether he wanted to repeal Kentucky’s version of the Affordable Care Act, Kynect, along with the federal act itself. He bobbed and weaved like his boy Mitch McConnell, and most people have left it at that: another scared Republican afraid to tell the voters what he really thinks about a program that’s helped many of them. Reporters are used to that. Nobody except liberals even criticize it anymore, sadly.
But I want to look at Paul’s entire ludicrous soliloquy on Obamacare, Kynect and healthcare generally, because it shows how fundamentally unserious he is about domestic policy. Or if he is serious, he’s seriously delusional. It was every bit the nonsensical word salad we are used to being served by Sarah Palin, but maybe it’s sexism: Paul is never called out on it or mocked the way the former Alaska governor was. He ought to be.
I’ve written before that “Paul is what you get when traditional and corrosive American nepotism meets the 21st century GOP echo chamber: a pampered princeling whose dumb ideas have never been challenged by reality.” Ron Paul’s son has a tendency to look proud of himself whenever he shows a passing familiarity with facts and figures and ideas, even if he’s conflating or distorting them beyond any resemblance to reality. It’s on display in this interview with Kentucky reporters.
The junior senator from Kentucky starts out by acknowledging that Kynect gets a lot of praise, locally and nationally.
I think the real question that we have in Kentucky is people seem to be very much complimenting our exchange because of the functionality of it, but there are still the unknown questions or what’s going to happen with so many new people.
OK. Let’s take a look at “what’s going to happen with so many new people.” Here Paul rolls out some brand-new GOP anti-ACA scare tactics. First: The rapid expansion of Medicaid, he claims, is costing jobs.
I mean it’s basically about a 50 percent increase in Medicaid in one year. That’s a dramatic shot to a system. And my question is what will happen to local hospitals. If you look at [Glasgow, Kentucky, hospital] TJ Samson laid off 50 people and they’re saying they can’t afford the huge burden of Medicaid.
Oops, stop right there. While the hospital’s CEO did in fact link the layoff of 49 staffers to Obamacare in April, days later the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services disputed that account. It said the hospital would take in hundreds of thousands of dollars more in Medicaid funding annually, because it’s now being reimbursed for uninsured patients it used to treat without payment. Asked about the discrepancy, Paul just pointed to earlier reporting about the Samson CEO’s remarks and said: “All I know is what I read in the papers.”
So for President Rand Paul, the buck would presumably stop with the papers.
Then Paul raised the specter of folks getting their private health insurance subsidized under the Affordable Care Act, but with such high deductibles that they ultimately won’t be able to pay.
That’s gonna mean … you’re still just a non-payer, probably. And hospitals are going to have to figure out, we won’t know this for six months to a year, how many people who show up with subsidized insurance will actually be able to pay [their] deductible.
This could conceivably be a problem – actually, it was a big problem before the ACA – but Paul has no evidence the ACA made the problem worse. More likely it has helped some, because even with a high deductible plan, many preventive services are now provided without a co-pay. The point is, there’s no evidence of such a problem yet; Paul is just throwing trash at Obamacare to see what will stick. And there’s more:
How many of the new people on Medicaid, how many of those people may have actually had insurance before? Did they go from being a non-payer to being a government payer? Or did they maybe have insurance, but now they’re on Medicaid because it’s easier than having insurance?
Paul could probably find out the answers to these questions, with staff work and a little consultation with the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, but he would never bother. After hearing all of this bad news, much of it invented, a local reporter asked the senator the obvious question:
With all those unknowns, do you think Kynect should be dismantled?
And here Paul joins McConnell and punts. Or lies, since it’s pretty sure from his answer he thinks Kynect should be dismantled.
You know I’m not sure — there’s going to be … how we unravel or how we change things. I would rather —I always tell people there’s a fork in the road.
Oh, that fork in the road. Paul turns to boilerplate conservative rhetoric:
We could have gone one of two directions. One was towards more competition and more marketplace and one was toward more government control. The people who think that the government can efficiently distribute medicine need to explain why the VA’s been struggling for decade after decade in a much smaller system.
Points for working in the VA, the Obama scandal du jour. Let’s leave that alone, it’s a story in itself. Continue, Sen. Paul:
And they also need to explain, even though I think we all want Medicare to work better, why Medicare is $35 trillion short.
Huh? First of all, Paul doesn’t “want Medicare to work better,” he wants to repeal it. That’s something you don’t hear much about, but he sponsored a bill with Utah Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee to replace Medicare with the Congressional Health Care Plan members of Congress buy in to, essentially privatizing it. The bill would also raise the age of eligibility from 65 to 70. That ought to go over well with the GOP’s rapidly aging white base. That’s why Paul is forced to lie about his own Medicare position.
And the allegation that Medicare is “$35 trillion short”? I could find no documentation for it besides a Heritage Foundation blog post, and a ton of YouTube videos where Rand Paul makes the claim on Fox News. It seems to refer to a 2011 estimate by Medicare trustees that the Part A Trust Fund would face a shortfall by 2026 unless payroll taxes were raised or program costs were trimmed – and the Affordable Care Act has been trimming them. It’s bunk.
Then Paul turns briefly to the question of Kynect:
There’s a lot of questions that are big questions that are beyond the exchange and the Kynect and things like that. It’s whether or not how we’re going to fund these things.
But then he detours again, to take us back to the already debunked example of TJ Samson hospital’s Medicaid-induced “layoffs.”
If they lose 50 good paying jobs in the hospital, is that good? Then we’ve got more people in the wagon, and less people pulling the wagon.
With that profound Kentucky take on Paul Ryan’s “makers vs. takers” narrative, he walks away. And we’re back to Mitt Romney’s deriding the “47 percent.” In Paul’s more colorful telling, the problem is that some of us pull the wagon, while freeloaders and layabouts just lounge in it. For 50 years, Republicans have tried to tell voters the folks “in the wagon” are minorities. But in Kentucky, which is 88 percent white, they’re mainly white. So Rand Paul, the great 2016 hope, is really a prisoner of the elitist 2012 narrative that cost the GOP the White House.
Even though there’s so much to explore in Paul’s Kynect two-step – delusion, ideology, outright lies – the media mostly ignored it. Those who’ve paid attention simply covered the admittedly newsworthy Obamacare evasion. But I think Paul’s entire stand-up act, his performance art — Being a Very Serious Senator, or at least playing one on TV — deserves more attention. It’s only the soft bigotry of the media’s low expectations for Republicans, and maybe a little of society’s sexism, that makes Rand Paul someone to contend with in 2016, when Sarah Palin is widely just a punch line.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, June 2, 2014
“The One Child Left Behind”: Rand Paul Still Doesn’t Understand What He Doesn’t Understand
Last week, in an apparent attempt to embarrass the White House, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) leaked a new detail to the media: as the attack in Benghazi got underway, some Obama administration officials reached out to YouTube to “warn of the ‘ramifications’ of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video.”
There was, however, a problem: Issa’s leak made the White House look better, not worse – the fact that officials contacted YouTube is proof that the administration genuinely believed that the violence was in response to an offensive video. Issa accidentally leaked evidence that bolstered the White House’s case, offering proof the administration’s consistent line was sincere.
But Glenn Kessler reports that despite Republicans inadvertently helping the White House on Benghazi, some on the right tried to exploit the news anyway.
FOX HOST ERIC BOLLING: “So this is kind of startling news that the White House was on the phone with YouTube as the attacks were still taking place that night, saying, Hey, did you see what’s causing this? They were already being political at that moment.”
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-Ky.): “You know, I’m appalled by it. One of the things that’s interesting is that very night, they were still struggling to get reinforcements. We had some more Special Operations forces in Tripoli. They couldn’t find a plane for them. So instead of calling to get a plane or to try to make arrangements to get a plane, they’re on the phone trying to create spin to say that, ‘You know what? This is about a video, which never had anything to do with this attack.’ So you know, it saddens me. Doesn’t surprise me, but does sadden me.”
It’s rather amazing to appreciate just how wrong this is.
To be sure, Bolling’s question appears to be based on some striking confusion – the White House reaching out to YouTube and the role of a YouTube video in contributing to violence is not “being political.” Indeed, it’s the opposite.
But Rand Paul’s response suggests his basic understanding of the relevant details is somehow getting worse, even as he’s presumably exposed to more information.
First, the Republican senator seems to be under the impression that the national security team at the White House only has one telephone – instead of making plane “arrangements,” he said, officials called YouTube. (Note to Rand Paul: the Situation Room has fairly sophisticated communications equipment. They’re capable of making more than one call at a time.)
Second, though it’s really not up to the White House to coordinate Special Operations flights directly, even if it were, when the senator claimed officials didn’t try to find a plane for Special Operations forces, that’s clearly wrong.
In other words, the Kentucky senator is “appalled” and “saddened” by details Rand Paul doesn’t actually understand.
That seems to happen quite a bit with the GOP lawmaker.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 28, 2014
“Rand Paul Is A Deeply Cynical Politician”: It’s Hard To Spot The Conviction But The Hypocrisy Is Evident
When Washingtonians refer to Rand Paul as a different breed of politician than his father, they generally mean it in a good way. The implication is that he is more pragmatic and tactical (probably more tactful, too); that his worldview has broader appeal. Whereas Ron Paul is way too much of a crank to ever have a shot of winning the GOP presidential nomination, Rand increasingly looks like a contender.
But whatever you might think about the elder Paul, you can say this for him: He is not cynical. He is a conviction politician, however repugnant some of us may find his convictions. The younger Paul? Well, he certainly styles himself a man of conviction. But at this point in his presidential quest, it’s getting hard to say for sure.
Take this story on Rand Paul’s “evolving” foreign policy views in Saturday’s New York Times. The premise of the piece is that Paul is being somewhat unfairly attacked by the hawkish wing of his party, whose members often fail to see the distinction between his father’s isolationism and his more nuanced brand of non-interventionism. As evidence, the piece adduces this rather eye-catching data point:
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America and a close associate of [GOP mega-donor Sheldon] Adelson’s, said that when he pressed Mr. Paul to explain his position on aid to Israel in a recent meeting in the senator’s Washington office, Mr. Klein left reassured. “He said if there was a vote and for any reason it seemed like it was actually going to be close, he would vote for it,” Mr. Klein said.
So, if Klein’s account is correct (and the Times presumably ran it by Senator Paul), what we have is as follows: Paul’s public position is that we should cut off all foreign aid, including aid to Israel, which he dubbed “welfare” back in 2011. But if Paul were ever in a position to end aid to Israel—which is to say, the only time his personal position would really matter—he would abandon that position, and instead vote to ensure that the aid continues.
I’m not sure I can think of a more irresponsible position. If Rand Paul thinks aid to Israel is truly important, then it’s deeply cynical to badmouth that aid simply because bad-mouthing appeals to the type of voter he’s courting. And if he thinks aid to Israel is irredeemably wasteful, then it’s deeply cynical to fink out when given the opportunity to roll it back. Either way, it’s hard to spot the conviction here.
In fairness, Paul did try to resolve this tension at another event, telling the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition that, in the Times’ paraphrasing, “while he would eventually like to terminate all foreign aid, he knew that would not be realistic now.” The most charitable interpretation of this riff is that Paul would like to cut off aid as soon as possible, but realizes you can’t do it abruptly without triggering major blowback among U.S. allies that would damage our standing around the world. That would indeed speak to his pragmatism.
But this interpretation seems like a stretch given that Paul’s comments appear to have been a lot less coherent than that, or at least less specific. “You could see he was a work in progress,” former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, who attended the meeting, told the Times. Instead, it’s hard to avoid the impression that Paul is simply trying to reassure neoconservatives that he’ll be with them on the issue they care about most, but without junking a big source of his political appeal. That’s not an “evolution.” It’s hypocrisy.
By: Norm Scheiber, The New Republic, May 26, 2014
“Not So Braveheart”: Paul Walks Back His Disavowal Of Voter ID Laws
Well, that was quick. Barely three days after his comments suggesting that Republicans need to get off the voter suppression kick if they ever wanted to appeal to minority voters, there’s this “clarification” from the director of his PAC (via Dave Weigel):
Senator Paul was having a larger discussion about criminal justice reform and restoration of voting rights, two issues he has been speaking about around the country and pushing for in state and federal legislation.
In the course of that discussion, he reiterated a point he has made before that while there may be some instances of voter fraud, it should not be a defining issue of the Republican Party, as it is an issue that is perhaps perceived in a way it is not intended. At no point did Senator Paul come out against voter ID laws.
So it’s fine to push voter ID laws and (presumably) otherwise try to keep minority folk from voting. But just don’t make it a “defining issue of the Republican Party,” which I am reasonably sure not a single person has suggested.
For dessert, the walk-back statement uses the “federalism” dodge, an old favorite of the Paul family on controversial issues:
In terms of the specifics of voter ID laws, Senator Paul believes it’s up to each state to decide that type of issue.
That’s also true of felon disenfranchisement laws and for the most part criminal justice reform, topics on which Paul sees no constitutional bar to a U.S. Senator discussing.
For a brave truth-teller succeeded to the leadership of his father’s Revolution, Rand Paul is sure gun-shy when it comes to defying the conservative movement/GOP CW.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 13, 2014
“His Policies Speak For Themselves”: Rand Paul Can Try To Be His Party’s Bill Clinton, But He’ll Never Be President
Rand Paul continues to fling any turd he can find at the Clintons for pretty obvious reasons.
The first-term senator from Kentucky has to do something to show the GOP establishment he can be competitive in a general election, and he’s trying to keep the former president out of his home state’s Senate race so that Rand didn’t sell out to Mitch McConnell for nothing.
There’s no doubt that the younger Paul is a savvy tactician. The proof of this is that he’s ironically trying to follow Bill Clinton’s path to the presidency by staking out a series of “Sister Soulja moment“-like strategic breaks from his party.
Last week, he noted that the GOP’s repulsive attempts to stop minorities from voting are “offending” people. Paul was the first Republican to call out Ted Nugent’s “sub-human mongrel” slurs against President Obama. And he’s built lots of credibility with civil libertarians on the right and left by focusing on “drones,” which has become a code word for “civilian casualties,” which happen to be down under this president, along with military casualties and wars.
Though Paul’s own drone stance is complicated by the fact he thinks it’s cool for a drone to take out an American suspected of robbing a liquor store, his non-interventionist tendencies and willingness to negotiate with Iran do all Americans a favor, providing a hedge against the far right’s recent destructive tendencies toward war.
These anti-war stands will also lead to a deluge of attacks funded by hundreds of millions of dollars should he become competitive in the 2016 Republican primary, which has been designed to give Jeb Bush the nomination, should Jeb want it.
However, these stands are not why Paul will never be president. America is as nearly non-interventionist as he is these days. His Aqua-Buddha past and support for ending some of the drug war have seeped into the mainstream, too. Rand probably can even get away with a dad whose “institute” publishes the work of 9/11 truthers.
What voters won’t tolerate are Rand Paul’s key actual policies:
- He released a budget that calls for the immediate privatization of Medicare and Social Security along with raising the retirement age;
- He favors a flat tax, which would cut taxes for millionaires and raise them on the middle class;
- He supports personhood, which would ban all abortions and some forms of birth control, a stand so unpopular it was even defeated in Mississippi.
Bill Clinton’s strategy was to make the Democratic Party appear more moderate. Rand Paul gets that rhetorically, perhaps.
But single women aren’t going to elect a president who would appoint Supreme Court justices who believe a fertilized egg has 14th Amendment rights. The middle class and seniors aren’t going to trade the Medicare promise for more tax breaks for millionaires. One decent comment on voter ID isn’t going to erase Paul’s opposition to immigration reform — just as one trip to Detroit won’t make him an “inner city” hero.
The usual caveats apply. The economy could go bust or we could find out that #Benghazi is worse than Iraq, 9/11, Watergate, Iran/Contra, Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy combined.
But Democrats have a natural advantage in 2016, and Rand Paul would take that advantage and put it on steroids.
UPDATE: In a statement to Slate‘s Dave Weigel, Rand Paul’s Super PAC director backed off the senator’s criticisms of voter ID laws: “At no point did Senator Paul come out against voter ID laws. In terms of the specifics of voter ID laws, Senator Paul believes it’s up to each state to decide that type of issue.”
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, May 13, 2014
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