“Rebels Without A Clue”: Republicans Are Delusional About Both Economics And Politics
This may be the way the world ends — not with a bang but with a temper tantrum.
O.K., a temporary government shutdown — which became almost inevitable after Sunday’s House vote to provide government funding only on unacceptable conditions — wouldn’t be the end of the world. But a U.S. government default, which will happen unless Congress raises the debt ceiling soon, might cause financial catastrophe. Unfortunately, many Republicans either don’t understand this or don’t care.
Let’s talk first about the economics.
After the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996 many observers concluded that such events, while clearly bad, aren’t catastrophes: essential services continue, and the result is a major nuisance but no lasting harm. That’s still partly true, but it’s important to note that the Clinton-era shutdowns took place against the background of a booming economy. Today we have a weak economy, with falling government spending one main cause of that weakness. A shutdown would amount to a further economic hit, which could become a big deal if the shutdown went on for a long time.
Still, a government shutdown looks benign compared with the possibility that Congress might refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
First of all, hitting the ceiling would force a huge, immediate spending cut, almost surely pushing America back into recession. Beyond that, failure to raise the ceiling would mean missed payments on existing U.S. government debt. And that might have terrifying consequences.
Why? Financial markets have long treated U.S. bonds as the ultimate safe asset; the assumption that America will always honor its debts is the bedrock on which the world financial system rests. In particular, Treasury bills — short-term U.S. bonds — are what investors demand when they want absolutely solid collateral against loans. Treasury bills are so essential for this role that in times of severe stress they sometimes pay slightly negative interest rates — that is, they’re treated as being better than cash.
Now suppose it became clear that U.S. bonds weren’t safe, that America couldn’t be counted on to honor its debts after all. Suddenly, the whole system would be disrupted. Maybe, if we were lucky, financial institutions would quickly cobble together alternative arrangements. But it looks quite possible that default would create a huge financial crisis, dwarfing the crisis set off by the failure of Lehman Brothers five years ago.
No sane political system would run this kind of risk. But we don’t have a sane political system; we have a system in which a substantial number of Republicans believe that they can force President Obama to cancel health reform by threatening a government shutdown, a debt default, or both, and in which Republican leaders who know better are afraid to level with the party’s delusional wing. For they are delusional, about both the economics and the politics.
On the economics: Republican radicals generally reject the scientific consensus on climate change; many of them reject the theory of evolution, too. So why expect them to believe expert warnings about the dangers of default? Sure enough, they don’t: the G.O.P. caucus contains a significant number of “default deniers,” who simply dismiss warnings about the dangers of failing to honor our debts.
Meanwhile, on the politics, reasonable people know that Mr. Obama can’t and won’t let himself be blackmailed in this way, and not just because health reform is his key policy legacy. After all, once he starts making concessions to people who threaten to blow up the world economy unless they get what they want, he might as well tear up the Constitution. But Republican radicals — and even some leaders — still insist that Mr. Obama will cave in to their demands.
So how does this end? The votes to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling are there, and always have been: every Democrat in the House would vote for the necessary measures, and so would enough Republicans. The problem is that G.O.P. leaders, fearing the wrath of the radicals, haven’t been willing to allow such votes. What would change their minds?
Ironically, considering who got us into our economic mess, the most plausible answer is that Wall Street will come to the rescue — that the big money will tell Republican leaders that they have to put an end to the nonsense.
But what if even the plutocrats lack the power to rein in the radicals? In that case, Mr. Obama will either let default happen or find some way of defying the blackmailers, trading a financial crisis for a constitutional crisis.
This all sounds crazy, because it is. But the craziness, ultimately, resides not in the situation but in the minds of our politicians and the people who vote for them. Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, September 29, 2013
“The Height Of Absurdity”: What Republican Political Regression Looks Like
In July, when several far-right lawmakers started pushing a government-shutdown scheme in earnest, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who isn’t exactly a moderate, had the good sense to reject the idea as silly.
“I think it’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of,” Burr said at the time. “Listen, as long as Barack Obama is president, the Affordable Care Act is going to be law.”
I mention this, of course, because the North Carolina Republicans’ reasoned, sensible approach to extortion politics has apparently disappeared over the last two months.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who dubbed Cruz’s threat to shut down the government over Obamacare the “dumbest idea” he’d ever heard, said Congress shouldn’t give Obama a debt ceiling increase without attaching strings, and the president “is going to pay some price for it, which is a benefit for the American people.”
“I hope [an Obamacare] delay is either part of the next [continuing resolution] or I hope it’s part of the debt ceiling,” Burr said.
There are a couple of important angles to this. First, if anyone was inclined to give Burr points for being an adult in July, now is the time to kick yourself. What he’s describing is a dangerous extortion scheme in which radicalized lawmakers threaten to hurt the country on purpose unless Americans start losing health care benefits.
The fact that Burr didn’t want to threaten a government shutdown was nice, but the fact that he does want to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States is madness — the severity of a sovereign debt crisis is vastly more serious than a shutdown.
Second, Politico mentioned in passing that the issue here is Congress “giving Obama a debt ceiling increase.” It’s time for the political world to stop thinking this way — raising the statutory debt limit isn’t “giving” the president anything.
Indeed, the political establishment’s understanding of this issue has become more than a little twisted. To see Republicans voting for a debt ceiling increase as some kind of concession is the height of absurdity. For those who rationalize threatening deliberate harm to the nation, and for much of the media, the idea is that we’re witnessing some sort of trade — Democrats get a debt-ceiling increase, Republicans get a laundry list of goodies they can’t pass through the legislative process.
The problem with this is that it’s not sane.
The legislative branch has the power of the purse, and appropriates government spending. When that spending is outpaced by federal receipts, it’s up to the executive branch to borrow the difference. Under a ridiculous quirk in the U.S. system, the executive is only allowed to borrow the difference after Congress, which spent more than it took in, gives its authority to do so.
This is called the debt ceiling. The Obama administration needs to borrow the funds to pay the bills for the stuff Congress already bought. There’s no real reason for the system to work this way — most modern democracies have no use for a statutory debt limit — but for now, this is the messy process we’ve created for ourselves.
The point, of course, is that when Congress raises the debt ceiling, as it must, it’s not doing the White House a favor. It’s not some kind of concession or gesture of goodwill. It’s not increasing the debt or giving Obama a blank check or spending any money. It’s just extending a legal authority to pay the bills lawmakers already racked up. Period. Full stop.
So when it comes to “negotiations,” for Congress to ask the White House, “What do we get for raising the debt limit” is insane because on a substantive level, the question is gibberish.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, September 26, 2013
“Cowering To The Tea Party”: Where Oh Where Are The Sane House Republicans?
With the Senate, as expected, passing a (relatively) clean continuing resolution (CR) and sending it back to the House — but with House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to first pass a Christmas tree debt-limit bill and then retreat on the CR reportedly in ruins — there’s a lot of pessimism right now about keeping the government open when funding runs out on Tuesday.
But it’s still in the interests of mainstream House conservative Republicans to avoid a shutdown. And for the same reason: They’re the ones who are going to have to allow something to pass after a shutdown, so there’s no advantage in waiting until then. There might be if they had a demand they really cared about and thought they might get, but that’s not the case here, since exactly none of the sane House Republicans (which is well more than half of their conference) believes that the GOP has any chance of defunding, delaying or repealing Obamacare in this particular fight.
There are basically two ways they can avoid a shutdown. One is that they can pass a clean CR with mostly Democratic votes, and then those who don’t have to bite the bullet can pretend that they held firm with the tea partyers only to be betrayed by Boehner and a handful of moderates.
Or they could just admit what they think: that this particular battle has no chance for success, no matter what grandstanding demagogues might say. In the Senate, more than half of the Republicans were willing to vote against Ted Cruz in the key cloture vote. If more than half of the Republicans in the House would publicly say that they’ll vote for a clean CR — or even just ask for a clean CR to come to the House floor — they could move forward.
The first blame for a potential shutdown goes to Cruz and his allies. But they have no leverage at all if most House Republicans walk away from what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today called the “weird caucus.” Which means that those mainstream House Republicans deserve plenty of blame as well if the government shuts down on Tuesday.
Sane conservatives in the Senate were willing to speak up and to vote to keep the government open. Where are the sane House Republicans?
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post, September 27, 2013
“Hurting Real People Who Have Real Needs”: Republicans Are Suppressing Obamacare Enrollment
Republicans have done everything they could think of to repeal, defund, undermine and otherwise disrupt Obamacare. But they’ve failed, and that’s why they’ve turned to a last-ditch strategy to stop the law and take away the rights of millions of Americans to get the health care they need.
Governors and state legislators are adopting state laws and regulations to sabotage the work of “navigators,” the community organizations that will help consumers sign up for care. We are witnessing navigator suppression, and the Republicans’ objective is simple: the harder they make it for navigators to do their jobs, the harder it will be for people to benefit from Obamacare.
Republican governors in 21 states are already denying more than 5 million people health care by refusing to expand Medicaid. Navigator suppression is another way for the Obamacare haters to pile on and limit the reach of the law.
In a new report, Health Care for America Now conducted a detailed review of the most egregious laws and regulations found in 13 selected states: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. These states are home to 17 million people without health insurance who are eligible for coverage under the health care reform law–fully 41 percent of the nation’s uninsured.
The excessive requirements we found include such things as residency rules, extra fees, additional and unnecessary training requirements, superfluous certification exams, and prohibitions against navigators talking with consumers about the benefits offered by different plans. These measures constitute direct interference in the enrollment process.
For example, in Missouri, state and local officials are barred from providing any assistance to an exchange. In Florida, the Department of Health released a directive prohibiting navigators from conducting outreach at any of the county’s 67 health departments. Fortunately, two big counties, Broward and Pinellas, are ignoring the order.
And just this month, Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered the Insurance Commissioner to write new navigator regulations that require, among other things, that navigators complete 40 hours of training in addition to the 20 hours required by the ACA and then pass a “rigorous” state exam. Perry is even trying to limit the hours of navigator operations to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. None of these rules is going to help get people covered in Texas, which has the nation’s highest percentage of uninsured residents.
These roadblocks and restrictions have caused groups to withdraw from the program and return their navigator grants. This is why President Obama in Maryland today criticized the Republicans for creating these sorts of “roadblocks” for the “churches and charities” working as navigators to educate the public about enrollment.
The Republicans claim these laws are about protecting consumers. But Georgia’s commissioner of insurance cleared that up when he boasted on video that he was doing everything he could to be “an obstructionist” to Obamacare.
Some of the Obamacare opponents may think they’re attacking the President or the law, but mostly they’re hurting real people with real health care needs. They’re making it harder for people to buy health care. This isn’t just an abstract political debate. For people without health insurance, this is about whether or not they can get medical care and get it without going bankrupt.
In a growing number of states, navigators are turning back their grants to help consumers because of navigator suppression policies.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, for example, which was planning to enroll people at three hospitals, turned back $124,000 in federal grant money because of state restrictions that went into effect this past July.
Cardon Outreach was going to educate people in Florida, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Utah. It returned its $833,000 grant.
In West Virginia, the Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, a vocal opponent of the ACA, launched a harassment campaign against one of his state’s navigators, West Virginia Parent Training and Information. Morrisey posed dozens of questions to the group about its navigator program and gave them only 14 business days to respond. Instead, the organization decided to send back its $366,000 enrollment grant.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council along the Texas border with Mexico just returned $288,000 in navigator grant funds this week in response to Perry’s attack, and four other Texas navigator groups reportedly may follow suit.
These state officials have taken their cues from members of Congress. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to 51 groups in 11 states, including food banks, legal aid societies, and United Way organizations. The committee demanded that these groups produce reams of paperwork about their operations and schedule a briefing of the committee by Sept. 13. The only purpose of the inquiry was to interfere with the ability of these groups to prepare for enrollment. That’s sabotage, and it’s a politically motivated abuse of power.
Many of the states now going after navigators are also passing laws to suppress voter registration and make it harder for minority, low-income and elderly residents to participate in elections. Just like voter suppression, enrollment suppression is an attack on people’s right to be healthy and free from financial hardship and bankruptcy.
That’s why navigator suppression shocks the conscience: it perpetuates the systematic denial of affordable health care to huge numbers of the most vulnerable individuals in our society, especially those in minority and lower-income populations.
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans no longer have to worry about getting the health care they need. They only have to worry about the Republicans taking it away.
By: Ethan Rome, Executive Director, Health Care for America Now; Health Care for America Now Blog, September 26, 2013
“When You Are On Fire”: Exactly How Much Republican Pyromania Are We Expected To Accept?
It must be difficult to be a Democratic Member of Congress right now. You are perpetually on call to put out a fire your Republican colleagues are determined to set, but they can’t make up their minds whether to burn down the house or the whole neighborhood.
Originally John Boehner wanted to give his charges the chance for an extended temper tantrum about Obamacare timed to conclude when the moment arrived to keep the federal government functioning, perhaps with a bit less money. Nope, that wasn’t sufficient. So the GOP headed directly towards a government shutdown, until Boehner and company looked about two inches beyond their own noses and saw that the public was (tragically) more tolerant towards a debt limit default threat than a shutdown. So the House GOP leaders moved in that direction. But they soon discovered getting the entire House GOP to vote for a debt limit increase would require a measure that incarnated every conservative policy fantasy in sight, and they are still struggling to get the votes. So now they may throw some sand in the gears of the continuing appropriations resolution and perhaps generate a mini-shutdown as a tonic to the troops, and hope that between the appropriations and debt limit measures they can slake the destructive furies of the Republican Party and its often-caustic right-wing chorus, and maybe even mark up a victory or two if Democrats conclude concessions are better than economy-wreaking chaos.
But at the moment, chaos reigns.
Even the jaded fans of pointless drama at Politico seem to think it’s out of control, per a Sherman/Bresnahan report:
Boehner and his team have now cycled through three fiscal strategies in about as many weeks, as rank-and-file Republicans jump from one approach to another in a so-far losing effort to emerge victorious from a budget showdown with President Barack Obama and the Democrats.
Now it’s on to “Plan C,” or whatever Republicans call this third iteration of government funding-debt ceiling strategy….
At this point, it’s difficult to conclusively determine where all the House GOP’s maneuvering and false starts will end.
I’m beginning to wonder if the whole idea is to convince Democrats that they need to consult abnormal psychology textbooks every time they deal with a fresh GOP demand.
Back when I worked for (pre-apostasy) Zell Miller, a very sensitive internal political memo laying out Zell’s secret re-election year agenda got accidentally taken off a fax machine at an out-of-state governors’ conference and handed to a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was all so weird and unlikely that the big story wasn’t what was in the document, but that Zell’s minions had gone to such lengths to leak it. “This is great,” I recall a colleague saying with real enthusiasm. “They think we’re completely crazy.”
Being completely out of control does create some leverage, particularly if the firebug is willing to set fire to himself (“When you are on fire,” Richard Pryor famously observed after nearly incinerating himself in a freebase cocaine accident, “people get out of your way.”). So people start thinking about making concessions they wouldn’t otherwise consider, or contemplating scenarios they wouldn’t otherwise entertain. As Ezra Klein said with disgust this morning:
It’s a mark of the insane and reckless turn in our politics that shutting down the government so one of our to major political parties can get the brinksmanship out of its system is emerging as the sober, responsible thing to do. But here we are, greatest nation the world has ever known.
Today’s Republicans really do make America exceptional. But I don’t know exactly how much pyromania we are expected to accept.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 27, 2013
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