“Incentivizing Harmful Behavior”: Sabotaging Obamacare Is A Lucrative Endeavor For Many Republicans
To gain steam for his initiative to tie funding of the government to defunding Obamacare, Senator Ted Cruz appeared at events over the summer with the Tea Party Express, a political action committee. “Either continue funding the government without giving one more dime to Obamacare, or shut down the government,” demands Tea Party Express chair Amy Kremer.
The Tea Party Express, in turn, has sponsored fundraising drives to help “elect more leaders like Ted Cruz.”
One problem for Cruz-acolytes hoping to make their way into office? The Tea Party Express PAC has spent nearly every dollar of the $2.1 million it has raised this year on campaign consultants and fundraising fees, but not a dime in transfers to candidates or on independent expenditures. In previous years, the PAC has funneled much of its proceeds to Russo Marsh and Rogers, a Republican consulting firm in Sacramento, California.
The frantic crusade to screw up the launch of the Affordable Care Act is a sad tale in American politics. If conservatives are successful, even with a short-term government shutdown Cruz and his House GOP allies might achieve, patients will suffer. If young people fail to sign up for health insurance—the stated goal of one Koch-backed front group now airing television advertisements—more will drown under crushing debt if they find themselves in need of serious medical care. But Washington, DC, has a bizarre way of incentivizing harmful behavior, and the sabotage Obamacare campaign is not without its winners.
A set of campaign consultants and insurance agents stand to profit from confusing Americans on the eve of the healthcare reform enrollment date.
The conservative media frenzy over the defunding debate has invigorated donors to many PACs, not just Tea Party Express. The Senate Conservative Fund PAC recorded its largest-ever fundraising hauls last month, though it spends way more on candidates and on candidate ads than the Tea Party Express. Still, the Jim DeMint–linked PAC expended nearly half its coffers on administrative, research and fundraising payments this year. FreedomWorks, the RNC and the Club for Growth have hopped on the Cruz campaign to raise funds by advocating the repeal of Obamacare. For a non-federal election year, at least these PACs are doing well.
The rigid anti–healthcare reform politics of the Koch brothers is also having a stimulative effect upon a small circle of Republican consultants. Americans for Prosperity, the largest Koch-owned front, pays the traditional 15 percent commission rate on all their television buys—the latest round going to Target Enterprises, a Sherman Oaks, California-based GOP media company. And with a seemingly endless appetite for anti-Obamacare paid media and anti-Obamacare grassroots organizers, Koch makes good on its claim of being a stellar job-creator, at least for jobs in right-wing political advocacy.
The New York Times rightfully notes in an editorial that many other conservative advocacy groups, like the National Liberty Federation, have latched onto the Obamacare fight, viewing the healthcare reform debate as little more than opportunity to raise a few bucks.
The second and less noticed benefactor of some of the more malicious attacks upon healthcare reform are health insurance brokers. Health insurance brokers make a living by selling health insurance and collecting a commission for every person or group they enroll. With healthcare reform set to provide easy access to health insurance options, free of charge, many in the health insurance agent industry view the Obamacare rollout as a death sentence. In recent months, the broker industry has mobilized to erect obstacles for the dozens of community group “navigators,” organizations tapped to spread the word about how to enroll in the exchanges.
In Georgia, under influence from health insurance agent lobbyists, the state passed a law that prohibits navigators from providing advice “concerning the benefits, terms, and features of a particular health benefit plan.” Other states have thrown up licensing laws in an effort to curtail navigators from being able to do, well, anything.
The Center for Public Integrity’s Nicholas Kusnetz has done some of the most interesting investigative reporting on this side of the story, revealing that the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America and the National Association of Health Underwriters have orchestrated a multi-pronged attack on Affordable Care Act navigators. The industry, which has secured anti-navigator laws in sixteen states, has poured some $7.5 million into state campaigns since 2010.
While brokers claim they seek only to ensure patients are not scammed by “unlicensed” navigators, in reality, blocking competition seems to be the primary motivation. Last month, the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America released a statement endorsing an effort by Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) to repeal all of the funding for the navigators programs. Notes from a lobbying association for insurance agents in California warned brokers before a visit to Sacramento: “If we don’t [lobby lawmakers] they will not think it will matter that much when they allow the unlicensed “navigators” to solicit your book of business!!”
Several community groups that had signed up to participate in the navigators program have now backed out, citing political pressure from Republican politicians. The House Oversight Committee, led by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Republican attorneys general have harassed several navigator groups with lengthy questionnaires and other demands.
Some anti–healthcare reform activists are truly motivated by their convictions. But others stand to gain financially from making sure their fellow Americans have problems signing up for health insurance.
By: Lee Fang, The Nation, September 25, 2013
“A Fanatical Group Of Nihilists”: The Upcoming Shutdowns And Defaults Are Symptoms Of A Deeper Republican Malady
Congressional Republicans have gone directly from conservatism to fanaticism without any intervening period of sanity.
First, John Boehner, bowing to Republican extremists, ushers a bill through the House that continues to fund the government after September 30 but doesn’t fund the Affordable Care Act. Anyone with half a brain knows Senate Democrats and the President won’t accept this — which means, if House Republicans stick to their guns, a government shut-down.
A shutdown would be crippling. Soldiers would get IOUs instead of paychecks. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees would be furloughed without pay. National parks would close. Millions of Americans would feel the effects.
And who will get blamed?
House Republicans think the public hates the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) so much they’ll support their tactics. But the fact is, regardless of Americans’ attitudes toward that Act — which, not incidentally, passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by the President, who was re-elected with over 50 percent of the vote, and constitutionality was upheld by the Supreme Court — Americans hate even more one party using the United States government as a pawn in their power games.
According to a recent CNN poll, 51 percent of Americans say they’d blame the Republicans for a shutdown; 33 percent would blame the President. They blamed Republicans for the last shutdown at the end of 1995 and start of 1996 — contributing to Republican losses of seven out of 11 gubernatorial races in 1996, 53 state legislative seats, 3 House seats, and the presidency.
So what are Senate Republicans doing about this impending train wreck for the country and the GOP?
Senator Ted Cruz is now trying to round up 40 Senate Republicans to vote against — not for, but against — the House bill when it comes to the Senate floor next week. Why? Because Cruz and company don’t want the Senate to enact any funding bill at all. That’s because once any bill is enacted, Senate Democrats can then amend it with only 51 votes — striking out the measure that de-funds Obamacare, and even possibly increasing funds in the continuing resolution to keep the government running.
So if Ted Cruz gets his way and the Senate doesn’t vote out any funding bill at all, what happens? The government runs out of money September 30. That spells shutdown.
The only difference between the Cruz and Boehner scenarios is that under Boehner we get a government shutdown and the public blames the GOP. Under Cruz, we get a shutdown and the public blames the GOP even more, because Republicans wouldn’t even allow a spending bill to come to the Senate floor.
In truth, the fanatics now calling the shots in the Republican Party don’t really care what the public thinks because they’re too busy worrying about even more extremist right-wing challengers in their next primary — courtesy of gerrymandering by Republican state legislators, and big-spending right-wing gonzo groups like the Club for Growth.
The Republican Party is no longer capable of governing the nation. It’s now a fanatical group run out of right-wing states by a cadre of nihilists, Know-nothings, and a handful of billionaires.
But America needs two parties both capable of governing the nation. We cannot do with just one. The upcoming shutdowns and possible defaults are just symptoms of this deeper malady.
By: Robert Reich, The Robert Reich Blog, September 21, 2013
“Caught Between Arithmetic And Ideology”: Can Republicans Afford To Buck The Tea Party?
Since the Tea Party emerged following President Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, Republican governors have frequently been the faces of some of the most extreme policies in recent political memory. Even before her infamous “finger point” at the president, Arizona’s Jan Brewer was signing and defending her state’s racial-profiling bill, SB 1070. In Ohio, John Kasich championed a law—later repealed by voters—to strip public employees of bargaining rights. In Florida, Rick Scott has pushed a plethora of hard-right policies, from drug screening of welfare recipients and government employees to reductions in early voting. Michigan’s Rick Snyder, who has a moderate streak, went to the extreme last December when he approved “right to work” legislation in a state built largely by union labor.
Yet Brewer, Kasich, Snyder, and Scott are among the nine GOP governors who have staked considerable political capital on Medicaid expansion, a key piece of the Affordable Care Act. They haven’t been quiet about it, either. Brewer made good on a threat to veto every piece of legislation that came before her until lawmakers sent her a bill to expand Medicaid. Snyder rankled his party when he told recalcitrant Republican state senators to “take a vote, not a vacation.” Scott was among the first Republicans to announce his support for expansion. Kasich, struggling to win support from his party’s lawmakers, has vowed to find a way to expand Medicaid even if they won’t.
All this, while in Congress, the Tea Party Republicans have worked tirelessly to shut down the government rather than see the Affordable Care Act continue, marking it as the emblem of Obama’s big-government liberalism.
By championing Medicaid expansion, these governors are defying the Tea Party, which was instrumental in their elections. Such defiance has been exceedingly rare from Republican officeholders on any level since the Tea Party revolution of 2010. That election transformed state legislatures and governors’ mansions—in many cases overnight—into ideological strongholds. Increasingly, the policy priorities of national right-wing groups like ALEC and Americans United for Life began to take precedence over state-specific agendas, and bipartisanship disappeared from state capitols almost as thoroughly as it has Congress. “The broader pathologies of our politics have clearly moved to the state level,” says Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author with Thomas Mann of It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, which made the case that Republican extremism and hyper-partisanship has crippled Congress.
But Kasich, Snyder, and Scott govern states that Obama has won twice. They have all struggled with low approval ratings and polarized the electorate with their far-right policies. They all face tough battles for re-election in 2014. By backing Medicaid, they were guaranteed to inspire Tea Party wrath. By opposing it, they would deny health coverage to huge numbers of low-income residents, shut the door on billions in federal funding, and risk further alienating voters.
“Republican governors are caught in a tug-of-war between arithmetic and ideology,” says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “For some of them, ideology wins, and for others, who are looking to their self-interest and the interests of their state at least in the short to medium term, they have done a very simple calculation and that is that the Medicaid expansion is a good deal for their states.”
There’s little denying that Medicaid expansion to cover many more adults, is a good deal for every state. For the first three years, the federal government will pick up 100 percent of the cost for new recipients. After that, states will never pay more than 10 percent of the costs of expanded coverage; the rest of the bill goes to Washington. In Ohio alone, more than 500,000 people would gain access to coverage. With more people covered, of course, the costs to states of uncompensated care will drop. In June, a report from the Rand Corporation found that the first 14 states that opted out of expanding Medicaid will have 3.6 million more uninsured residents, lose $8.4 billion a year in federal payments, and pay an additional $1 billion in uncompensated care in 2016.
The arithmetic hasn’t been enough to convince most Republican governors to back Medicaid. Sixteen of the 30 oppose expansion, including the chief executive of another state Obama won twice, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker. Three other GOP governors had yet to venture a position.
Then there’s Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett, a governor emblematic of the dilemma facing unpopular Republicans in swing states. Obama won Pennsylvania by 11 points in 2008 and by 5 points in 2012. But Corbett, who won in the 2010 wave, has stuck to the Tea Party agenda on everything from voter ID to welfare cuts. He was quick to announce that his state would reject federal funds for Medicaid expansion.
Under enormous pressure, however, he changed his mind, and last week announced he would support Medicaid expansion if the federal government agreed to a slew of concessions. Unlike Walker, a strong favorite in 2014 thanks to weak and divided opposition following a failed recall attempt, Corbett is among the most vulnerable incumbents in the country. Corbett is now trying desperately find some political path to moderation—though it’s likely to be too little too late and it stands in contrast to those like Snyder and Kasich, who actually took the lead on the issue.
That a minority of Republican governors has backed Medicaid expansion does not add up to a major shift in the political dynamic. But it could be significant, depending on the outcome of the 2014 elections. If a governor like Scott or Kasich can manage to win re-election even after infuriating his right-wing base on a key issue, it will send a couple of important messages to other Republicans, at least those in purple states: Yes, the Tea Party can be bucked. And no, making policy based on the needs of your state does not amount to certain political death. It might even save you from it.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, September 23, 2013
“If Liberals Hate Something, It Must Be Terrific And Effective”: Those Obamacare Rape Ads Are A Scam On Conservatives
I suppose I have to talk about the creepy anti-Obamacare ads that everyone, or at least all the liberal bloggers, are talking about today.
Look, folks: this is a very obvious scam.
This is not about stopping the ACA.
This is about money.
Oh, for the donors, it’s presumably about stopping Obamacare.
But for the people putting together the ads, unless they are incredibly stupid and naive, it’s almost certainly about raising money from those donors. And, perhaps, making a name for themselves (or a bigger name — I’m not looking to see who is responsible) within the conservative movement.
These ads could not be better designed to do one thing: to get condemned by liberals. Thus impressing easily scammed conservative marks, who tend to really believe that if liberals hate something, it must be terrific and effective.
This campaign is not designed to convince young people to “opt out” of Obamacare. It’s part of a “campus tour” supposedly designed to convince those young people to go without insurance, but that’s transparently a fraud; traditional-aged college students, the ones who are supposedly being targeted, aren’t really the customers that matter (it’s their older brothers and sisters…yes, some traditional-age college students may purchase their own insurance under ACA, more than was the case before, but it must be a fairly small group).
No, there are real efforts to undermine the law — harassing the “navigators,” pressuring the NFL and others not to publicize it, and more — but this campaign isn’t one of them.
Will it have any effect on actual consumer behavior? I doubt it. But it is worth noting that if it does “work” at all, it’s going to work on the people who respond best to the affect evoked by the ads: in other words, people already primed and ready to hate Obama(care), people already primed and ready to hate the government of the United States, people primed and ready to suspect the very worst of the program. And do note: the way it “works” is by convincing them to go without health insurance.
So basically: if you’re a rich conservative who isn’t very smart about how you give your money, this ad is designed to pick your pocket. If you’re a non-rich conservative, you might get duped into some foolish behavior, but that’s just acceptable collateral damage. For everyone else, it’s an occasion for (to be fair, entirely justified) outrage, I suppose, but basically it’ll come and go without any real effects.
Hey, I know: we’re not supposed to question motives. I believe that. So I’ll say again: it’s possible that these ads are not a scam, but a real political campaign undertaken by seriously naive and stupid operatives. Just as it’s possible that the people doing the “defund” campaign sincerely believe that a government shutdown threat would achieve that, as opposed (as Jamelle Bouie and others pointed out) just finding it an effective money-raising tool). I have to admit, however: that’s not what I think is going on.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, Washington Monthly, Ten Miles Square, September 20, 2013
“A Major League Asshole”: Ted Cruz Is Not Well-Liked And The Knives Are Coming Out For Him
“Be liked and you will never want,” said Willy Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. “That’s the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked!” Of course, the great tragic figure of the American theater was terribly wrong about that. But in politics, personal relationships still matter, even if the days when Lyndon Johnson would call up a senator and sweet-talk him into changing his vote on a bill are long gone.
I’m thinking about this because Ted Cruz—Tea Party hero, up-and-comer, future presidential candidate—is suddenly finding himself on the receiving end of a whole lot of hostility from House Republicans. By way of context, there’s a broad consensus that Cruz is, as George W. Bush would put it, a major-league asshole. He’s not someone who wastes time and energy being nice to people or cultivating relationships that could be useful down the road. He’s pretty sure he’s smarter than everyone, and doesn’t mind making it clear that’s how he feels. People consider him rude and condescending. This was apparent from the moment he got to Washington, and it was true back in Texas as well. But if you agree with his politics, then does that matter?
It sure seems to matter today. On the surface, there’s a tactical dispute about whether Cruz is working hard enough to get the Senate to defund Obamacare now that the House is about to do its part by passing a continuing resolution that does the defunding deed. Because he expressed some resignation about the CR’s prospects in the Senate—which is tantamount to admitting that Republicans will not be able to flap their arms and fly to the moon, no matter how hard they try—Cruz is being hit left and right, or more properly, right. House Republicans feel that Cruz encouraged them to force a government shutdown over defunding, and now that they’re doing their part, he doesn’t seem to be doing enough on his end. Republican Rep. Sean Duffy fumed that Cruz had “abused” and “bullied” House Republicans. His colleague Peter King said, “If he can deliver on this, fine. If he can’t, he should keep quiet from now on and we shouldn’t listen to him,” which is actually strong words from a congressman to a senator. And check out this, from the National Review:
House insiders say a handful of House Republicans cursed Cruz in the cloakroom on Wednesday, and a leadership source says angry e-mails were exchanged among GOP staffers who consider Cruz to be a charlatan. “Cruz keeps raising conservatives’ hopes, and then, when we give him what he wants, he doesn’t have a plan to follow through,” an aide fumes. “He’s an amateur.” Another aide says, “Nancy Pelosi is more well-liked around here.”
Holy cow. That’s like somebody on the Red Sox saying that Alex Rodriguez is more well-liked in the Sox clubhouse than one of his teammates. So would this have happened if Cruz was a nicer guy? My guess is that there would be far less of this open antagonism.
And this tells us something about Cruz’s long-term prospects. He got where he is by being smart and aggressive, and having the good fortune to be in Texas at a time when the Tea Party was ascendant. In high school and college he was a champion debater, an activity in which winning means getting in front of people and talking your opponents into submission. But running for president (which Cruz would plainly like to do one day) means getting a whole lot of people to like you. Fundraisers, reporters, other politicians who might endorse you, power brokers from the highest party pooh-bah down to every block captain in Des Moines—you’ve got to court them and make them love you so they’ll work their hearts out. Politicians like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush who excel at that personal side of politics have an immense leg up.
It’s one thing to be personally awkward, like Al Gore or Mitt Romney—that makes it harder, but not impossible. But if you’re someone who inspires this kind of venom, that’s another matter entirely.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 20, 2013
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