“The Obamacare Swindle”: Republican Grifters Using Defunding To Raise Money From Gullible Tea Partiers
House Republican leadership does not want a government shutdown over Obamacare, but the agitation of conservative activists might make one inevitable.
That’s not good news for Republicans. After the debt ceiling crisis in 2011, congressional approval ratings dipped to their lowest ever, with Republicans taking a huge hit; in one survey, 71 percent of respondents disapproved with the GOP’s handling of the debt limit. In another, 68 percent said the same (PDF).
Conservatives must know they have nothing to gain politically from taking this stance, which raises the question: why do it? One answer, as suggested by the National Review’s Robert Costa in August, is money. Tea party organizations, he writes, “aren’t worried about the establishment’s ire. In fact, they welcome it. Business has boomed since the push to defund Obamacare caught on. Conservative activists are lighting up social media, donations are pouring in, and e-mail lists are growing.” [Emphasis mine]
To illustrate the point, Heritage Action for America—the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank—has a standing website devoted to collecting donations. “Conservatives in Congress have proposed using the fight over a key budget bill, called the continuing resolution, to strip funding from this law. But Establishment Republicans and special interests in Washington are resisting this plan,” it explains. But there’s no reason to panic: “You can ensure Obamacare is defunded,” it asserts. All it takes is a small donation to Heritage. “Time is of the essence. Please donate now to ensure we have the resources to fight and win.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, this particular push had raised over $327,000, and it’s no stretch to assume that other, similar efforts have raised as much if not more cash. To wit, the Senate Conservatives Fund—a political action committee devoted to electing “true conservatives to the United States Senate”—also has a specific website that collects donations for Obamacare repeal. It asks supporters to “Join Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in the fight to stop Obamacare” with a small contribution. The same goes for the National Liberty Federation, a Tea Party group that wants to know if you have a few dollars to spare in the fight against Obamacare.
Of course, no matter how much money these groups collect, the Affordable Care Act is here to stay. And they know it. “Even they admit privately that they won’t succeed in defunding Obamacare,” notes The Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial urging “kamikaze” Republicans to give up their self-defeating crusade against the law. As President Obama said in a speech on Monday, “the Affordable Care Act has been the law for three-and-a-half years now. It passed both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional. It was an issue in last year’s election, and the candidate who called for repeal lost.” Simply put, there is no conceivable scenario that ends with Obama dismantling his signature legislative achievement.
It should be said that the most fervent opponents of the Affordable Care Act are Republican base voters. Of those who “always” vote in GOP primaries, notes the Pew Research Center, 53 percent oppose the law and want lawmakers to make it fail. When they demand action—as they have for the last four years—Republican politicians and conservative activists have a choice. They can try to channel this anger into something constructive, or they can cynically use it to boost their own prospects. For lawmakers like Ted Cruz and organizations like Heritage Action, the choice was simple: Give them what they want, even if it’s doomed to fail.
If there were no money involved, I’d call this a misguided bid for relevance. As it stands, the effort to defund Obamacare is a lucrative business. Which is why it continues to go forward, even as the odds for success dip to the quantum level. For the lawmakers and groups spearheading this movement, Tea Party voters aren’t dedicated citizens as much as they are gullible customers; ripe targets for their brand’s commercialized outrage.
Ted Cruz may style himself as a leader, but the reality is that he and his fellow travelers are just the latest in a long line of shameless grifters. And like the presidential campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain, this grift will continue for as long as there is money to earn, and Republican voters to con.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The Daily Beast, September 18, 2013
“Celebrating Misery”: House Republicans’ Ghoulish Defunding Rally
There was something ghoulish about the rally that House Republicans held today in the Rayburn Room after they voted to defund health care reform. The party atmosphere was so boisterous, the cheers and laughter so loud, that it was easy to forget everyone in the room had just voted to keep tens of millions of people from getting health insurance.
By keeping spending at its current levels through mid-December, they had also voted to continue the sequester, which is preventing millions of people from getting public housing subsidies, Head Start seats, and unemployment benefits. The sequester is also taking a serious toll on scientific research and investment in infrastructure, not to mention its infuriating drag on employment and the economic recovery. How about another round of applause?
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, of course, from a House that had voted the previous day to cut food stamps for 3.8 million low-income people, including many very young and very old recipients. But at least they didn’t have a party to celebrate that vote.
Today, though, everyone was in a great mood.
“When we acted, it wasn’t just a group of Republicans, but it was a bipartisan vote,” said Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Whip. (O.K., fine. Two Democrats voted for it, and 188 voted against.) “Let me state that again because I want to make sure you write it correctly. [Huge laughter.] It was a bipartisan vote because we’re Americans first! [Cheers, applause.]”
But some Americans are last, like the millions who would have to get all their medical care from an emergency room if the House had its way. That didn’t seem to bother Eric Cantor, the Republican leader, who pushed through the food-stamp bill and today claimed the health law was turning the country into a part-time economy. (Actually, the recession had started that trend long before President Obama’s health law took effect.)
Mr. Cantor called on Senate Democrats to pass the House bill, which isn’t going to happen, and even named a few from conservative states, like Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who Republicans hope to defeat for re-election by linking them to the health law.
What he didn’t mention, though, is that the House’s real beef is with Senate Republicans, not Democrats, many of whom have denounced the extremist tactic of threatening a government shutdown if health reform isn’t defunded. The defeat of the House demand in the Senate is pre-ordained, and when the measure comes back to the House next week without any mention of the health law, and with little time left to avoid a shutdown, the laughter and applause will be long gone.
By: David Firestone, Editors Blog, The New York Times, September 20, 2013
“The Party of Me, Me, Me”: The Republican Push To Defund Obamacare Is Just Selfish And Vindictive
Recently, Republicans have shown that their disdain for Obamacare is stronger than their level of caring about the American people, as evidenced by their wanting to shut down the government if there is not a one-year delay in implementating this legislation.
Seriously, tenacity is one thing, but acting like a bunch of spoiled brats at the taxpayer’s expense is not what Americans sent those politicians to Washington to do. Despite 40 votes to repeal, defund, etc., the GOP shows once again that it’s the main attraction at the circus, for they must know this is all for show. The Democratic ruled Senate is not going to vote in favor of such a proposal and, clearly, the president would not sign the law if it made it to his desk.
And are we forgetting the majority of Americans who voted for the president both in his first and second runs for the White House? Doesn’t the population who wants, and for many needs, the Affordable Care Act count? I guess not.
Whether it’s egos, their careers or the inability to stand apart from their terribly fragmented party, Republicans still shows they are the party of no, the party of the rich and the party of the inability to play nice with Democrats to do what is in the best interest of all Americans.
Having said that, we here on the left have been asking: if you want to repeal and replace this piece of legislation, what are you replacing it with? Well today, that has been answered.
A group of House Republicans is going to unveil legislation providing an expanded tax break for consumers who purchase their own health coverage and increasing the government funding for high-risk pools. What the GOP has clearly forgotten is one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act was passed, was because it’s, well, …. affordable!
Has the GOP seen the rates being put forth by the big insurance companies? My husband, my two children and I pay nearly $2,000 a month for our PPO plan; and we are all healthy, thankfully.
The proposal, which was endorsed by the Republican Study Committee, provides a tax credit to people who buy coverage that is approved for sale in their state. The GOP says the American people could claim a deduction of $7,500 against both their income and payroll taxes, regardless of the cost of insurance.
But there are several big problems here. 1) Who decides what is “approved” for sale and based on what criteria? 2) You are giving the states the power of dispensing insurance, but the states can’t afford to. 3) What happens to federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the numerous states that hold their hand out for their check from Uncle Sam, including some GOP-led states such as New Jersey and Florida? 4) Millions of Americans who should pay their taxes do not. Now you want more people to pay less? And you constantly talk about our deficit and how our government can’t pay its bills? 5) This program is not fair. If one person has a very low-rate plan and is healthy, they can deduct as much as someone paying triple who might not be. And lastly, 6) If Obamacare is difficult to implement and there was much criticism on the delay of this plan, how would the complexity of this proposal be any less?
The RSC claims a membership of 175 members, about three-quarters of the House Republicans. I wonder, have all 175 Republicans read what’s in it?
Let’s face it. This party is angry. They’re angry a black guy won. They’re angry the black guy got his team to draft and pass health care reform, badly needed in this country. So they want their version, their turn to “win”; that is what this is about. This is not in the best interest of the health of America’s people, nor the health of our economy. If we turn the tables on the GOP, will their plan be a “job destroyer,” as they have suggested Obamacare will be? What’s the start date of their plan? Will there be any glitches?
The bottom line is, Obamacare has been passed. To hold the country financially hostage and threaten to shut it down if the GOP doesn’t get its way and its version of a piece of legislation that is already law is not good leadership; it’s selfish. Is that what America needs in Washington today? I don’t think so.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, September 20, 2013
“The Poison Of Ideology”: Republicans Have Even More Pain In Store For Their Base In Poor White Real America
Rick Santorum is right. Not far right, crazy right, piously right or, on most issues, never right. He is all of those things. But under the rubric that even a blind pig can find an acorn every now and then, the moral scourge of the Republican Party is on to something — a greater truth.
Earlier this summer, Santorum said Republicans look like the party of plutocrats, stiffing working people and the poor. The 2012 convention, he noted, was a parade of one-percenters, masters of the universe and company owners.
“But not a single — not a single — factory worker went out there,” he said. “Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them.”
They still don’t care, and the darkening events of what looks to be an autumn of catastrophic failure by a Congress stuffed with extremists will prove Santorum’s point ever more.
Late Thursday, despite pleas from Catholic bishops and evangelicals, the Republican-dominated House passed a bill that would deprive 3.8 million people of assistance to buy food next year. By coincidence, this is almost the exact amount of people who have managed to remain just above the poverty line because of that very aid, the Census Bureau reported a few days ago.
A Republican majority that refuses to govern on other issues found the votes to shove nearly 4 million people back into poverty, joining 46.5 million at a desperation line that has failed to improve since the dawn of the Great Recession. It’s a heartless bill, aimed to hurt. Republicans don’t see it that way, of course. They think too many of their fellow citizens are cheats and loafers, dining out on lobster.
Certainly there are frauds among the one in seven Americans getting help from the program formerly known as food stamps. But who are the others, the easy-to-ignore millions who will feel real pain with these cuts? As it turns out, most of them live in Red State, Real People America. Among the 254 counties where food stamp use doubled during the economic collapse, Mitt Romney won 213 of them, Bloomberg News reported. Half of Owsley County, Ky., is receiving federal food aid. Half.
You can’t get any more Team Red than Owsley County; it is 98 percent white, 81 percent Republican, per the 2012 presidential election. And that hardscrabble region has the distinction of being the poorest in the nation, with the lowest household income of any county in the United States, the Census Bureau found in 2010.
Since nearly half of Owsley’s residents also live below the poverty line, it would seem logical that the congressman who represents the area, Hal Rogers, a Republican, would be interested in, say, boosting income for poor working folks. But Rogers joined every single Republican in the House earlier this year in voting down a plan to raise the minimum wage over the next two years to $10.10 an hour.
The argument holding back higher pay — a theory that Republicans accept without challenge — is that raising wages for the poorest workers would be bad for companies, and bad for hiring.
But experience debunks this convenient political shelter. Washington State has the highest state-mandated minimum wage in the country, $9.19 an hour, and an unemployment rate that has been running below the national average. It’s not all Starbucks, Amazon and Microsoft in Seattle, either. In the pine-forested sliver of eastern Washington, a high-wage state bumps right up against low-wage Idaho. Fast-food outlets flourish in Washington, the owners have said, because they can retain workers longer, while Idaho struggles to find qualified people to hold entry-level jobs.
Costco, they of the golf-cart-size containers of gummy bears, has long paid wages and benefits well above the industry average for big-box stores, and it hasn’t hurt the bottom line. The stock is up 79 percent over the last five years. Costco, to its credit, is urging Congress to raise the minimum wage. But that’s one big business Republicans will not listen to, because it breaks with the heartless credo of the new G.O.P.
The movement for higher minimum pay is raging through the states just now, with ballot initiatives and legislation plans. The people, in this case, will have to circumvent a Congress bent on actively trying to hurt the poor.
Republicans have more pain in store for their base in poor white America. Shutting down government, for one, will cause a ripple effect that will be hardest on those living paycheck-to-paycheck. The biggest obsession, the Moby-Dick of the right wing, is making sure millions of people do not have access to affordable health care. This week, Republicans drew the line for any doubters: they will wreck lives to blow up the health care law.
You have to wonder where this animus for those in the economic basement comes from. It’s too easy to say Republicans hate the poor. Limousine liberals can seem just as insensitive. And if Republicans were offering some genuinely creative approaches to helping the 26 million Americans who self-identified as “lower class” in a recent survey, they would deserve a listen. Tax cuts, the party’s solution to everything, do nothing for people who pay no federal income tax.
What’s at work here is the poison of ideology. Underlying the food assistance fight is the idea that the poor are lazy, and deserve their fate — the Ayn Rand philosophy. You don’t see this same reasoning applied to those Red State agricultural-industrialists living high off farm subsidies, and that’s why Republicans have separated the two major recipient groups of federal food aid. Subsidized cotton growers cannot possibly be equated with someone trying to stretch macaroni into three meals.
But Republican House leaders do have some empathy — for themselves. National Review reported this week that Representative Phil Gingrey, a hard-right conservative who wants to be the next senator from Georgia, complained in a private meeting about being “stuck here making $172,000 a year.” To say the least, he doesn’t yet qualify for food assistance.
By: Timothy Egan, The New York Times, September 19, 2013
“Terrified That Obamacare Will Succeed”: Why Republicans Are Desperate For A Government Shutdown
The coming battles over budgets, the debt ceiling, a government shutdown and Obamacare are not elements of a large political game. They involve a fundamental showdown over the role of government in stemming rising inequality and making our country a fairer and more decent place.
Anyone who doesn’t see this should be forgiven. The stakes in this battle are almost always buried in news accounts about tactics and obscured by an unquenchable desire across the media to provide the latest take on whether President Obama is growing “weak” and has already become the lamest of lame ducks.
Yes, Obama has work to do in quelling doubts about his leadership. But little of what we’re hearing offers enlightenment as to why this big argument is happening in the first place, and why it matters.
To begin with, this is not just a fight between Republicans and Democrats. The GOP is clearly divided between those who take governing seriously — they still believe in government enough to accept responsibility for keeping it open — and those who see in every issue the “final conflict” that Marxists kept predicting. Stopping Obamacare, in their view, is necessary to prevent the country from reaching the end of the road to serfdom. Compared with this hellish prospect, who cares about shutdowns?
What’s fascinating, and this speaks to the perceived power of the tea party in primaries, is that it has taken only a small minority of House Republicans to push toward Armageddon. The Post’s Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane estimated that roughly 40 conservatives revolted against their leadership’s efforts to keep the government open past Sept. 30. That’s 40 in a 435-member House of Representatives. What’s become of us when less than 10 percent of one chamber of Congress can unleash chaos? What does this say about the House Republican leadership gap?
But it’s also important to understand why the Republican right is so fixated on killing or delaying Obamacare before it goes into effect. Its central worry is not that the program will fail but that it will succeed.
In an interview on Fox News this summer, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) a leader of the stop-Obamacare forces, gave the game away. After ritualistically declaring that “Obamacare isn’t working,” he said this: “If we’re going to repeal it, we’ve got to do so now or it will remain with us forever.” Why? Because once the administration gets the health insurance “exchanges in place . . . the subsidies in place,” people will get “hooked on Obamacare so that it can never be unwound.”
In other words, Obamacare, like Medicare and Social Security, could work well enough and improve the lives of enough people that voters will get “hooked” on it. For fear of this, the tea party’s champions would shut down the government and risk financial calamity over the debt ceiling? Even the Wall Street Journal’s reliably anti-Obama editorial page on Tuesday upbraided the “kamikazes” of the right.
There is a thread running through the antics of the kamikaze caucus. Almost everything it is doing is designed to keep government from acting against inequality and addressing the stagnation or decline of incomes among both poor and middle-class Americans. Foiling Obamacare, which would relieve economic pressure by getting health insurance to 25 million Americans who wouldn’t have it otherwise, is part of this larger story.
As Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted, this week’s census figures showed the poverty rate “remaining unchanged at a high 15.0 percent in 2012” and median household income “unchanged at $51,017, some 8.3 percent — or $4,600 — below its level in 2007, before the recession.”
Things would be even worse without food stamps which, as Greenstein pointed out, kept 4 million Americans out of poverty last year. And what is the House’s main priority this week? To toss 3.8 million people off the program next year. More generally, conservatives want to keep reducing government spending at a time when the unemployed most need public policy that stimulates growth rather than drags the economy down. Continued cuts will mean more economic sluggishness.
It’s hard to decide which is worse: utter indifference on the right wing to the damage that win-at-all-costs politics could cause the overall economy, or its coldhearted effort to block any attempt to ease the burdens on Americans who are struggling. One way or the other, this is what we should be talking about.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 19, 2013
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