“Marinating In The Swamp”: Tea Party Republican’s Government Shutdown Crisis Proceeding On Schedule
What with all the attention being paid to Syria, most people have forgotten that we’re just three weeks away from a government shutdown unless Congress passes a continuing resolution (CR), which is the (relatively) quick-and-easy way of keeping the government operating at current funding levels without writing a whole new budget. As you may remember, Tea Party Republicans in the House would like to use the threat of a government shutdown to force a defunding of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, while the Republican leadership, conservatives to a person, realizes that this is spectacularly stupid. If they hold up the CR with a defunding demand, Barack Obama will say no, the government will shut down, Republicans will get every ounce of the blame, and it’ll be a complete disaster for the GOP. Eventually they’ll give in and pass a CR, but only after having caused a crisis and eroding their brand even further, and by the way not actually defunding Obamacare.
So House Majority Leader Eric Cantor came up with something resembling a solution. The way it would work is that the House would pass two versions of the CR, one that defunds Obamacare and one that doesn’t. They would then send them to the Senate, which would presumably pass only the one that doesn’t defund Obamacare, which Obama would then sign. As Politico describes it, “The arrangement allows all sides to express themselves, but it surrenders the shutdown leverage that some conservatives hunger for.” And not surprisingly, Tea Partiers both inside and outside Congress don’t like it. Take, for instance, high-profile bloviator Erick Erickson of Red State and CNN. Here’s how his reaction starts:
Eric Cantor is always looking for new and imaginative ways to screw conservatives.
Let me stop you right there. Really? Does Erickson really believe that Eric Cantor, he of the 96 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and equally near-perfect ratings from every other conservative organization, the guy who dreams of challenging John Boehner from the right—he’s “always looking for new and imaginative ways to screw conservatives”?
The rest of Erickson’s analysis of the situation isn’t particularly wrong in its facts, but this is what happens when you’ve spent a long time marinating in the fever swamp. A disagreement over tactics is immediately interpreted as an ideological betrayal. If asked, Cantor would say that he wants to repeal Obamacare as much as anybody, but he knows that shutting down the government next month is not only not going to accomplish that, it will impede everything else conservatives want to do. And he’d be telling the truth. But some people just can’t hear it.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 10, 2013
“Let’s Defund America”: The Tea Party’s Silliest Push Yet
Washington will be visited today by tea party members rallying to urge Congress to “Defund Obamacare.” Here’s the most interesting (and ironic) thing about the #DefundObamacare effort: Even if they convince congressional Republicans to hold hostage America’s budget, it won’t defund Obamacare – but by stopping funding to critical programs, it would defund America.
That’s right. A government shutdown would not shut down Obamacare. That’s what the Congressional Research Service reported when asked by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. How is that possible, you ask? Because much of Obamacare is funded by multiyear and mandatory funding. Such funding is unaffected by the annual appropriations that the tea party wants House Speaker John Boehner to shut down. The state marketplaces (known more commonly as “exchanges”), the subsidies for low-income people to buy insurance, the individual mandate and all the new rules prohibiting insurance company discriminations and abuses (remember the days of pre-existing conditions)? They’ll all go forward even if the tea party succeeds in disrupting this year’s federal budget. That’s why Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., called the defund plan “the dumbest idea” he ever heard, and why Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called it “Shenanigans.”
Okay, so the entire goal of the tea party’s rally isn’t even possible.
But guess what? Even the rationale for the tea party’s rally is mixed up. They claim the reason to “exempt America” from the Affordable Care Act is that Congress is already exempted from it and because large employers are as well. But, here’s the problem: Neither point is factually true. Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams famously said.
First, the federal Office of Personnel Management ruled a few weeks ago that members of Congress and their staffs will, indeed, receive their insurance through the state Marketplaces. But, heck, tea party leaders apparently figure, people are already on their way to the rally and haven’t heard the OPM news, so let’s just leave them in the dark. No need to actually correct the record. Why let facts get in the way of a good rally on the Mall?
And large employers? Ninety-six percent of large employers already offer health insurance because that’s what the market demands. Only 4 percent of large employers aren’t yet covered. But they didn’t get an “exemption” as the tea party contends; they simply got a temporary delay in having to provide insurance. Obama simply said he didn’t need to fight with a tiny handful of businesses if they honestly needed a few more months to get organized to offer insurance. So neither Congress nor big business is “exempt” from Obamacare.
In short, what are we looking at? The tea party’s rationale isn’t valid, and its goal isn’t even doable.
Nevertheless, whether or not Boehner will cave to the tea party remains very much in question. Boehner may indeed try to defund America. After all, his speakership rests in part on his ability to keep the extremists in his caucus supporting him – not always easy with Eric Cantor breathing down his neck.
What would happen if the tea party won and shut the government down? What impact would they have? Here are some examples of who would get hurt if Republicans defund America:
Recent veterans returning from Afghanistan who try to file new claims with the Veterans Administration. Although VA hospitals would presumably remain open in a shutdown, the staff who normally handle new claims wouldn’t be at their desks.
Parents sending their kids back to school, who want to know that federal food inspectors will be on the job making sure peanut butter and hamburgers are not contaminated.
College students who have questions about federal student loans, including vets using the GI Bill (which is often late or incorrect in its disbursement) – but who will find no staff at the Department of Education or VA desks to answer their questions.
Grandparents who are finally old enough for Social Security and want to file a new claim will find that there aren’t Social Security staff around to get them started. (But Americans should rest assured that existing Social Security will continue to be sent out on time – that is, unless the tea party also succeeds in convincing the GOP to push America into a default crisis at the beginning of October, when the credit card payments come due that Congress has racked up; then nobody knows what will happen.)
Americans of all ages who get hit by the flu season or an outbreak of whooping cough, because there won’t be Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff at their desks to track and warn us about the flu or any other disease.
One tea party leader recently wrote in USA Today that she is “undeterred by the consequences.” Really?
No wonder only seven percent of Americans agree with the tea party’s idea of shutting down the government over Obamacare. Nobody wants to Defund America. Americans need a federal budget that creates jobs and grows the economy. But to whom are Speaker Boehner and his caucus listening? Americans might consider speaking up to counter the tea party’s megaphone. Business leaders who want a stable economy and predictable federal budget should remind Speaker Boehner that America’s budget is not the place for political stunts.
By: Carrie Woffard U. S. News and World Report, September 10, 2013
“An Important Milestone”: In Michigan, A Defeat For The Tea Party And Victory For Common Sense
Obamacare took a big step forward on Tuesday night, when the Michigan Senate approved an expansion of the state’s Medicaid program. The state House is likely to back the same measure, as early as next week. And while the program requires a special federal waiver, the Obama Administration is likely to grant it. Assuming all of that happens, Michigan will become the twenty-fifth state to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. As a result, a few hundred thousand residents are likely to get insurance—and the state will get a much-appreciated infusion of federal funds, while putting up a much smaller share of state money.
For the advocates of making health insurance available to all Americans, it’s a huge victory. But the victory did not come easy—or without some last-minute drama.
Tuesday’s vote was the product of a long, sustained campaign by Democrats, moderate Republicans, progressive organizers and business leaders. For months, they have made the case for expansion—citing the likely financial and health benefits for Michigan’s uninsured citizens, and the expected boost to Michigan’s economy. The federal government is picking up most of the expansion’s costs, they have argued, and hospitals need the revenue to make up for money they lost on charity care and declining reimbursement from other sources.
Among those assessing the statistical impact were Marianne Udow-Phillips, director at the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation and a lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. As she told me on Wednesday,
if you look at all the facts—the fact that the majority of physicians in the state are ready to serve this population; the positive impact on the state budget, on the state’s economy at large, on hospitals, on businesses, on all those who are currently insured (by reducing cost shifting) – not to mention the half a million people who will directly benefit by getting health insurance coverage in a program that has the highest satisfaction of any insurance coverage type in the state – you have to draw the conclusion that the Medicaid expansion is the right thing to do for the state.
Governor Rick Snyder and the state Chamber of Commerce have been among the strongest proponents of expansion. The state’s health care industry, naturally, has lobbied furiously. But Tea Party Republicans and their allies have been dead set againt it, arguing that Medicaid is a wasteful, expensive program that subsidizes the indolent—and that the size of the federal subsidies masked the true impact on the state, which would actually be negative.
Writing this week in the Detroit Free Press, Joseph G. Lehman and Clifford W. Taylor from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy warned that
The state’s main incentive to expand Medicaid is a federal promise to transfer to Michigan $2 billion (increasing to $3 billion) annually for three years if we add 320,000 Michiganders earning up to 138 percent of the poverty level to Medicaid rolls.
After three years our federal subsidy would shrink by $300 million per year, meaning either Michigan taxes increase by that much or lawmakers kick 320,000 people off Medicaid, which seems unlikely.
Expansion supporters have responded that, even after the reduction, the federal government would still be picking up 90 percent of the new cost. They have also tried to accommodate concerns about Medicaid efficiency, by, among other things, proposing that some Medicaid recipients pay a portion of their own costs. The compromises changed a few votes, and in June the state House approved its version of the expansion. But the Senate in June surprised everybody, including the governor, by rejecting the measure. One likely reason: Tea Party groups, and their financial backers, were threatening to support primary challenges to Republicans who voted yes.
The expansion’s supporters spent the remainder of the summer making their case, rallying the public, and lobbying individual members. As of Tuesday morning, they were confident they had 19 senators willing to vote yes. That would produce a tie in the 38-member chamber, with the lieutenant governor prepared to vote yes and break the tie. But when the Senate first voted in early afternoon, only 18 said yes. The chamber quickly voted to reconsider and, after a feverish few hours of lobbying and meeting, tried one more time. This time, the bill passed 20 to 18.
Progressives aren’t thrilled about some of the compromises, particularly those asking Medicaid recipients to pay a larger share of their costs. (Sarah Kliff has more of the details if you want them.) And it’s not out of the question that the federal government will raise objections, because the federal Medicaid law limits the ability of states to change the program. But given political resistance to any expansion, supporters are mostly elated at Tuesday’s outcome. “It’s not perfect, but it’s going to help nearly half a million Michiganders,” Amy Lynn Smith wrote at Electablog, a progressive website based in Michigan.
Michigan’s decision is an important milestone in the effort to make Medicaid available to all low-income Americans—an endeavor that has proven far more difficult than most experts anticipated. Last summer, when the Supreme Court made it easier for states to reject Obamacare’s planned expansion of Medicaid, many of us assumed the vast majority of states would participate anyway. The need for coverage was too great, and the allure of federal money too tempting, for even most Republicans to reject. Quite obviously we were wrong. Conservatives serving either as governor or state legislators have successfully blocked expansion across a wide swath of the country, including the huge states of Florida and Texas, where a few million people would be eligible.
But the Medicaid expansion has gotten support from several other Republican governors, including Jan Brewer in Arizona (where the expansion is already going forward) as well as Rick Scott in Florida and John Kasich in Ohio. Florida looks hopeless, at least for the time being, given the grip extreme conservatives have over the legislature. Ohio is another story: The politics there look a lot like the politics in Michigan. The same goes for Pennsylvania, although that state’s Republican governor, Tom Corbett, doesn’t yet support expansion.
Obamacare’s Medicaid component, in other words, is moving ahead. But progress is taking place in fits and starts, with frequent setbacks, thanks mostly to political opposition that’s strongest in the most conservative parts of the country.
Yeah, you should get used to that pattern.
By: Jonathan Cohn, Sebior Editor, The New Republic,
“Marginalized By Louder Fringe Voices”: Barely A Blip On The National Radar, The Tea Party Is Losing August
August 2009 was the month of the Tea Party town hall.
We were just eight months into the Obama presidency, and Democratic congressmen headed home for recess only to get ambushed by mobs chanting their opposition to ObamaCare. As The New York Times reported at the time, “members of Congress have been shouted down, hanged in effigy, and taunted by crowds.” The August 2009 town halls certainly created obstacles on the road to health care reform, and in many ways, gave birth to the national Tea Party movement.
Now here we are in August 2013, when some observers thought that Tea Party groups would actually derail the tenuous legislative push for immigration reform. The anti-immigration group NumbersUSA is certainly trying, posting “Town Hall Talking Points” along with lists of congressional events at which to reel them off.
But midway through August, the Tea Party is barely a blip on the national radar. What happened?
1. The anti-immigration Tea Party crowd is being out-crazied
Despite the heroic efforts of Rep. Steve “Cantaloupe Calves” King, the anti-immigration faction of the Tea Party is being crowded out by voices even farther out on the fringe.
The news out of the town halls has featured Oklahoma’s “Birther Princess” and a Republican congressman casually musing about impeachment. Outside of the town halls, Republicans are publicly feuding with each other over whether to agitate for a government shutdown and conservative talk radio hosts are expending their energies defending the wisdom of turning a Missouri rodeo into a minstrel show.
The right wing’s summer cacophony is muffling the noise of the anti-immigration forces, as well as deepening the Republican image problem among moderates and people of color.
2. The Republican leadership wants no part of Tea Party agitation
For all we know, the Tea Party fizzle may be exactly what the Republican leadership wants. According to Politico, “House Republican leaders have spoken about immigration only when asked during the August recess.” That suggests Speaker John Boehner and his allies are looking to lower the temperature, creating a climate that eventually will allow compromise to win the day.
But it’s not just the formal Republican leadership that is refusing to join the anti-immigration crusade. Tea Party favorites like Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz haven’t been leading the anti-immigration parade either, despite their opposition to the bipartisan Senate bill. The Daily Caller‘s Mickey Kaus lashed out, saying, “If Amnesty Wins, Blame Cruz,” as Cruz is siphoning off conservative grassroots energy for his fight against ObamaCare.
The best NumbersUSA could book for its Stop Amnesty tour is Rep. King. A recent rally led by King, held in the congressional district of the second-highest ranking House Republican, attracted a mere 60 people. Meanwhile 1,500 pro-immigration-reform activists held a Wednesday rally in the heavily Latino congressional district of the third-highest ranking House Republican.
3. Republican money is on the other side
The 2009 town hall outbursts were nationally organized in part by conservative groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, which were funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.
But the Kochs support immigration reform, as do Karl Rove and 100 other major Republican donors. As of June, pro-immigration groups had outspent opponents more than 3-to-1.
These three factors are connected. Because the anti-immigration squad is so poorly funded and lacking in leadership, it is vulnerable to being marginalized by louder fringe voices and better organized mainstream voices.
The louder the fringe voices become, the stronger the case mainstream Republicans can make to their leaders to accept immigration reform, on the grounds that the party can’t survive if it remains associated with birthers and bigots. At the same time, since the Tea Party can’t get the conservative grassroots riled up now, they won’t have much of a case to make to incumbent congressmen that they will face fierce primary challenges next year if they agree to a compromise with Democrats.
Score August as a big win for immigration reform.
By: Bill Scher, The Week, August 16, 2013
“Crazy Is as Crazy Does”: Congress Is Off To Suck Up To Its Lunatic Tea Party Constituents
Four years ago, Democratic representatives went home for the August recess and found themselves under assault from angry Tea Partiers, who took over town meetings with shouting and fist-shaking over the Affordable Care Act in particular, and more generally, the theft of their country by the foreign Muslim usurper Barack Obama. This August, however, it’s Republicans who are under attack by some of those same people.
At one town meeting after another, hard-right Republican House members are being confronted by constituents accusing them of not being quite doctrinaire and reckless enough (see here, or here, or here). Once again the immediate topic is Obamacare, but now the question isn’t whether the law should pass, but whether Republicans should shut down the government in a futile attempt to defund it. The members catching the most heat are those who argue that shutting down the government is useless, because Barack Obama is never going to sign a budget that defunds his greatest domestic accomplishment, so the only thing a shutdown would do is create more political headaches for the GOP.
This outbreak of relative pragmatism on the part of some Republican members of Congress is of course seen by Tea Partiers as little more than weak-kneed appeasement. It suggests that there’s a shift underway among the Republican base, from simply favoring the threatening of a government shutdown as a way to extract concessions, to supporting a shutdown of the government even with the knowledge that doing so will produce no concessions from Democrats.
As many a Republican politician will tell you (ask Marco Rubio, for one), convincing the Tea Party that you’re sufficiently conservative and that you hate Barack Obama enough isn’t just a full-time job, it’s a game that almost everyone will eventually lose. At some point you’ll take some position or express some opinion that is interpreted as less than maximal anti-Obamaism, and all it takes is one slip to be declared a traitor forevermore. So as crazy as Republican politicians sometimes seem, don’t forget that they’re under constant pressure from a base that is even crazier.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 8, 2013
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