“Last Phase Of The Kabuki Dance”: John Boehner’s Phony New Ransom Demand That He’s Been Saving
Boxed in by his caucus’ demand to defund Obamacare on one side, and a steeled White House on the other, House Speaker John Boehner seems ready to throw in the towel and enter the last phase of the Kabuki dance he’s staged for the benefit of his insolent Republican base.
Of course, he won’t say this, and his recent comments at a fundraiser in Idaho appear on their face to be a doubling down, but, when read correctly, they actually suggest the opposite. “I’ve made it clear that we’re not going to increase the debt limit without cuts and reforms [to mandatory entitlement spending] that are greater than the increase in the debt limit,” he said yesterday.
This entitlement demand is mostly new. While we got hints that Boehner might put Social Security and Medicare on the table back in early July, we’ve hardly heard a peep about it since. Instead, Republicans have been focused defunding Obamacare.
As Josh Barro writes, insisting on entitlement cuts is often Boehner’s last move before capitulation, because he knows it’s a ransom demand that will never be paid. He did it in December, when spokesperson Michael Steel used almost the exact same words: “Any debt limit increase would require cuts and reforms of a greater amount.” (The next month, the House voted overwhelmingly to bypass the debt ceiling and got none of those cuts.) And Boehner did it 2011. That time, he won the overall battle, but he still didn’t get any entitlement cuts.
Cutting the safety net is anathema to Democrats, and in the unlikely scenario that they’d do it, they certainly aren’t going to rush it through in the perhaps 15 legislative work days Congress has before it hits the October debt ceiling deadline. Boehner knows this.
And he’s done nothing to suggest he’s serious about entitlement cuts. There was a brief, peculiar moment this spring when the White House not only was willing to talk social safety net reform, but actually put cuts to Social Security in their budget. And Democratic congressional leaders suggested they’d deliver enough votes to pass something. What did Boehner do? He rejected the proposal out of hand, sight unseen, and called it ”no way to lead and move the country forward.” (That was basically the White House’s expectation all along, they claimed when liberals threatened mutiny.)
If Boehner’s entitlement demand was an empty threat in 2011 and 2012, and he didn’t take up his best chance at it in 2013, then it has to be even more of a bluff today as the landscape has titled decidedly against Republicans, MSNBC’s Suzy Khim notes. The deficit is falling fast and a clear majority of Americans opposed to defunding Obamacare, according to a new Kaiser poll out today, so the White House holds most of the cards. Both they and Boehner know that a government shutdown or default will be worse for Republicans than for Democrats, so this time the president is refusing to negotiate with the hostage takers.
So now, all that’s left is for Boehner to somehow bring his base along. He doesn’t necessarily need their votes, but he needs to drop the pitchforks for moment. Brian Beutler previews how it may go down:
Boehner introduces legislation that both increases (or extends) the debt limit and includes some goodies for conservatives that make the bill a non-starter with Senate Democrats and the President (maybe a year-long delay of the individual mandate — let your imaginations run wild); that bill fails on the House floor; everyone panics; faced with no better option, Boehner breaks the Hastert rule, puts a tidy, Senate-passed debt limit bill on the floor, and we all dress up as Speaker Pelosi for Halloween.
Of course, Beutler notes, plenty of things could go wrong. For instance, Boehner could decide that he’ll refuse to break the Hastert rule (meaning he won’t put anything on the floor that isn’t supported by a majority of Republicans) under any circumstance.
He’s done that when it comes to immigration reform, where he could pass a bill tomorrow if he were willing to use Democratic votes. He knows that every time he breaks Hastert, he enrages the Republican base a little bit more, so it’s possible that he’s been saving it up for this moment, which he must have known would come.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, August 28, 2013
“The Grand Old Party Of Nihilists And Cranks”: The Politics Of Destruction With The Values Of Zealots
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, Republican Saxby Chambliss, Georgia’s senior senator, was considered a steadfast conservative. The American Conservative Union has given him a lifetime score of 92, while the Club for Growth has scored him at 83. He earns an A from the National Rifle Association.
But a couple of years ago, Chambliss embarked upon an exercise that would merely have cemented his stature as a power broker as recently as the administration of George W. Bush: He joined Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, to form a bipartisan group of senators working to come up with a deal to whittle down the deficit. In other words, he considered compromise with Democrats.
In our current warped political universe, that was enough to earn Chambliss a potential challenger from the right, and he decided not to seek re-election. Chastened by Chambliss’ experience, none of the Georgia Republicans running for his vacant seat wants to occupy the same ZIP code with the words “compromise” and “bipartisan.”
This is what the Grand Old Party has come to: It’s now led by nihilists whose only politics are those of destruction and whose only values are those of zealots. There may be reasonable Republicans remaining in office, but they’ve been bullied into compliance and cowed into silence.
If you don’t believe that, listen to the growing drumbeat for the impeachment of President Obama — despite the glaring lack of evidence that he has committed impeachable offenses. (Having the temerity to win a second term is not an impeachable crime.) While such talk was once restricted to the nutters — men like U.S. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI), who has said the president’s impeachment would “be a dream come true” — it has leaked into the GOP’s water supply.
Witness the recent off-the-cuff remarks of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who, though a standard-bearer for the hard right, has been considered a thoughtful and rational man. At a recent meeting with constituents, Coburn declared that the president was coming “perilously close” to the standards for impeachment.
Last month, at a tribute in his honor, the retiring Chambliss obliquely urged his party to come to its senses. He didn’t explicitly mention the GOP’s spiral into right-wing madness, but he did speak of the importance of his work with the Gang of Six, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I don’t mind crossing party lines. If Republicans had a patent on all the good ideas, we’d be in power forever. We don’t have a patent on all those good ideas,” he said.
But his intended audience has taken another lesson from Chambliss’ bipartisanship: If you even consider it, you will be labeled a RINO — Republican In Name Only — by the tea party activists who now wield enormous power in the Republican Party. Having chased Chambliss off, they have taken to hectoring Georgia’s junior Republican senator, Johnny Isakson, for his failure to jump with enthusiasm to the idea of shutting down the government over Obamacare.
Tea Party types have also targeted longtime senator Lamar Alexander, Republican from Tennessee. In a letter urging Alexander to retire, they claimed that “our great nation can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship, two traits for which you have become famous.”
In response, Alexander penned a remarkable op-ed in The Tennessean defending his record as a politician who has occasionally reached across the aisle. “I know that if you only have 45 votes and you need 60 senators to get something important done like balancing the budget and fixing the debt, then you have to work with other people — that is, IF you really care about solving the problem, IF you really want to get a result, instead of just making a speech,” he wrote.
However, such time-honored traditions of governance have little effect on the white-hot rage of radicals who want to toss out any conservative who remembers the lessons of his middle-school civics classes. They have no respect for the basic give-and-take on which representative democracies thrive, no real interest in improving the nation’s fortunes. So, no, Senator Alexander, they don’t care about solving problems.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, August 31, 2013
“Another Case Of Willful Deception”: Mitch McConnell Shouldn’t Brag About Supporting Bills He Opposed
Several weeks ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) got caught misleading Kentucky voters about his record on the Violence Against Women Act. This morning, he was even more brazen on the subject (via Joe Sonka).
A press release distributed by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) campaign at a “Women for Team Mitch” event on Friday brags about the Senate Minority Leader’s support for the Violence Against Women Act, even though McConnell voted against the measure in 1994, 2012, and 2013.
“Mitch was the co-sponsor of the original Violence Against Women Act — and continues to advocate for stronger polices to protect women. I am proud to call him my senator,” the document quotes a voter as saying.
For months, a variety of congressional Republicans have pretended to support the Violence Against Women Act, even after they voted against it, hoping voters and reporters wouldn’t know the difference.
But the fact that McConnell has a lot of company doesn’t make this any better. His campaign is now trying to give voters the impression that he’s championed VAWA, but in reality, McConnell has voted against it repeatedly. Indeed, he voted against it even when he knew with certainty it would pass — suggesting he opposed the law just to make a point about the depth and seriousness of his opposition.
As for the notion that McConnell “continues to advocate for stronger polices to protect women,” let’s also not forget that the Senate Minority Leader voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.
If McConnell wants to defend his record, fine. If he wants Kentuckians to find merit in the votes he cast, the senator is welcome to make his case. But the fact that he sees willful deception as the appropriate course is a problem.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 30, 2013
“The Cycle Of Savagery”: Jim DeMint Is Now Going Too Far, Even For Republicans
After months—years really—of serving as the scourge of any GOPer he deemed too squishy, the über-conservative senator–turned–Heritage Foundation president finally earned a gentle spanking from his former colleagues. Upon Congress’s return from recess next week, Heritage staffers will no longer be welcome at weekly meetings of the conservative Republican Study Committee.
The ban, which ends a decades-long special arrangement between the two groups, reportedly flowed from a dust-up between Heritage and lawmakers over this summer’s Farm Bill negotiations. (Even the stripped-down version that the House passed was insufficiently austere for Heritage’s taste.) But ag policy is merely the tip of the iceberg for Jim DeMint, who has been hammering Republican lawmakers to hold the conservative line on everything from immigration to Obamacare—to the increasing annoyance of even ideologically simpatico members. While banishing Heritage from planning sessions may not have much practical effect, it’s a sign that congressional Republicans are rethinking their willingness to take DeMint’s abuse lying down.
Which is not to say that Hill Republicans didn’t know DeMint was going to be a gigantic pain once he left office. He was, after all, a gigantic pain while in office. Upon leaving the chummy upper chamber and establishing an independent perch at Heritage, of course he was going to escalate the fight.
Just this week, in fact, DeMint is wrapping up arguably his most aggressive assault to date on his own party: a two-week, nine-city town-hall tour spreading the message that Obamacare must be stopped by any means necessary, including shutting down the federal government. Now most Republicans, of course, would be delighted to defund much if not all of the Affordable Care Act. But most also acknowledge that a government shutdown would not only be politically devastating for the GOP, it simply wouldn’t work. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told a crowd back home in Kentucky, “I’m for stopping Obamacare, but shutting down the government will not stop Obamacare.”
This kind of squish talk is like catnip for DeMint. And so, joined by Rafael Cruz, father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (who rose to office with the support of the DeMint-founded Senate Conservatives Fund PAC), DeMint spent a chunk of his recess rallying supporters in Indianapolis, Dallas (where Senator Cruz made an appearance), Tampa, Nashville, Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Wilmington, Delaware, and Fayettville, Arkansas, with the battle cry that Republicans unwilling to go to the mattresses over Obamacare are too soft for public service and “need to be replaced.” At stops along the way, he called out particular lawmakers for criticism. (He took a swipe at John Boehner, for instance, while in the speaker’s home state of Ohio.)
Meanwhile, the Senate Conservatives Fund—which DeMint no longer heads but is still run by his former advisers and staffers—is making the fight even more personal. Last week, the group launched a series of radio ads slamming a half-dozen Republican senators who have declined to sign a letter pledging to shut down the government as a way to defund the ACA. Among those on the hit list are McConnell, Arizona conservative Jeff Flake (to whose campaign the SCF contributed richly last year), and DeMint’s former South Carolina colleague, Lindsey Graham. Brushing off the attack, Flake responded by tweeting “Oh, whatever”—which immediately prompted the SCF to release a second ad, urging Republicans to tell Flake “Oh, whatever” the next time he asked for their support.
And so the cycle of internecine savagery accelerates, even as Republicans brace for what is fast becoming an annual game of budget chicken. Members of the party establishment, understandably, are growing increasingly anxious, and sounding the alarm about the possible repercussions of shutdown shenanigans.
“Shutting down the government in an effort to defund is the one way Republicans can turn Obamacare from a major plus to a major minus in the 2014 elections,” warns GOP pollster Whit Ayers—who, as it turns out, has just completed “extensive polling on public opinion regarding a shutdown.” While Ayers declines to unpack the yet-to-be-released results of the survey, his for-God’s-sake-don’t-do-it attitude is a pretty big clue as to what he has heard from voters. In the coming days, Ayers, among others, will be trooping up to the Hill to discuss the issue with GOP players. He tells me, “There’s a great many people hoping that wiser heads will prevail.”
Perhaps they will. Then again, such “wiser heads” are precisely the ones that DeMint is measuring for the political chopping block.
By: Nichelle Cottle, The Daily Beast, August 30, 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,
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