“No Vote Head-Faking”: How John Boehner Is Playing Washington
There were no fireworks when John Boehner stood before Republican members at their retreat in rural Maryland and unveiled the House GOP’s “principles” for immigration reform. Even as the speaker outlined policies intolerable to hawkish conservatives, such as providing citizenship to undocumented children, there was, amazingly, no ugly dissent inside the Hyatt conference center.
There’s a simple reason why: Most members realized that Boehner was presenting broad ideas to be discussed, not specific proposals to be voted on.
“I thought the principles were vague enough that most people could agree with them,” Rep. Raul Labrador said after the retreat.
That was the idea.
At the beginning of the year, interviews with dozens of lawmakers and aides revealed a strategic dichotomy forming within the House GOP. Many conservatives craved a “bold” voting schedule in 2014 that would draw sharp policy contrasts on a host of issues. Republican leaders, on the other hand, saw such aggression as counterproductive in an election year and preferred to play it safe by pounding the issues of Obamacare, government oversight, the economy, and opportunity for middle-class Americans.
What has emerged is something of a safe middle ground. Boehner said Thursday that Republicans “will not shy away from” advancing major legislation this year. But the pace of that advance will be slow. Indeed, as GOP leadership carefully navigates an election year that appears promising for the party, Boehner is allowing conservative policy solutions to emerge from the conference—but they are meant to elicit positive headlines and score political points, not to expedite votes.
Take immigration. In the abstract, plenty of Republicans support legal status for undocumented immigrants (albeit only after several triggers, such as border security and employment verification, are in place.) Still, they say 2014 isn’t ripe for such an overhaul, citing election-year politics and a belief that President Obama is unwilling to enforce immigration laws. Boehner, knowing the reticence of his members yet understanding the necessity of appearing proactive on immigration, felt he had to act.
So the speaker released a nebulous outline of principles. Republicans rolled their eyes, sensing that significant legislative action was unlikely, but the media went crazy, splashing front-page headlines heralding the House GOP’s embrace of legalization for the undocumented. And one week later, after lawmakers lodged obligatory concerns and reporters wrote glowing reviews, Boehner dutifully acknowledged that immigration reform probably won’t happen this year.
“This is an important issue in our country,” Boehner said on Feb. 6. “It’s been kicked around forever, and it needs to be dealt with.”
The speaker was discussing immigration, but he could have been referencing any number of policies his GOP members want to bring to a vote—tax reform, health care, privacy, and welfare reform among them. Republicans want action, but it’s becoming clear that most of these will share immigration’s fate: Principles will be shared and a discussion will be had, but a vote will not.
Tax reform is the latest example. Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, made a splash last week by introducing a long-awaited overhaul of the tax code. Many conservatives have eagerly anticipated Camp’s proposal for three years, and are now agitating for a vote. “If this is a really powerful document that can rally a bunch of support in the party, then what’s to stop us from having a vote in the House?” Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina said of Camp’s tax plan.
Boehner’s response when asked about Camp’s plan on Wednesday: “Blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Leadership sees the details of this proposal, such as eliminating popular deductions, as politically perilous. But they also know how enthusiastic some members are about tax reform. So rather than rankle conservatives by suffocating the plan altogether, or irritate the business community by bringing a risky proposal to the House floor, Boehner’s team is content to have Camp to unveil his plan—allowing for a broad messaging campaign but not a specific vote.
This head-faking has provided GOP leadership with a blueprint for 2014. Now, with immigration and tax reform essentially taken off the table, and fewer than 75 legislative days left before midterm elections, Boehner’s team will have to grapple with but a few more potentially troublesome policy pushes.
Privacy legislation, if it’s a libertarian-backed bill with teeth, is unlikely to reach the floor.
Same goes for welfare reform. A group of conservatives, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, have worked with the Heritage Foundation on a proposal to roll back welfare spending to pre-recession levels and add work requirements to the food-stamp program. But a vote on this plan is unlikely. Tinkering with the social safety net is always hazardous, and, as with other bold proposals, leadership won’t risk an election-year backlash by voting on something that stands no chance of clearing the Senate.
The one major issue that Boehner’s strategy won’t apply to is Obamacare. Conservatives have demanded action—and were promised votes—on an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. Majority Leader Eric Cantor earned applause in Cambridge when he guaranteed an Obamacare replacement plan, and is beginning to meet with colleagues to piece something together. Cantor is widely expected to deliver.
Still, as National Journal reported in January, the House Republican health care plan is likely to be a medley of poll-tested proposals slapped together— not one of the comprehensive alternative plans that conservatives have been boosting.
For conservatives who demanded an aggressive, wide-ranging legislative agenda in 2014, winding up with one vote on a watered-down health care bill might not suffice. “Instead of talking, we could actually act—and we could have a real impact,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, a frequent critic of leadership. “It’s easy to blame Harry Reid and the president for everything, but we’re missing a lot of opportunities. Standing back and waiting is not going to win elections.”
Still, after initially decrying a play-it-safe strategy, other conservatives now sound comfortable with the approach. “When you put a bill out there,” said Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, “it has a lot of details that can detract from the overall concept.”
By: Tim Alberta, The National Journal, March 2, 2014
“Willful Republican Obfuscation”: The GOP Takes Another ObamaCare Study Way Out Of Context
It’s no secret that Republicans are pinning their midterm election hopes on ObamaCare.
So it should be no surprise that the GOP has tried to cast virtually all news about the health care law as proof that ObamaCare will kill jobs and send insurance costs soaring. The only problem with that strategy is that the underlying arguments are often disingenuous.
In the latest case, a new report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimates that ObamaCare could raise insurance premiums for nearly two-thirds of small businesses, affecting some 11 million employees. Before ObamaCare, those small businesses were paying below-average rates — often by having younger, healthier workers whom insurers could charge less to cover — but new rules designed to level the insurance marketplace will cause those rates to rise, according to the report.
Naturally, right-wing blogs and Republican lawmakers seized on the report to bash ObamaCare. The report revealed another “broken promise” from the Obama administration, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement, calling it “another punch in the gut for Americans already struggling in the president’s economy.”
The reality of the report’s conclusions, though, are a bit more nuanced.
While the report did find that insurance premiums would probably go up, it did not determine that insurance costs overall would spike. That’s because the report focused only on the impact of ObamaCare’s new rules, and not, crucially, on the impact of its new benefits.
ObamaCare contains a wealth of subsidies, tax breaks, and the like — many of them geared specifically toward small businesses — that are intended to drive down individuals’ insurance costs. When you factor in all the positives, “Obamacare may well be the best thing Washington has done for American small business in decades,” The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki wrote last year.
The CMS report acknowledged that fact, hedging that there was “a rather large degree of uncertainty associated with this estimate” and that the true impact “will be based on far more factors than the three that are focused on in this report so understanding the effects of just these provisions will always be challenging.” And the report specifically mentioned one nongovernmental analysis of the entire law which found that it would have a “minimal” impact on small business premiums.
Moreover, the report estimated that costs would drop for the remaining one-third of small businesses. Why? They’re currently paying above-average rates, so the market-leveling rules will actually benefit them.
The GOP hand-wringing comes on the heels of its failed attempt to claim a separate federal report confirmed that ObamaCare will be a job killer. That nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report actually found that the law would lead to a reduction of labor, not jobs, as incentives made it easier for people to work less or retire early. The GOP’s claim was so bogus, in fact, that the CBO released a follow-up statement thoroughly debunking it as an egregious distortion of the truth.
Republicans understandably want to make the health care law look bad to boost their election prospects. But skewing the findings on ObamaCare only hurts their credibility and reveals the party’s willful obfuscation on the issue.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 25, 2014
“Reality Be Damned”: Do Republicans Need A Plan B On ObamaCare?
For years, Republicans have trotted out the same message: ObamaCare is a massive disaster, and the public knows it. And when Healthcare.gov crashed out of the starting gate, that message proved quite resonant.
Yet as ObamaCare begins to turn the corner, Democrats are going back on the offensive, touting the law’s benefits and successes in hopes of boosting support for it — and the party — ahead of the 2014 elections. Republicans, meanwhile, have so far stood by the same critiques, betting that the law will still be seen as a failure come Election Day.
Which raises a thorny question for the GOP: What if ObamaCare works?
Undoubtedly, ObamaCare is now functioning better than it was in October. Though problems remain for the exchange site — the back end is still a mess, often sending bogus or incomplete information to insurers — enrollments are reportedly surging through both the federal and state-run marketplaces.
Good news in hand, the White House and congressional Democrats this week launched a campaign of daily pro-ObamaCare messaging to promote the law ahead of the December 23 enrollment deadline for coverage that kicks in January 1, 2014. Their goal is to present a “raw two-sided picture,” according to Politico, with “Democrats delivering benefits on one side, and Republicans trying to deny them on the other.”
“My main message today is: We’re not going back,” Obama declared in a reboot speech Tuesday.
If ObamaCare keeps improving, the GOP’s “we told you ObamaCare was a mess” pitch could quickly wear thin. And if it does, Republicans will find themselves in need of a new argument or a legislative alternative.
So far, they don’t really have either.
On the messaging front, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday repeated boilerplate GOP criticisms that the law is “fundamentally flawed,” and that it “continues to wreak havoc on American families, small businesses, and our economy.” Other GOP leaders similarly contended that the law is still a problem-plagued failure.
That the message hasn’t changed despite ObamaCare’s turnaround proves that “Republican complaints of two months ago were purely opportunistic,” wrote Jamelle Bouie over at the Daily Beast.
“For them, it just doesn’t matter if Healthcare.gov is working, since ObamaCare is destined to fail, reality be damned!” he added. “At most, the broken website was useful fodder for attacks on the administration. Now that it’s made progress, the GOP will revert to its usual declarations that the Affordable Care Act is a hopeless disaster.”
The GOP has also yet to offer a credible legislative alternative to ObamaCare. Though there are several Republican bills that would reform the health-care system, they’re generally considered suspect, and none have consensus support within the GOP. Boehner on Tuesday tellingly dodged a question about whether he would even bring up such a bill up for a vote, saying only, “We’ll see.”
Polls have shown that while voters aren’t too keen on the health-care law, they’re willing to give it a chance. Indeed, the first few months of ObamaCare’s disastrous rollout could be a distant memory once coverage and benefits kick in next year.
Which points to another problem for Republicans: Their anti-ObamaCare crusade will be tough to sustain once people begin to see the law’s benefits in action. Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum sussed out that point, writing, “Once the benefits of a new program start flowing, it’s very, very hard to turn them off.”
By the middle of 2014, ObamaCare is going to have a huge client base; it will be working pretty well; and it will be increasingly obvious that the disaster scenarios have been overblown….
Given all this, it’s hard to see ObamaCare being a huge campaign winner. For that, you need people with grievances, and the GOP is unlikely to find them in large enough numbers. The currently covered will stay covered. Doctors and hospitals will be treating more patients. ObamaCare’s taxes don’t touch anyone with an income less than $200,000. Aside from the Tea Partiers who object on the usual abstract grounds that ObamaCare is a liberty-crushing Stalinesque takeover of the medical industry, it’s going to be hard to gin up a huge amount of opposition. [Mother Jones]
Republicans have so far committed themselves to staunchly opposing ObamaCare no matter what, even producing a playbook for attacking the law from here to November 2014. But if ObamaCare continues to improve, the GOP might need to draw up a new play — or risk getting burned at the polls.
By: John Terbush, The Week, December 4, 2013
“Feigning Outrage”: The GOP’s Health Reform Playbook
The last thing Republicans want right now is to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
They may claim it is destroying the country, but they need it, and desperately, to rebuild their party. They even have a detailed playbook to exploit it, outlining how and when to stage attacks against Democrats who support it in order to inflict maximum damage in the months before the 2014 midterm elections.
As Jonathan Weisman and Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported in this morning’s Times, House Republicans have been organizing their strategy behind closed doors for the last month. They began by capitalizing on the gifts given them by the White House in the form of the malfunctioning health care website and President Obama’s false promise that no one need lose an insurance policy. Then they moved on to claims that personal data is insecure on the insurance exchanges.
Next, according to the playbook, will come criticism of premium price hikes, and breast-beating about changes to Medicare Advantage plans, as well as the possibility that people will lose their doctors under some policies.
Republicans will also hold hearings, and come armed with anecdotes from outraged citizens who suddenly find their new health insurance options aren’t perfect.
Reform has given new life to a party that was in the depths after the shutdown debacle just last month.
This deep concern about Americans’ access to quality insurance is entirely new and utterly insincere, of course. Nearly one in 10 people on Medicare — 4 million people — are dissatisfied with that program, according to surveys, but you don’t hear their complaints broadcast at hearings or at Republican news conferences. In 2010, long before the health reform law took effect, 20 percent of people on employer-based insurance expressed dissatisfaction with their plans, as did a third of people on the individual market. They complained about high deductibles and constrained networks of doctors and hospitals, just as many of them will under the new system. And they complained about cancelled policies.
Republicans never cared about those concerns before the Affordable Care Act came around, and they don’t really care now, even though they’re doing a great job of feigning outrage. They’re simply using these grievances, magnified by anecdotal media coverage, to batter Democrats who are still standing up for the president’s program.
Some of those Democrats are fighting back. They’re pointing out, as the White House did yesterday, that the growth in health care costs is slowing significantly. They’re trying to highlight people who are saving money on their new policies, or who can buy insurance even if they are sick. And they will try to broadcast the voices of the previously uninsured, who have never appeared in a Republican diatribe and never will.
But the most attention, as always, will be paid to the shrillest critics. Just remember, as their attacks pick up in volume in the months to come, that they were prepared long in advance, as cheap as canned laughter.
By: David Firestone, Editors Blog, The New York Times, November 21, 2013
“The Coming Electoral Consequences”: Speaker Boehner Keeps Motivating The Wrong Base
The widely held assumption is that a variety of popular measures can pass the Senate and earn President Obama’s signature, but won’t become law because of the Republican-led House. And in plenty of instances, that’s true.
But on a variety of important proposals, the problem isn’t the House majority party, but rather, the willingness of the House GOP leadership to let the chamber vote up or down on the bills in question. The obstacle, in other words, isn’t 218 “no” votes; it’s House Speaker John Boehner’s disinclination to let the House exercise its will.
I can appreciate why the Speaker would rather kill popular bills than pass them – he promised his right-wing members he’d honor the manufactured “Hastert Rule,” and Boehner’s afraid of being deposed – but as Brian Beutler noted yesterday, the posture may well carry electoral consequences.
Big Senate bills in and of themselves won’t shake House Republicans out of their paralysis. It’s unrealistic to expect the House will address all of these issues and it’s possible they won’t address any of them. But the constituent groups to whom these issues matter – Latinos, the LGBT community, women and African Americans – won’t be confused about who killed them.
The flip side of the GOP becoming a whites-only party and crossing its fingers that Healthcare.gov fails is that Boehner is doing his damnedest to help Democrats receive their 2008 and 2012 coalitions in the coming midterm.
Remember, one of the key Democratic hopes going into the 2014 midterms – now 364 days away – is that congressional Republicans will motivate the Democratic base to show up for a change in a midterm cycle. How’s that going so far?
Swimmingly. Democratic candidates and campaign committees now intend to go to Latino communities and say, “Like immigration reform? Then help vote out the Republicans who killed the bipartisan reform package.” Dems intend to go to LGBT communities and say, “Like ENDA? Then help vote out the Republicans who killed the bipartisan bill.” Dems intend to go to African-American communities and say, “Like voting rights? Then help vote out the Republicans who made it impossible to reform the Voting Rights Act.”
And Dems intend to go to everyone and say, “Like the government shutdown and series of self-imposed crises? If not, then help vote out the Republicans who cooked up these schemes.”
The Democratic coalition is stable, but not unbreakable. By refusing to govern, Boehner and House Republicans are strengthening that coalition, boosting Democratic fundraising, helping Democratic recruiting efforts, and motivating the Democratic base.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 5, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 