“Why Don’t We Just Pack Up And Go Home?”: Republicans Are Afraid To Take The Blame For Their Own Actions
Just this week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have all presented the identical argument: passing immigration reform will be very difficult because Republicans consider President Obama fundamentally untrustworthy.
The general thrust of the argument is that GOP lawmakers aren’t confident that the Obama administration will enforce federal law, and as such, they don’t want to vote for reform. Even if Congress approves sweeping border-security measures intended to satisfy GOP lawmakers’ demands, they say, Obama, the out-of-control, “lawless” radical, may simply blow off laws (or parts of laws) whenever it strikes his fancy.
It’s a deeply silly posture, based largely on fantasy and this partisan pretenses, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took this one step further yesterday during a notable press briefing.
“When [Republicans] say … they don’t trust the president to do it, why don’t we just pack up and go home?” she said. “We have a democratic system. We have checks and balances. We have three branches of government. In fact, we’re the first in the Constitution – the legislative branch. And what we’re supposed to do is legislate, and not make up excuses as to why we don’t.”
“That’s not a reason not to do an immigration bill, that’s an excuse not to do it,” she added. “And around here, you have to always differentiate between what is a reason, and what is an excuse.”
This may have seemed like a throwaway line, uttered in frustration, but Pelosi actually raised a critically important point. If Republicans believe their own rhetoric, why would Congress even show up for work at all?
Pelosi’s response may have sounded flippant, but there’s nothing rhetorical or theoretical about the Republican assertions. If the majority of the House of Representatives is sincere, and GOP lawmakers seriously believe President Obama simply ignores laws whenever he feels like it, and acts unilaterally to impose his will, Constitution be damned, why doesn’t Congress “just pack up and go home”?
Indeed, consider the legislative process over the last month or so. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed appropriations bills, directing the executive branch to finance government operations. But if Republicans don’t trust the president to faithfully execute the laws approved by the legislative branch, why did Congress bother? Why didn’t Republicans balk and declare they would only appropriate funds after Obama had earned their trust?
Soon after, lawmakers in both chambers approved a farm bill, which the Obama administration will now help implement. But if the House GOP is convinced the rascally president ignores laws, why did they vote on the farm bill in the first place?
House Republicans keep voting on all kinds of measures, which would be an odd thing to do if they’re convinced the American system of government has broken down so severely that a lawless White House is prepared to ignore federal laws on a whim.
And therein lies the point: lawmakers keep voting on legislation because they probably don’t seriously believe their own talking points. They’re not genuinely convinced Obama will blow off federal laws, because if they were, they would bother to pass new federal laws.
What’s likely happening is that Republicans may kill immigration reform and they’re afraid to take the blame for their own actions. The “we can’t trust Obama” line is a fig leaf, and a rather transparent one at that.
Of course, if I’m mistaken, and House Republicans genuinely believe they see a president who casually disregards and/or breaks laws he doesn’t like, they can prove their sincerity by stopping the legislative process and beginning impeachment proceedings. But so long as GOP lawmakers continue to legislate, working under the assumption that the executive branch will still execute federal laws, the inanity of the Republican argument on immigration will be increasingly obvious.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, February 7, 2014
“Health, Work, Lies”: Losing Your Job And Choosing To Work Less Aren’t The Same Thing
On Wednesday, Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said the obvious: losing your job and choosing to work less aren’t the same thing. If you lose your job, you suffer immense personal and financial hardship. If, on the other hand, you choose to work less and spend more time with your family, “we don’t sympathize. We say congratulations.”
And now you know everything you need to know about the latest falsehood in the ever-mendacious campaign against health reform.
Let’s back up. On Tuesday, the budget office released a report on the fiscal and economic outlook that included two appendices devoted to effects of the Affordable Care Act.
The first appendix attracted almost no attention from the news media, yet it was actually a bombshell. Much public discussion of health reform is still colored by Obamacare’s terrible start, and presumes that the program remains a disaster. Some of us have pointed out that things have been going much better lately — but now it’s more or less official. The budget office predicts that first-year sign-ups in the health exchanges will fall only modestly short of expectations, and that nearly as many uninsured Americans will gain insurance as it predicted last spring.
This good news got drowned out, however, by false claims about the meaning of the second health care appendix, on labor supply.
It has always been clear that health reform will induce some Americans to work less. Some people will, for example, retire earlier because they no longer need to keep working to keep their health insurance. Others will reduce their hours to spend more time with their children because insurance is no longer contingent on holding a full-time job. More subtly, the incentive to work will be somewhat reduced by health insurance subsidies that fall as your income rises.
The budget office has now increased its estimate of the size of these effects. It believes that health reform will reduce the number of hours worked in the economy by between 1.5 percent and 2 percent, which it unhelpfully noted “represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million.”
Why was this unhelpful? Because politicians and, I’m sorry to say, all too many news organizations immediately seized on the 2 million number and utterly misrepresented its meaning. For example, Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, quickly posted this on his Twitter account: “Under Obamacare, millions of hardworking Americans will lose their jobs and those who keep them will see their hours and wages reduced.”
Not a word of this claim was true. The budget office report didn’t say that people will lose their jobs. It declared explicitly that the predicted fall in hours worked will come “almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor” (emphasis added). And as we’ve already seen, Mr. Elmendorf did his best the next day to explain that voluntary reductions in work hours are nothing like involuntary job loss. Oh, and because labor supply will be reduced, wages will go up, not down.
We should add that the budget office believes that health reform will actually reduce unemployment over the next few years.
Just to be clear, the predicted long-run fall in working hours isn’t entirely a good thing. Workers who choose to spend more time with their families will gain, but they’ll also impose some burden on the rest of society, for example, by paying less in payroll and income taxes. So there is some cost to Obamacare over and above the insurance subsidies. Any attempt to do the math, however, suggests that we’re talking about fairly minor costs, not the “devastating effects” Mr. Cantor asserted in his next post on Twitter.
So was Mr. Cantor being dishonest? Or was he just ignorant of the policy basics and unwilling to actually read the report before trumpeting his misrepresentation of what it said? It doesn’t matter — because even if it was ignorance, it was willful ignorance. Remember, the campaign against health reform has, at every stage, grabbed hold of any and every argument it could find against insuring the uninsured, with truth and logic never entering into the matter.
Think about it. We had the nonexistent death panels. We had false claims that the Affordable Care Act will cause the deficit to balloon. We had supposed horror stories about ordinary Americans facing huge rate increases, stories that collapsed under scrutiny. And now we have a fairly innocuous technical estimate misrepresented as a tale of massive economic damage.
Meanwhile, the reality is that American health reform — flawed and incomplete though it is — is making steady progress. No, millions of Americans won’t lose their jobs, but tens of millions will gain the security of knowing that they can get and afford the health care they need.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 6, 2014
“Surprise! Republicans Aren’t Serious About Reform”: The GOP’s Lame Attempt To Blame Obama For The Failure Of Immigration Reform
This week, it became all too clear that House Republicans don’t really want to address immigration reform in any meaningful way this year. And if the reform effort does wither on the vine, Republicans know just who to blame: themselves.
Ha, just kidding. They’re going to blame President Obama.
A mere week after unveiling a list of immigration “principles” that the GOP would pursue, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that handling immigration this year would be “difficult,” because many Republicans don’t trust Obama.
“There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws,” he said. “And it’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.”
Of course, a bipartisan immigration reform package has already passed the Senate, which includes an eye-popping $40 billion for border security. Obama has even signaled that he would be prepared to sign into law a more modest package, including one that bestowed only legal status — as opposed to citizenship — to undocumented workers.
The obstacle to reform has always been in the GOP-controlled House, where hardcore conservatives have opposed any law that bears even a whiff of amnesty. That, in turn, has spooked potential reform supporters who are wary of a primary challenge.
Indeed, Boehner’s so-called principles can be seen as a trial balloon that was quickly deflated by members of his own party, including influential conservative writers like The Weekly Standard‘s William Kristol, who argued that the issue unnecessarily divided the GOP ahead of the 2014 midterms.
Boehner’s remarks were still notable, though, in that they are part of a ridiculous attempt to pin the blame on Obama, a strategy that Republicans have been testing out for months.
Back in October, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who helped author the Senate’s immigration bill before fleeing to chase down his lost conservative credibility, said Obama poisoned immigration reform by standing firm through the government shutdown and debt ceiling fight. By not agreeing to the GOP’s fantastical demands that he gut his health-care law, Rubio said, Obama made immigration reform “harder to achieve.”
“The president has undermined this effort, absolutely, because of the way he has behaved over the last three weeks,” he said.
To be sure, some on the right have charged all along that the White House can’t be trusted to meet tough border security and verification requirements, necessitating “specific enforcement triggers” before a path to citizenship or legal status could even come into play. What’s different now is that the claim has gone mainstream, a reflection of how desperate the GOP is to convey to Latino voters that they would do something on immigration were it not for Obama.
A sampling from the past week:
- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “Here’s the issue that all Republicans agree on — we don’t trust the president to enforce the law.”
- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.): “There’s some real question of trust here and the White House continues to really thumb its nose up, if you will, at the Congress.”
- Rubio (again): “We just don’t think government will enforce the law anyway.”
As Slate’s David Weigel explains, the argument is pretty much bunk:
Say the Senate bill was passed in the House tomorrow, conferenced, and signed by the president. He’s got three years left in office. The legalization component of the Senate bill depends on a border security standard that’s going to be determined by a panel of state governors. They have five years to sign off. If you think about the timing of the Affordable Care Act — passed in 2010, implemented at the end of 2013 — there’s no real danger of Obama using a new immigration law to grant more amnesty. He could do that right now.
So, file these talking points under “Republicans Looking Busy.” [Slate]
But Boehner can’t spike immigration reform without first finding a scapegoat to blame for its failure. And since Senate Republicans are on board, who else is there to blame but the ultimate conservative bogeyman?
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 7, 2014
“Running Out Of Excuses”: Boehner’s ‘Trust’ Issues On Immigration
The odds of congressional success on immigration reform tend to swing wildly from one day to the next. Reform’s chances are either “likely” or a “long shot” depending on the latest quote, headline, hearing, poll, or rumor.
But this morning, the man who largely has the future of the policy in his hands made it sound as if immigration reform simply will not happen anytime soon.
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that House leaders cannot move immigration reform legislation until President Barack Obama restores “trust” among Republicans.
But the GOP leader did not say what rebuilding that trust might entail.
The Speaker told reporters, “There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. And it’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.”
Boehner added, “The president’s asking us to move one of the biggest bills of his presidency, and yet he’s shown very little willingness to work with us on the smallest of things.”
As a factual matter, some of this is just odd. Obama has generally shown overwhelming willingness to work with Congress on just about anything, large or small. There’s probably a reason Boehner didn’t mention any examples to bolster his argument.
But the real significance of the Speaker’s comments were their likely bearing on the immigration debate. As Boehner sees it, House Republicans aren’t confident that the Obama administration will enforce federal law, and as such, they don’t want to vote for reform. As the argument goes, even if Congress approves sweeping border-security measures intended to satisfy GOP lawmakers’ demands, Obama may simply blow off laws (or parts of laws) whenever it strikes his fancy.
Indeed, it’s not just Boehner making this argument. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) pushed the same case on the Sunday shows.
It’s a deeply flawed argument, though the motivation behind it is quite clear.
Note, if the argument sounds familiar, there’s a good reason – the “we can’t pass immigration reform because Obama’s an untrustworthy tyrant” tack first came up last summer. At the time, some congressional Republicans argued that a delay in the implementation of Affordable Care Act provisions was undeniable proof that “we have a president that picks and chooses the laws that he wants to obey and enforce. That makes him a ruler. He’s not a president, he’s a ruler.”
As we discussed at the time, the complaint isn’t persuasive. When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, the administration has some discretion in implementing various provisions. It’s not unusual and it’s not unique to health care. Plenty of parts of the Dodd/Frank financial-regulatory reform law were delayed, too. This has long been the norm, and using it as an excuse not to trust the entire executive branch on literally every issue is kind of silly.
As Brian Beutler wrote in July:
The administration isn’t unlawfully writing the employer mandate out of existence, just like it wouldn’t unlawfully refuse to send thousands of agents to the border if an immigration reform law required them to.
And because immigration reform will be a bipartisan law if it passes, Republicans in Congress will have less incentive to stand in the way if the implementation process reveals real problems with its drafting. Which means the administration won’t be left, as it is with the ACA, facing a suboptimal choice between implementing the law poorly or taking clunky administrative steps to smooth the process out.
So, if “we don’t trust Obama” is such a weak pretense for killing immigration reform, why are congressional Republicans so heavily invested in it? A few reasons, actually.
First, the GOP desperately hopes to convince the American mainstream that the president is an out-of-control, “lawless” radical. It’s not true – Obama’s actually a fairly moderate technocrat – but the manufactured narrative has become a convenient way for Republicans to raise money, rile up the base, and kill popular legislation.
Second, as a policy matter, it’s possible GOP lawmakers hope to use this excuse to tilt the policy playing field in their favor. As Greg Sargent noted on Monday, Republicans may very well insist that increased border security begin well in advance of any other part of immigration reform, insisting that it’s the only way for Obama to prove his “trustworthiness.” In other words, the legislation would give Republicans everything they want, with the understanding that other provisions could come later, once GOP lawmakers are satisfied the president isn’t a big liar.
And finally, let’s not lose sight of the blame game. Congressional Republicans, who have zero major legislative accomplishments since the 2010 midterms, are prepared to kill a popular, bipartisan immigration-reform effort that’s been endorsed by business leaders, labor leaders, economists, immigration advocates, and the faith community. If they refuse to pass legislation, as now appears likely, GOP leaders will need an extraordinary excuse to justify failure on this level.
According to Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan, that excuse effectively boils down to this: “Republicans don’t like Obama.” If they think that’ll work in persuading the public, they may want to consider a back-up plan.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 6, 2014
“What Republicans Say Versus What Republicans Mean”: A Classic Exercise In Political Disguise And Deceit
Now that the State-of-the-Union cameras are off, House Republicans are eager to discard their frozen smiles and return to their jobs of undermining virtually every goal President Obama set out in his speech on Tuesday night. They made that clear in a letter that the top four House officials sent to the president today, which purports to seek agreement on four points in the speech. It actually does quite the opposite.
The letter is a classic exercise in political disguise and deceit. The real aim of House Republicans is to reduce or remove the influence of the federal government in the marketplace and in the lives of Americans. But that’s not a usable political motto, since most people — except for the most rigid Tea Partiers or libertarians —still expect Washington to work for their benefit. So to preserve the standing of the Republican Party, its leaders have to make it sound as if they share the public’s desire, while concealing their own.
The four leaders — Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the conference chairwoman — wrote that if Mr. Obama truly wants to have “a year of action,” as he said in his speech, he can work with them to enact four bills the House has already passed. They all sound lofty until you actually read them, which is the reason the president has no intention of signing any of them.
Skills training. The president wants more training to match up workers and students to the needs of employers, and called on Vice President Joe Biden to oversee reform of existing training programs. The House training bill, passed last March, would actually eliminate many of the best programs, particularly those that involve labor organizations, and would not replace them. Requirements to direct training to low-income workers– the people who need new skills the most — would be dropped. Instead, the bill would freeze funding for seven years and send much of the remaining federal training money to the states, which cannot be counted on to build reliable programs. The bill’s real intention is to cut spending and weaken labor.
Natural Gas. The president said he would help businesses build factories that use natural gas, which causes less pollution than coal or oil, while strengthening protection of air, water, and federal lands. The Republican letter says nothing about the environment, but does push a bill the House passed in November to automatically allow construction of gas pipelines if the federal government takes too long to issue permits. Almost all pipelines are approved or disapproved within a year, which is apparently too long for the House’s business supporters. The bill’s real intention is to remove federal oversight of the pipeline industry.
Workplace flexibility. The president called for better maternity and paternity leave policies, and an end to restrictions on personal time that he said belonged in a “Mad Men” episode. The Republican response is that businesses should be able to choose whether to give overtime or compensatory time to hourly employees. The House bill, passed in May, would remove the worker protection in place since 1938 that requires extra pay for overtime work. Employees would be able to request comp time, but employers wouldn’t have to give them time off when requested, and wouldn’t have to pay them for comp time that wasn’t used. The bill’s real intention is to give more power to employers and less to workers.
Medical research. Republicans slashed important research in the sequester — the National Institutes of Health has been cut by $4.2 billion since 2011 — and the president urged that the money should be restored. The letter points to a House bill passed last month that would give $126 million to the N.I.H. over ten years for pediatric research. But it would get that money by eliminating public funding for political conventions. The House is free to stop cutting research and put all the money it wants into the N.I.H. The bill’s real intention is to force the political parties to rely on corporations to pay for their conventions, giving businesses far more leverage.
The letter makes no mention of the other popular ideas that Republicans have no intention of approving, including raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance and making preschool universal. The party is on retreat today to come up with disguises for blocking those ideas, too.
By: David Firestone, The New York Times, January 30, 2014
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