The Republicans’ Deceptive Payroll Tax Compromise
Republicans finally came to their senses yesterday and realized they were waging a losing battle with their opposition to a payroll tax extension. The two-month extension Congress passed in December was set to expire by the end of this month, and Republicans were adamant that any further extension be paired with equal spending cuts. Democrats balked, instead suggesting a surtax on millionaires that the Republicans would never accept, and another last minute legislative showdown appeared inevitable. Then out of nowhere yesterday afternoon Congressional Republicans announced that they would drop their resistance:
“Because the president and Senate Democratic leaders have not allowed their conferees to support a responsible bipartisan agreement, today House Republicans will introduce a backup plan that would simply extend the payroll tax holiday for the remainder of the year while the conference negotiations continue regarding offsets, unemployment insurance, and the ‘doc fix,’” said GOP leaders in an official statement Monday afternoon.
The last impasse on the tax extension left Republicans limping out of Washington for the Christmas recess. The payroll tax cut—which maintains the current 4.2 percent rate that, for a family earning $50,000 a year, amount to about $80 extra per month than the standard 6.2 percent rate—is a widely popular measure and Republicans faced public scrutiny as their obstinacy risked raising taxes on 160 million people, all in the name of political brinkmanship. By slipping this announcement out far in advance of the deadline on the same day the president released the 2013 budget, Republicans hoped to avoid a repeat of their previous public relations debacle.
Seems like an unabashed win for the Democrats, right? It’s certainly reassuring that the payroll tax extension, a form of stimulus bolstering the still shaky economy, will remain in place through the end of the year. Except unlike the December concession, this change of heart only covers the politically popular payroll tax. Excluded is an extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and the so-called Doc Fix, which stalls a drastic drop in the fees paid to Medicare physicians.
I imagine Republicans will also find common ground on the latter half—they wouldn’t want to position themselves against your grandma’s doctor during an election year—but the agreement seems designed as a ploy to put an end to the increased unemployment benefits that Republicans have fought against throughout Obama’s presidency. While the payroll tax cut helps keep the economy afloat, the unemployment benefits are the more simulative part of the equation, possibly dropping GDP by 0.3 percent if no extension is passed. But since those benefits aren’t dolled out to as wide a base as the payroll tax, there is less of a public groundswell whenever Republicans hold the extension hostage.
If Democrats buy into the Republicans’ attempts to separate the various measures, it’s unlikely that any offsets would be enough to convince Republicans to support extending unemployment. The party is secretly crossing their fingers, hoping the economy doesn’t improve before Obama is on the ballot this fall. Any form of stimulus that lacks widespread appeal would be a nonstarter.
By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, February 14, 2012
“Jim DeMint’s Doormat: GOP Presidential Nominee Only Needs Enough Working Digits To Handle A Pen
The most quoted speech at CPAC this year was Mitt Romney’s, but my vote for the most significant goes to Grover Norquist’s. In his charmingly blunt way, Norquist articulated out loud a case for Mitt Romney that you hear only whispered by other major conservative leaders.
They have reconciled themselves to a Romney candidacy because they see Romney as essentially a weak and passive president who will concede leadership to congressional conservatives:
All we have to do is replace Obama. … We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.
The requirement for president?
Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.
This is not a very complimentary assessment of Romney’s leadership. It’s also not a very realistic political program: congressional Republicans have a disapproval rating of about 75%. If Americans get the idea that a vote for Romney is a vote for the Ryan plan, Romney is more or less doomed.
To date, sad to say, Romney has worked hard to confirm this image of weakness.
Nobody wants a president who acts as the passive instrument of even generally popular groups like labor unions. (Did you know that—despite decades of declining popularity—unions still have an approval rating of 52%? I didn’t until I looked it up.)
But a candidate who appeases the most disliked people in national politics? That guy will command neither public affection nor respect.
Mitt Romney badly needs his Sister Souljah moment. Instead, he’s running as Jim DeMint’s doormat.
By: David Frum, The Daily Beast, February 13, 2012
Mitt Romney’s Problem With Conservatives: He’s Not Selling What They Want
The press has offered basically two explanations for Mitt Romney’s failure to win over conservative voters. The first is ideological: conservatives know that Romney was once a moderate, and they don’t consider his swing to the right sincere. The second is personal: whether because of his money, his faith, or his hair, average Republican voters just don’t relate to him.
There’s clearly something to both of these arguments, but they don’t fully explain Romney’s struggles. After all, moderates-turned-conservatives have won GOP nominations in the past. George H.W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1996, and John McCain in 2004 all won their party’s nomination despite histories of deep tension with the conservative movement. Steve Forbes, who had spent most of his life as a Rockefeller Republican, amassed so much conservative support in the run-up to the 2000 campaign that he briefly challenged George W. Bush from the right. Republicans also have rallied behind candidates from elite economic backgrounds (George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush) and candidates uncomfortable speaking about their faith (George H.W. Bush, Dole, McCain).
There’s a third explanation for Romney’s woes: he’s just not selling what conservative Republicans most want to buy. Going into this campaign, I suspect, Romney and his advisers figured it would be the perfect confluence of man and moment. Americans are obsessed with restoring jobs. Economic management, Romney likes to say, is his “wheelhouse.” As he put it last year, “That is what I know and what I do. I’ve had experience in turning things around that are going in the wrong direction.” From management consulting to the Olympics to the state of Massachusetts, Romney describes himself as a man who, through a combination of smarts, toughness, and pragmatism, nurses struggling enterprises back to health.
For the general election, it’s a pretty good shtick, which helps explain why Romney runs close to Obama in a head-to-head matchup. But while reviving the economy may be the issue that Americans care about most, it’s not the one that the Republican base cares about most. For conservative activists, the 2012 election isn’t fundamentally about jobs, it’s about freedom. The essential question is not how best to use government to restore economic growth. It is how best to keep government from destroying liberty.
When CBS News and The New York Times surveyed Tea Party supporters in 2010, for instance, they found that 45 percent described the movement’s goal as scaling back the federal government, compared with only 9 percent who described it as creating jobs. Asked what they were angriest about, 16 percent said the new health-care law, 14 percent said a government that doesn’t represent the people, 11 percent said government spending, and only 8 percent said unemployment and the economy. (This may be partly because, according to CBS and The Times, Tea Partiers are wealthier than other Americans and thus more insulated from the economic downturn.)
Obviously, conservatives see shrinking government and boosting the economy as interconnected: they’re convinced that if you do the former, the latter will follow. But when conservatives talk about limited government, it isn’t the prospect of enhanced economic growth that inspires them most, it’s the prospect of greater freedom. For a century now, American progressives have found the suggestion that boosting marginal tax rates or increasing anti-poverty programs threatens freedom to be downright baffling, but from Calvin Coolidge to Barry Goldwater to Glenn Beck, it’s been a core belief of the American right. And it has particular resonance in an era dominated by fears of national decline and after three years of a president who, more than his two Democratic predecessors, really has increased the federal government’s reach.
From Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul to Newt Gingrich to Rick Santorum, the candidates who have stirred passion on the right this presidential season have been those who have defined the election not as a struggle between economic stagnation and economic prosperity but between government tyranny and individual freedom. That’s why Obamacare is such a potent issue for grassroots conservatives; it also explains the right’s obsession with the Obama administration’s “war on religious liberty.” It’s why Gingrich gets such huge applause when he promises to abolish the Obama administration’s “czars.”
Listen to what Santorum said after he thumped Romney last week in Missouri. “People have asked me, you know, what is—what is the secret?” Santorum declared. “Why are you doing so well? Is it your jobs message? And, yes, we have a great jobs message … [but] the real message—the message that we’ve been taking across this country and here in Missouri—is a message of what’s at stake in this election … we have a president of the United States, as I mentioned, who’s someone who believes he knows better, that we need to accumulate more power in Washington, D.C., for the elite in our country to be able to govern you, because you are incapable of liberty, that you are incapable of freedom. That’s what this president believes. And I—and Americans—understand that there is a great, great deal at stake. If this president is reelected, and if we don’t have a nominee that can make this case and not be compromised on the biggest issues of the day, but can make the case to the American public that this is about the Founders’ freedom, this is about a country that believes in God-given rights and a Constitution that is limited to protect those rights.”
This is a bad general-election message. The Americans who decide presidential elections, especially in tough economic times, are pragmatic. They want candidates willing to do whatever it takes—no matter whose ideological ox is gored—to make the economic pain stop. It was FDR’s kitchen-sink pragmatism—along with his optimism and sense of urgency—that propelled him to victory over the doctrinaire Herbert Hoover. Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush in 1992 with the campaign motto, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Ronald Reagan won in 1980 in part because—unlike Goldwater 16 years earlier—he convinced Americans that when it came to popular government-spending programs, he would not let his conservative economic beliefs cause middle-class Americans any pain.
I suspect that Romney understands this. I’m sure he’d like to frame this campaign as a contest between a real-world, problem-solving businessman and a haughty academic who doesn’t understand what happens when ideas leave the blackboard. The problem is that at the very moment Romney wants to attack Obama for seeing the economy in abstract, ideological terms, his own party base is demanding that he do exactly the same thing.
Poor Mitt Romney. I actually think he’s interested in fixing the economy. But his party’s base is more interested in fighting the culture war by other means.
By: Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast, February 13, 2012
Why The Catholic Contraception Controversy Is A Phony Battle
Public health and women’s autonomy collided with religion last week. Elders in the Catholic Church were incensed as the regulations implementing the federal healthcare law would have required institutions affiliated with the Church (but not the Church itself) to provide health plans covering contraception. The rules (part of the normal regulation-writing process that comes after a sweeping law is enacted) would not have forced the Church or its clergymen to hand out birth control; they only would have required Catholic-affiliated schools, hospitals, and universities to play by the rules everyone else has to follow, and provide for full healthcare coverage for women.
The Obama administration, under fire as the health issue turned into a political issue, offered a compromise: health insurance companies would have to provide the free birth control to the female employees (some of whom are not even Catholic), but the religious-affiliated institutions would not have to pay for it.
It was a dodge of sorts, to be sure, but it gave the bishops the cover they needed to maintain the Catholic Church standard opposing contraception. Still, it was a generous compromise. And now the bishops are suggesting it is not enough, citing “serious moral concerns” about the compromise, particularly as it might apply to entities that self-insure.
That, on its own, is a bit of a stretch. The Church, after all, has given marriage annulments to politically-connected people who had not only been married for years, but have had children. If that’s not an inartful dodge around the Church rule forbidding divorce, nothing is. And while it’s probably not helpful to resurrect the painful episode of the decades of child sexual abuse by priests and the failure of the Church to stop them, it’s also true that the institution of the Church is still rebuilding its “moral” brand.
Picking a fight with the Obama administration does nothing to advance that goal. Nor does it improve the Church’s power over its own flock—98 percent of whom have used birth control. Government should indeed protect religious freedom, which is why no one’s asking priests to marry same-sex couples or forcing Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. But what the Church is dangerously close to doing is an equally invasive reverse: asking the government to try to enforce a rule the Church has been wildly unsuccessful in imposing on its own members.
There’s one clear reason why both the Church and the GOP presidential candidates have been raising the tired old accusations of the a war on Catholicism (an allegation that is extremely insulting to Catholics, to whom faith in God is sincere and unshakeable—certainly not threatened by a coworker getting free birth control pills). It’s an election year, so it’s prime time for making hyperbolic and incendiary accusations that have little basis in fact. Social issues have been largely absent from the campaign so far, and for a reason: the economy has been so bad that it was enough of an issue for GOP candidates to run on. But now that the unemployment rate is creeping slowly down and the stock market is stabilizing, the economy may retreat somewhat as an issue. And that leads candidates to insert wedge issues like the contraception debate.
Remarkably, opponents of the Obama administration rule, along with self-described liberal pundits, are convinced that the “Catholic vote” will rise up against Obama in the fall. That analysis assumes that all Catholics vote according to their Church’s dictates, which is absurd, especially in this case. If nearly all Catholics use birth control, why on earth would they vote against a president who tried to make access to birth control easier? Those who are that upset about contraception weren’t planning to vote for this president, anyway.
There will be more social issues raised during this election year, especially after the GOP nomination is sealed. But the contraception debate is a phony one.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 13, 2012
Republican Women Senators Breaking Ranks With Party, Come Out In Favor Of Obama Contraception Rule
While GOP senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has pledged to fight the Obama’s administration’s modified regulation requiring health insurers and busnisses to offer contraception coverage without additional cost sharing, the revised rule “appears to have won over” two of the five Republican women senators.
Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME) and Susan Collins (ME) — both of whom have sponsored legislation requiring insurers to offer contraception benefits in all health plans — are in favor of the new compromise, which would allow religiously affiliated colleges, universities, and hospitals to avoid providing birth control. Their employees will still receive contraception coverage at no additional cost sharing directly from the insurer:
“It appears that changes have been made that provide women’s health services without compelling Catholic organizations in particular to violate the beliefs and tenets of their faith,” Snowe said in a statement. “According to the Catholic Health Association, the administration ‘responded to the issues [they] identified that needed to be fixed,’ which is what I urged the president to do in addressing this situation.
“While I will carefully review the details of the president’s revised proposal, it appears to be a step in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement. “The administration’s original plan was deeply flawed and clearly would have posed a threat to religious freedom. It presented the Catholic Church with its wide-ranging social, educational, and health care services, and many other faith-based organizations, with an impossible choice between violating their religious beliefs or violating federal regulations. The administration has finally listened to the concerns raised by many and appears to be seeking to avoid the threat to religious liberties posed by its original plan.”
Republicans in the senate seem determined to oppose the compromise and have introduced legislation that would allow employers or individuals to opt out of any benefit that undermines their moral beliefs. “They don’t have the authority under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to tell someone in this country or some organization in this country what their religious beliefs are,” McConnell told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “This issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down,” he said.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who led the GOP’s opposition to the original rule, has yet to issue a statement on the measure and did not respond to ThinkProgress’ query about her position. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) also did not respond. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) co-sponsored a 1999 bill requiring contraception equity in insurance coverage and has not yet to weigh in on the current debate.
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, February 13, 2012
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