“How A President Negotiates With Congress”: Cross-Party Negotiations In Congress Are More About Leverage
The Democratic presidential primary has sparked a discussion on the left about the value of bold proposals vs incrementalism. In arguing for the latter, Scott Lemieux takes on the ridiculous notion that the history of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are examples of bold change proposals.
The idea that the Social Security — which not only offered modest benefits but intentionally excluded large numbers of African-Americans — was not an example of incremental reform is quite remarkable. Even more revealing is the Medicaid example. Nothing makes it clearer that this fake-nostalgia for the REAL LIBERAL Democratic Party of yore is just a rhetorical cudgel with which to beat Democrats and not any kind of serious historical analysis than this. Apparently, a public health insurance program that required states to cover only a subset of people well below the poverty line was REAL, UNCOMPROMISING LIBERALISM while a public health insurance program that required states to cover everyone up to 138% of the poverty line is the hopelessly compromised neoliberal work of useless corporate sellouts. Right.
But then Lemieux takes on an argument we’ve heard often during the Obama presidency about how he has too often pre-compromised by negotiating with himself. This is the case Brian Beutler made not too long ago when arguing in favor of Bernie Sanders’ approach.
But if we’re imagining both of their agendas as opening bids in negotiations with Congress, why fault Sanders for not negotiating with himself? Ask a future Democratic Congress for single payer and a $15 minimum wage and you might get laughed at… but you also might get the public option and a bump to $12. Ask it for the public option and a $12 minimum wage, as Clinton might, and you’ll get a fair hearing from the outset, but you might end up with advancements barely worth fighting for. President Obama, as Sanders is fond of noting, negotiated with himself, and progressives paid an unknowable price as a result.
Here’s what Lemieux says about that:
People who think that important legislation gets passed by presidents making opening bids far outside the expected negotiating space have no idea how presidential power works. (And, for that matter, have no idea how negotiating works. If the Mariners phone up the Angels and offer Mike Zunino for Mike Trout, that doesn’t mean that the Angels will then offer to accept Leonys Martin for Mike Trout; it means the Angels GM will stop taking your phone calls.) To say that a president “pre-comprimised” is often used as an insult, but it is in fact a sign that he knows what he’s doing. The lessons of FDR and LBJ — and now Obama — are the opposite of what this faction of the left thinks they are.
Frankly, the argument Beutler makes is something that has never made sense to me – no matter how many times I’ve heard it over the last 7 years. For example, if President Obama had made single payer his opening bid in health care reform, I fail to see how that would have triggered a more progressive negotiation process. First of all, it would have negated what he ran on as a candidate and more likely would have been ignored – even by Democrats – as a serious proposal. Similarly, the President proposed raising the minimum wage to a meager $10/hour a couple of years ago. Did that spark a negotiating process with Republicans? No, they’ve simply ignored it – just as they did his “bold” proposals for things like the American Jobs Act, universal pre-K and free community college.
The truth is that cross-party negotiations in Congress are more about leverage than they are about bold opening bids. In order to get the other party to the table, you have to be willing to give them something they want. That is why – since 2010 when Republicans took control of the House – pretty much the only thing that has been negotiated is the budget and raising the debt ceiling. Initially Republicans used those “fiscal cliffs” as leverage (or hostages) to get what they wanted. For the last couple of years, both parties have eventually come to the table on budgets in order to avoid another government shut-down (which is the leverage).
Beyond what Lemieux wrote, it is important to remember that when FDR was negotiating for Social Security and LBJ for health care, they were engaged in intra-party negotiations – much as Obama did during those few months that Democrats controlled the House and had a 60-vote majority in the Senate. That is not a likely scenario for a Democratic president any time in the near future. Any “bold” proposal will therefore require having leverage that brings Republicans to the table. In other words, it will require pre-compromise.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, May 13, 2016
“Why Don’t We Grow Up?”: Kasich Slams Carson And Trump; ‘Do You Know How Crazy This Election Is?’
At a rally Tuesday in his hometown of Westerville, Ohio, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich gave a possible preview for his performance in Wednesday’s national debate — calling his far-right competitors in the race, particularly Ben Carson and Donald Trump, completely crazy.
Kasich did not directly name the other candidates, but he listed their proposals in ways that would leave no doubt about whom he was speaking. And if either of those two men were to end up as the Republican nominee, you can pretty well expect that Kasich’s attacks will end up in Democratic campaign ads in Ohio.
Kasich began by talking about all the people he’s met on the campaign trail, particularly in the early state of New Hampshire. “But you know, I want to let you all know: Do you know how crazy this election is?” he said, to laughter from the crowd of his local supporters. “Let me tell you something: I’ve about had it with these people.”
Kasich continued:
And let me tell you why: We got one candidate [Carson] that says that we ought to abolish Medicaid and Medicare. You ever heard of anything so crazy as that — telling our people in this country who are seniors, or about to be seniors, that we’re gonna abolish Medicaid and Medicare? We’ve got one person [Carson again] saying we ought to have a 10 percent flat tax that’ll drive up the deficit in this country by trillions of dollars — that my daughters will spend the rest of their lives having to pay off.
You know, what I say to them is, why don’t we have no taxes? Just get rid of them all, and then a chicken in every pot on top of it.
We got one guy [Donald Trump] that says we ought to take 10 or 11 million people and pick them up, where the — I don’t know where, we’re gonna go in their homes, their apartments. We’re gonna pick them up and we’re gonna take them to the border and scream at them to get out of our country. Well that’s just crazy. That is just crazy.
We got people proposing health care reform that’s gonna leave, I believe, millions of people without adequate health insurance. What has happened to our party? What has happened to the conservative movement?
Here are some more choice bits of Kasich from the rally, as he rails against other candidates for offering no constructive ideas, but lots of irresponsible promises that would wreck the country.
“Why don’t we grow up?” he asked. “Why don’t we get a reality check on what the heck needs to be done in this country?”
By: Eric Kleefeld, The National Memo, October 27, 2015
“Shocking Sloppiness Won’t Doom The Health Reforms”: Republican Politicians Will Have A Lot Of Angry People On Their Hands
How many politicians, aides, lobbyists, lawyers, insurance moguls, professional groups, and interns — both the political and medical kind — agonized over the details in the Affordable Care Act? The number is big.
But despite thousands of hands in the kitchen, the final product included four words that cast doubt on a cornerstone of the reforms — subsidies for those buying coverage on federal health insurance exchanges. Unbelievable.
Diehard foes of the reforms have weaponized those words as a means to kill the law. They argue in the Supreme Court case King v. Burwell that specifically offering subsidies for plans bought on exchanges “established by the state” means no help for those going to federal exchanges.
Since the program started, low- and middle-income Americans have been receiving tax credits for coverage on both types of exchanges. Almost everyone assumes that’s how it’s supposed to be.Take away subsidies for federal exchanges and only the sickly will join it. The economic structure underpinning guaranteed coverage will collapse as premiums charged for plans on federal exchanges soar and the healthy stay away in droves.
The plaintiffs, though they come from the right, are doing their Republican colleagues no favors. You see, when the Affordable Care Act created federal exchanges in states that had not set up their own, leaders in Republican-controlled states could noisily defy President Obama while taking few political risks. They could refuse to set up state exchanges knowing that their constituents would enjoy subsidized coverage on the federal exchanges.
Lose those subsidies and Republican politicians are going to have a lot of angry people on their hands. Some 7.5 million Americans receive subsidies on federal exchanges.
Hypocrisy now crashes over the Republicans’ wall of opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Politicians are currently rewriting the story of their obstruction of a law that they dread could come apart.
An exasperating example is Olympia Snowe, a former senator from Maine who fancies herself a moderate Republican. During the battle for the bill’s passage, she strung Obama along for months, pretending that she might provide him at least one Republican vote. (Why Obama indulged these stalling tactics… perhaps his memoirs will tell.)
Anyway, Snowe recently commented that the little words at the heart of the Supreme Court case were unintended. “Why would we have wanted to deny people subsidies?” she said. “It was not their fault if their state did not set up an exchange.”
So why did she vote against the bill? She also railed against “Obamacare” as a “government-run health care system,” not that this was the case. Until Snowe left the Senate in 2013, she worked with her party to undercut the reforms.
But get this: At the time of the bill’s writing, Snowe proposed letting Americans buy cheaper drugs from Canada. It was OK, apparently, for a foreign government to help struggling Mainers obtain health care, but not OK for their own to do so.
One expects the health reforms to survive this latest assault. The best outcome would be the Supreme Court’s confirming that the words were a mistake and that yes, subsidies for the federal health exchange are legal.
If the court says no, politicians in states relying on federal exchanges could swing into action and set up some form of state exchange. And the Obama administration would probably make it easy for them.
The bipartisan takeaway here is the appalling state of American governance. We now hear from all sides that omission of subsidies for the federal exchanges was “sloppy,” “careless,” “inadvertent,” “a drafting error.” Actually, it was inexcusable.
But let’s move on.
By: Froma Harrop, Featured Post, The National Memo, May 28, 2015
“The Right’s Collective Amnesia And Fantasia”: Former Republican Senator Admits The Obamacare Court Challenge Is Built On Lies
For months, when the Affordable Care Act was still swimming upstream through the legislative process, President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats courted Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican from Maine, thinking she would respond rationally to enticements and provide Democrats bipartisan cover to reform the U.S. health insurance system.
Their efforts ultimately failed. Snowe, like every other Senate Republican, voted against the health reform bill in 2009 and 2010, and then joined Republicans in their various efforts to undermine or repeal the law, until she retired in 2013.
But now it looks like all the time Democrats wasted on negotiating with Snowe, and allowing her to help shape the legislation, has paid off. Snowe has, to my knowledge, become the first contemporaneous Republican senator, current or former, to acknowledge that a Supreme Court challenge meant to cripple Obamacare is built on a tissue of lies. If the Court sides with Obamacare opponents, her comments will become incredibly relevant to the ensuing political shitstorm.
“I don’t ever recall any distinction between federal and state exchanges in terms of the availability of subsidies,” Snowe admitted, according to New York Times health reporter Robert Pear.
“It was never part of our conversations at any point,” said Ms. Snowe, who voted against the final version of the Senate bill. “Why would we have wanted to deny people subsidies? It was not their fault if their state did not set up an exchange.” The four words, she said, were perhaps “inadvertent language,” adding, “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
There are two intersecting argumentative threads that one must untangle to really understand King v. Burwell. The first, specialized one addresses the question of what the text of the Obamacare statute means. Does it, in all its interlocking, cross-referenced parts, provide authorization for the IRS to issue subsidies to all exchanges? Or does it prohibit those subsidies in the three dozen states that have availed themselves of federal fallback exchanges, through Healthcare.gov? Only the most cribbed reading of the law—literally less than a sentence of the whole text—suggests the latter.
The second thread is, if anything, even more straightforward: What were the framers of the Affordable Care Act trying to do? Were they trying to stitch together a harmonious system across all state borders, with subsidies available everywhere? Or were they trying to coerce states into setting up their own exchanges by threatening to withhold subsidies from their citizens, and impose chaos on their insurance marketplaces? There is no evidence to suggest that the goal of the Affordable Care Act was the latter.
These threads invariably become entwined for two reasons. First, if Congress was trying to create an incentive for states to set up their own exchanges, then its failure to provide those states clear notice of the threat in the law raises serious constitutional concerns. But also, judges have consciences and intellectual standards, too, and may in some cases allow their understanding of the political history of the Affordable Care Act to influence the way they think about what the text of the law actually conveys. This explains why conservatives have been engaged in a year-long campaign to revise the history, and assert that the framers of the ACA knew all along that threatening the states would leave the law vulnerable to ruin, but did it anyway.
Pear’s article largely elides the textual question—if anything, it proceeds from the assumption that Obamacare opponents have a better legal case than they really do. But at the same time, it is devastating to the spin that Republicans are putting on the ACA’s history to bolster the plaintiffs in King.
Here, for instance, is Snowe’s erstwhile colleague, Senator Orrin Hatch, who served with Snowe on the committee that drafted Obamacare, claiming that the law’s drafters, not its enemies, are falsifying the historical record to influence judges.
“The Democrats were arguing that the only way to get the states to sign up is to put the pressure on them by making them have to do a state exchange, so it’s kind of disingenuous for them to come in now and say they didn’t mean that,” Hatch told reporter Todd Zwillich in this DecodeDC feature. “I’m not the only one that knows that. Their attitude was, you’ll never get all the states to sign up if you don’t force them. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any doubt in the Democrats’ minds they wanted to do that because they were afraid the states wouldn’t form their own exchanges. Now they’re trying to say they didn’t say that, but they did.”
With respect to King, almost every Republican member of Congress is, like Hatch, caught in the grip of the right’s collective amnesia and fantasia. The spectacle of it is breathtaking to sentient observers of the health reform process, but ultimately meaningless if the Supreme Court does the right thing in June, and rules for the government. If it doesn’t, the textual argument will effectively be over. But, for the purposes of reading such a bad decision into its proper context, addressing the ensuing chaos, and clarifying for the record for the public, the historical argument will take on even greater significance—which makes Snowe’s contribution extremely valuable.
By: Brian Beutler, Senior Editor, The New Republic, may 27, 2015
“Praise The Lord, Mom’s Alive”: Rick Scott’s Stunning Health Care ‘Ruse’ In Florida
In early 2013, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) surprised nearly everyone by announcing he’d changed his mind about Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act. The Republican governor had long condemned the idea, but he apparently had a change of heart.
“I cannot, in good conscience, deny the uninsured access to care,” he said at the time. Scott added that Medicaid expansion is “a compassionate, common sense step forward.” The governor even referenced the death of his mother when explaining his rationale.
“A few months ago, my mother passed away, and I lost one of the only constants in my life,” Scott said. “Losing someone so close to you puts everything in new perspective … especially the big decisions…. As I wrestled with this decision, I thought about my Mom’s struggles raising five kids with very little money.”
That was February 2013. In April 2015, Scott reversed course again, announcing his renewed opposition to the policy he’d endorsed. And today, the local CBS affiliate in Miami reports that the governor offered an unexpected explanation for his posture two years ago.
Scott conceded this week that was all a ruse. He now says his support for Medicaid expansion was a calculated move designed to win support from the Obama administration for the state’s proposal to hand over control of Medicaid to private insurance companies. At the time, he denied that his support was tied to a deal with the federal government.
Now that he’s succeeded in privatizing Medicaid, Scott is again railing against Medicaid expansion and is suing the federal government for allegedly forcing it on him.
Oh my.
Of course, if you notice that CBS/Associated Press excerpt, you’ll notice that it’s missing something: a quote. The entire report appears to be a paraphrase of Scott’s comments, and the exact wording always matters.
Indeed, the governor’s office this afternoon pushed back against the AP’s reporting, saying the piece “editorialized” Scott’s comments.
So, which is it? On Twitter, Gary Fineout, an AP reporter in Florida, fleshed this out in a little more detail, explaining the argument Scott presented yesterday. As Fineout described it, the governor may have claimed at the time that his mother’s death inspired him to change his perspective, but in reality – according to Scott’s comments yesterday – the Florida Republican only supported Medicaid expansion as part of “a quid pro quo” to get a waiver from the Obama administration for Medicaid privatization.
Scott may have publicly claimed in 2013 that his position was about his “conscience” and deceased mother, but according to the governor’s new version of events, the rhetoric wasn’t actually sincere – his previous position was a calculated move to gain approval for his privatization plan.
In other words, the governor didn’t literally use the word “ruse” yesterday, so much as he effectively described a scheme in which he told the public something untrue in order to get what he wanted at the time.
I don’t expect much from Florida politics, but when a governor references his deceased mother to make a deliberately misleading argument, the Sunshine State is quite possibly breaking new ground in ugliness.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 7, 2015
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