“House Republicans Exhausted By Failure”: They Would Prefer To Start Working Even Less
Following up on a segment from last night’s show, it appears the U.S. House of Representatives, just nine months into the current Congress, can’t think of anything to do. The Republican leadership hasn’t scheduled many work days for the remainder of 2013, and they’re now considering a plan to scale back even further.
For the first time in months, House Republicans are facing no immediate cataclysmic deadlines, and GOP leaders are struggling to come up with an agenda to fill the 19 legislative days that are left in 2013.
Need evidence? The House votes Monday evening and will finish its work week Wednesday. After that, the House is out of session until Nov. 12. Internally, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and senior Republicans aren’t discussing coming back early from the scheduled recess, but instead, they are wondering if they’ll cancel some of the remaining days in session.
This Politico item was published yesterday, so there are really only 18 legislative days remaining until New Year’s Eve – it’s great work if you can get it – a total which may be poised to shrink.
The 112th Congress was the least productive since the clerk’s office started keeping track seven decades ago, and this current 113th Congress is on track to do even less. Presumably, the Republican majority could at least try to take up meaningful bills in the hopes of passing something, but at this point, they’re not even inclined to bother. Rather, they’re thinking about showing up to work even less.
What about the House Republican policy agenda? It apparently doesn’t exist. What about the desire to have some legislative accomplishments? It’s been overwhelmed by political lethargy. This crop of lawmakers is giving new meaning to the phrase “do-nothing Congress,” and instead of scurrying to prove themselves capable of governing, they’re content to just accept the label and go home.
As pathetic as this may be, the larger point isn’t just to point and laugh at the House’s ineptitude. Rather, one of the key takeaways of this is that House Republicans keep saying they’d love to tackle immigration reform – if only they had more time.
The problem, of course, is not with a lack of time, but rather what they choose to do with it.
I’m reminded of an item from two weeks ago, when Byron York quoted a Senate Republican staffer commenting on the House GOP. “They are a majority party that wants to be a minority party,” the aide said.
The evidence to bolster that thesis is increasingly apparent. There is such a thing as a governing party. It just so happens that the House Republican conference isn’t one of them. For those in doubt, look no further than the fact that these lawmakers have accomplished practically nothing this year, and are apparently so exhausted by their failures that they’d prefer to start working even less.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 29, 2013
“The GOP’s Hypocrisy On Obamacare”: Republicans Get The Vapors And Become Outraged About The Problems They Created
Last spring, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on implementation of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and the chairman of the committee, was not pleased with how things were going.
The Obama administration originally had asked for more than half a billion dollars to spend on public relations and outreach for the law. House Republicans had returned with an offer of nothing. That’s right: zero dollars. Without necessary funds, the Department of Health and Human Services worried it would not have the necessary money to pay for navigators to help people enroll in health care, for the technology needed to implement the exchanges and for the public relations campaign that was required to inform citizens about what the law actually did.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the controversial move of asking insurance companies and nonprofit organizations to donate money and help. Republicans were outraged. She asked for more money. She was refused.
Then, when she tried to move some money from the PR budget to replace cuts to other areas, Baucus became quite upset. He was concerned that if the administration did not do more to inform people about the law and get implementation going, there would be problems:
“A lot of people have no idea about all of this,” he said. “People just don’t know a lot about it, and the Kaiser poll pointed that out. I understand you’ve hired a contractor. I’m just worried that that’s gonna be money down the drain because contractors like to make money. … I just tell ya, I just see a huge train wreck coming down.”
As I’ve said before, it’s important to note that the “train wreck” Baucus was describing was a botched implementation because not enough was being done to make things go smoothly.
It wasn’t a description of the law itself but of what might occur if the government did not devote enough resources to making it work. Sebelius’ response was not surprising to those who were paying attention. She said that she was “incredibly disappointed” that all her requests for resources were being denied by Republicans.
That was then. Today, implementation has arrived, and if it’s not a train wreck, then it’s certainly close. The administration is still under fire because people cannot get the insurance they want through the exchanges. But while I will continue to point out the problems with implementation and fault the administration for mistakes they’ve made, how does one ignore the apparent hypocrisy from many politicians who are now “outraged” about the very problems they’ve helped to create.
Republicans refused to appropriate money needed to implement Obamacare. When Sebelius tried to shift money from other areas to help do what needed to be done, she was attacked by Senate Republicans. At every step, Republicans fought measures to get money to put towards implementation.
Is it really a surprise then that implementation hasn’t gone smoothly?
Federal legislators aren’t the only ones to blame. Let’s remember that original versions of the bill called for one big national exchange. This would have been much easier to implement. But conservatives declared that insurance should be left to the states and kept out of the hands of the federal government. So as a compromise (yes, those did occur), exchanges were made state-based instead of national.
As a precaution, the law stipulated that if states failed to do their duty and enact exchanges, the federal government would step in and pick up the slack. This was to prevent obstructionism from killing the law. Surprisingly, it was many of the same conservative states that demanded local control that refused to implement state-based exchanges, leaving the federal government to do it for them.
That made implementation much harder.
There have been books, webinars and meetings explaining how to sabotage the implementation of Obamacare. There have been campaigns trying to persuade young adults not to use the exchanges. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that many of the same people who have been part of all of this obstructionism seem so “upset” by the fact that people can’t easily use the exchanges.
For goodness sake, the government was shut down just a few weeks ago because some of the same people who are now bemoaning poorly functioning websites were determined to see that not one dime went to Obamacare.
Lest you think I’m defending this month’s rollout, I encourage you to review my last article here. I still maintain that the administration has had a failure in management in overseeing and reporting on progress towards October 1. But I’m also sympathetic that they’ve had a hard job to do. I would like to see this go better. I’d like to see millions more get insurance. I’d like to see the law of the land function as well as it can, and if it doesn’t, I’d like to see Congress continue to amend it to make it work better. I’d like a better health care system.
What I cannot ignore, however, are the many people who actively worked to see implementation fail now get the vapors over its poor start. The truth is, they got what they wanted. A victory lap is somewhat warranted, not concern-trolling.
If, on the other hand, their concern is real, then I’m sure the administration would welcome their help in making things right.
By: Aaron Carroll, Director, Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, Indiana University School of Medicine, Special to CNN, October 28, 2013
“Make ’Em Pay”: House Republicans Act As If They Are Immune From Majority Sentiment, But Each Is Up For Re-Election In 2014
Where do you go if you’re a “Deadliest Catch” kind of guy, manliest of manly men, but couldn’t fish for king crab because some jelly-bellied Republicans threw a tantrum 5,000 miles away and shut down the government?
What do you do if you’re a farmer in Kansas who could not put winter wheat in the ground or get this year’s cattle vaccine because your government agriculture office was deemed nonessential? Whom do you see about the home loan that was held up, the family restaurant near the federal building that couldn’t meet October’s payroll, the bookings lost at season’s end in dozens of national parks?
Real Americans, the wind-chapped toilers so often invoked by politicians in a phony froth, lost real money from the real pain inflicted on their livelihoods by the extortionists in Congress this month.
How much money? At least $24 billion was the estimate given by Standard & Poor’s. Small business was hit particularly hard. And it’s a rolling pain, affecting consumer confidence, that will be felt through a holiday buying season that can make or break many retailers.
“I am a small businessman in a big ocean with big bills,” said Captain Keith Colburn, an Alaska crab fisherman, in Senate testimony during the shutdown. “I need to go fishing,” said the skipper, who is featured in the reality TV show “Deadliest Catch,” but was being held back by “a bunch of knuckleheads,.” who prevented marine regulators from doing their jobs.
So, who pays? For years, Republicans have been trumpeting the idea that when a government action hurts a private business, the government should compensate for the loss. This principle is based on a broad reading of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment; it’s usually summoned as leverage against environmental regulation.
But in the case of the federal shutdown, of course, the economic hit on millions of Americans didn’t come from government — it came from one political faction in the House of Representatives. You could sue the Tea Party, but what is that? A bunch of costumed zealots on Fox are not responsible for anything that comes out of their mouths and lands in the porous mind of someone like Representative Ted Yoho of Florida.
You could sue Ted Cruz of Texas for initiating the calamity with a marathon of self-absorption. But the senator, like all members of Congress, has broad protection to pretty much say or do anything he wants inside the thick-walled refuge of the Capitol, a free speech guarantee that is warranted even when abused by vanity projects like Cruz.
What’s left is the ballot box. And here, Red State America can do a huge service for the rest of country. The states hit hardest by the shutdown, it now appears, were those where Republicans prevail. Virginia, with its wealth of government jobs and businesses that depend on those jobs, is Exhibit A. There, Republicans are likely to lose the governor’s race next week in part because their party disrupted so many lives in October’s meltdown.
The more difficult job will be ousting, from hardened, gerrymandered districts, the people who put ideology ahead of common sense and commerce. They seem faceless and buffoonish. They act as if they are immune from majority sentiment. But each of them is up for re-election a year from now, and the good news is that almost 75 percent of voters say most Republicans in Congress don’t deserve to be sent back to Washington.
In some districts, it will be civil war. What’s left of moderate Republicans are organizing to go after the crazies. “Hopefully, we’ll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them,” former Representative Steve LaTourette of Ohio told the National Journal. His group of fed-up Republicans, Defending Main Street, plans to raise $8 million to target the looniest of the loons.
Make Steve King of Iowa pay. As key government offices across the country were shuttered, as farmers in his district could not get their loans processed, King crowed, “We’re right!” He exists because political theater requires new players in clown makeup. The Des Moines Register recently suggested a slogan for King: “Send me back to Washington so I can continue to embarrass Iowa.”
Make Darrell Issa of California pay. Using the vast apparatus of his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he is going after National Park Service rangers. Having shut down the government, Issa wants to know why popular parks and monuments were closed. The audacity! During an earlier hearing, a fellow congressman provided an answer: He held up a mirror and aimed it at Republican lawmakers.
And certainly make Marlin Stutzman of Indiana pay. This congressman gave history the money quote on the shutdown. “We have to get something out of this,” he said. “And I don’t know what that even is.” A year from now, he can find out.
By: Timothy Egan, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, October 28, 2013
“The Tea Party’s Suicide Pact”: Hell Bent On Breaking The GOP And Picking Up The Pieces
If Senate Republicans are the surrender caucus and the House GOP is the suicide caucus, then the Democratic House caucus is the victory caucus.
I’m a fan of the Military History Channel and all during the GOP/Tea Party default debacle, I kept thinking of the kamikaze planes crashing into American aircraft carriers off Okinawa. The pilots were brave, but they didn’t stop the U.S. from destroying the empire. Japanese soldiers on Pacific atolls during World War II had to choose between surrender and suicide, and, like the House Republicans, chose to kill themselves to atone to their emperor Ted Cruz for their defeat.
So far, there’s no sign that Emperor Cruz or his minions in the party of tea will give up the fruitless fight. The tea partiers are the GOP’s kamikazes and they are prepared to fight until the last Republican dies. One of the ironies of the battle is that red district tea partiers will survive the 2014 midterms, while the few moderately conservatives Republicans left in Congress will go down in flames in their purple districts.
Why are the tea partiers so suicidal? The tea party is hell bent on breaking the GOP and picking up the pieces.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said last week that “the GOP was going nuts.” King was wrong. The GOP got to nuts more than a year ago and now has reached lunacy. According to national surveys by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, the GOP’s net rating five weeks ago was -43; it was -46 last week. The same polls showed that the net rating of the Affordable Care Act was -13 in September but only -5 last week.
The intent of the tea party was to destroy the ACA and save the GOP from itself. National polls indicate that all the party of tea did was hurt the GOP and save Obamacare from itself. Another way of looking at these numbers is that 38 percent like the ACA but only 22 percent like the GOP.
In the last few days, the Tea Party has made it clear the dead enders will continue the hopeless fight until it finishes off the GOP.
Cruz said late last week that he will do everything he can to kill Obamacare. The suicide caucus has voted to repeal the ACA 40 times and tried to defund it during the default debacle but it’s still alive. The definition of insanity is, of course, to do the same thing over again and expect a different result
The day after the end of the budget battle, President Obama called on the House to pass a comprehensive immigration reform law. Several House Republicans have said they will fight against immigration reform to the last breath. The tea party might win the congressional battle against immigration reform, but it would lose the electoral war by further alienating the fast growing Latino voting population.
Last week, prominent Republicans like the Lt. Governor of Texas, Dave Dewhurst, called for President Obama’s impeachment. The suicide caucus in the House has the power to impeach the president but it would need 67 Senate votes to remove him from office. There are only 46 Republicans in the Senate, and some of them wouldn’t even vote to kick the president out of the White House.
The suicide caucus’ motto should be “if it feels good do it” even if it leads to electoral disaster. If the tea party does kill off the GOP, the epitaph on the party’s tombstone should either read “With friends like ours, who needed enemies,” or “In the party of Lincoln something was stinking.”
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, October 23, 2013
“More Problems Than Just The Tea Party”: Too Much Attention Being Paid To The Gladiator TV Hard Core “Stars” Of The Republican Party
I am not talking about poll numbers. I am not talking about the Republicans’ record unpopularity. I am not talking about declining support for the tea party. I am not even talking about election results.
I am focusing on the following numbers: 85, 49, 87 and 87 again.
Those are not Powerball numbers … well, in a sense maybe they are!
What are they? These are the “YES” votes from Republican members of the House of Representatives on four pieces of legislation that Speaker John Boehner brought to the floor of the House, ignoring the Hastert rule. That, of course, is the rather absurd self-imposed rule that says you shouldn’t bring up a bill if it does not have majority support from your caucus.
Here are the bills:
- 85 Republican votes to approve the fiscal cliff deal at the end of 2012.
- 49 Republican votes to approve emergency funding for hurricane Sandy.
- 87 Republican votes to approve extending the Violence Against Women Act.
- 87 Republican votes to approve opening the government this week.
Combined with nearly unanimous support from Democrats, all these bills passed.
Now, that meant that 151 votes, 179 votes, 138 votes and 144 votes were cast against these four bills, respectively, by Republican House members.
The point here is that the problem with Republicans is not just several dozen Tea Party activists – it is a caucus that won’t truly stand up to those extreme elements of the party. Too much attention is being paid to the gladiator TV hard core “stars” of the Republican Party such as Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and Reps. Raul Labrador, Michele Bachmann, Steve King and a handful of others.
They have somehow convinced the House Republican caucus that the best way to take on Obama and the Democrats is scorched earth.
The real question now is whether the pragmatic, reasoned, responsible gene present in many Republican House members will assert itself. Will they negotiate bills on fiscal matters, immigration reform, entitlements and taxes that lead to progress? Or will they let the tea party members role them over and over again?
The hope for many is that this horrendous shutdown and brinkmanship may have taken many members to the edge – they see the absurdity and suicidal nature of the action – and they are ready to stand up to the extremists within their own party. When we start seeing the numbers switch and more than 100 Republican members begin to accept reasonable legislation then we will know that they are no longer going to kow-tow to the Tea Party. We can all hope for that day.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, October 18, 2013
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