“Assuming Voters Are Fools”: GOP Tax Talk Takes A Trivial Turn
For more than three years, Republican critics of President Obama’s health care reform law have come up with all kinds of reasons to hate the law, most of which fall apart rather quickly under scrutiny. Thanks to last week’s Supreme Court ruling, however, the right has a new talking point they’ve largely ignored up until now: Obamacare raises taxes.
For Republicans, this should effectively end the conversation. The individual mandate counts as a “tax”; taxes are inherently evil; ergo the law is awful and anyone who supported it deserves to be publicly flogged. What’s more, conservatives are arguing that this wasn’t just any ol’ tax increase — it was the Largest Tax Increase Ever.
On Fox News, Jim Pinkerton characterized the mandate as “the biggest tax increase in the history of the universe.”
I hope most objective observers can agree this is, for lack of a better word, dumb. As Josh Marshall explained, “The Congressional Budget Office says the mandate penalty will raise $27 billion between 2012 and 2021. $27 billion over a decade. Anybody who cares to can do the math. But if you want to call it a ‘tax increase’ — which is debatable — it’s clearly one of the tiniest ones in history.”
This one tax penalty raises less than $3 billion a year, and it would affect about 1% of the population. What’s more, even if we’re generous, and assume the right is talking about all of the provisions within the law that raise new revenue, it’s still not even close to being the largest tax increase ever.
And just to top this off, Mitt Romney, the man Republicans want to be president, created and imposed the exact same tax penalty. He is, in fact, the only public official in American history to implement the policy the right is now pretending to find outrageous.
The entire argument is demonstrably ridiculous, apparently crafted under the assumption that voters are fools. We’ll see if the assumption is correct.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 2, 2012
“Completely Disingenous”: Can Romney Remain Absurd Until November?
If you will forgive yet another post on the implications of the Supreme Court’s ACA decision, it is important to understand that for all the “excitement” and “motivation” it may create among “base voters,” this development also makes every day on the campaign trail a tightrope for Mitt Romney. He was already going to have to navigate his way to November talking constantly about the economy and the federal budget even as he was stuck with economic and budget policies that would horrify swing voters if they were aware of them. And now there will be no escape from the subject of a national health reform initiative modeled on his own plan in a gubernatorial administration that now seems about a million years away from where he has landed ideologically in order to win his party’s presidential nomination.
National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh refers to Romney’s current positioning on health care as presenting an “Absurd Romney:”
The difficulty of Absurd Romney’s task is pointed up by Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who helped Romney design his 2006 health insurance program in Massachusetts. He says that the then-governor used reasoning and language very similar to that of Chief Justice John Roberts in arguing for the necessity of an individual mandate. While Roberts said that Congress did not have the right to mandate behavior, it did retain the right to “tax and spend,” including penalizing people for not buying health care.
“It’s a penalty for free riding on the system. That’s the way Gov. Romney talked about it,” says Gruber, who later became one of the key architects of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which was modeled in part on the Romney law. “Justice Roberts used similar language today.” Back in the 2000s, when Gruber demonstrated to Romney with computer models that, absent an individual mandate, one-third of Massachusetts’ poorest and sickest would remain uninsured (and drive up costs for everyone), Romney jumped on the point, instantly converted, says Gruber. Romney went at the problem “like a management consultant or an engineer” with no ideological taint, even against the advice of his conservative political advisers, Gruber says. “They were concerned about the politics of universal health care. He argued them down.”
Today, says Gruber, Romney is being “completely disingenuous” in arguing against a law whose principles he once embraced. And somewhat absurd. Gruber says Romney’s suggestion that, as in Massachusetts when he was governor, states should be permitted to decide on their health care plans is also disingenuous. Massachusetts could devise its health care law only because it had access to a large amount of federal money, a $385 million Medicaid grant that it needed to use to extend care to the poor. “He says the states could do it but not the federal government. Well, actually the states can’t do it” because they don’t have the money, says Gruber. “What he should be saying is that he ‘ll give the states a trillion dollars to come up with their own plans, but he’s not going to do that.”
Now some readers will say Romney and most of his supporters don’t give a damn about consistency, logic, or avoiding the appearance of being Absurd, and will just brazen it out. That may be true. But the thing about lying all the time about who you are, what you’ve done, and what you intend to do is that it frequently causes even the most disciplined dissembler to screw up or at least fail to make sense to voters with even minimal discernment. That’s the risk Romney is going to have to take nearly every time he opens his mouth over the next four months.
By: Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 29, 2012
“Mitt Romney, The Godfather Of ObamaCare”: Wrong Argument, Wrong Candidate
Remember the line Rick Santorum took against Mitt Romney in March? The race for the Republican nomination was not quite over, and the former senator, referencing health care policy, told voters in Wisconsin, “Pick any other Republican in the country. [Romney] is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”
Yesterday’s developments help reinforce the fact that Santorum had a point.
Consider today’s Boston Herald. For those unfamiliar with the outlet, the Herald is an unabashedly conservative paper, which goes out of its way to boost Republican candidates. Its front page headline this morning reads: “For Romney, Obamacare Ruling’s Just What The Doctor Ordered.”
Contrary to conventional wisdom, an anti-tax backlash over the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision upholding Obamacare could propel Mitt Romney all the way to the Oval Office, national Republicans said…. President Obama had originally promised the overhaul wouldn’t tax the middle class, and Republicans quickly seized on the ruling to point out that is exactly what the law does.
“Chief Justice John Roberts has all but gift-wrapped the election for Republicans with this ruling,” said Keith Appell, a GOP consultant based in Washington, D.C. “Now every single Democrat will have to defend the largest tax increase in American history during a bad economy in an election year.”
As a matter of policy, this is deeply silly. The mandate remains a tax penalty that will only apply to free riders — about 1% of the population, according to the CBO, who can afford insurance but refuse to get it.
But even if we put this aside, there’s that nagging detail the Boston Herald and other Republicans keep overlooking: Mitt Romney’s health care law in Massachusetts, his crowning accomplishment in government, has an identical mandate and an identical tax penalty. If Obamacare’s mandate must be considered a tax increase, Romneycare’s mandate must also be considered a tax increase.
Indeed, we can make this even more explicit: Mitt Romney is the only public official in American history to approve and implement this specific tax increase.
The conservatives who rushed yesterday to fill Romney’s coffers are supporting the godfather of Obamacare — the guy who imposed this health care mandate (read: tax increase) before the president was even elected. It’s exactly why Santorum called him the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama,” and why in retrospect, Santorum had a point.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 29, 2012
“For Women Only”: Five Health Care Mandates Republicans Support
Republicans are in complete upheaval over Obamacare, fired up by the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law yesterday. They have continuously claimed that the government is ramming this legislation down the throats of the American people, and now they are calling it an unwanted financial burden on everyday Americans. In fact, the individual mandate — the portion of the law that Republicans most vociferously oppose — wouldn’t even affect most Americans.
It might be time for Republicans to take a look back at their own record of health care legislation that they did like — and that forced American people, particularly women, into a lot of things:
Forcing women to get transvaginal ultrasounds: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell wanted to force every woman seeking an abortion to go through the extremely uncomfortable and medically unnecessary procedure of a transvaginal ultrasound — sticking a medical wand far into a woman’s vagina to get a clearer ultrasound image.
Ordering women to cremate and bury their miscarried fetus: A huge abortion omnibus bill in Michigan could force women who miscarry to cremate the miscarried fetuses. This comes at no small expense to the woman: cremation of a fetus costs hundreds of dollars, and interment can be additional thousands. The bill has been passed by the Michigan House, and is awaiting a vote by the Michigan Senate.
Requiring doctors to lie to female patients: In Kansas, Republicans tried to force doctors to tell women that they faced risk of cancer from having an abortion. That is patently untrue, and making doctors say that it was true would be, in effect, requiring them to lie to their patients.
Making a dying woman consult two doctors before she can get a life-saving abortion: The New Hampshire legislature just overrode a veto by the Governor, forcing through a law that bans “partial birth” abortions. The law only reinforces federal law, but has the additional requirement that any woman who is exempt from the abortion ban because her life is at risk must visit not one but two doctors before she can get the procedure to save her life. For many rural women, especially those facing life-threatening conditions, this is near impossible.
Mandating people pay extra to give medical device companies a tax break: Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) worked so hard to protect medical device companies from having to pay, that he has instead passed their costs onto the consumer — regular Americans — by increasing the cost of health coverage.
By: Annie-Rose Strasser, Think Progress, June 29, 2012
“Running Against Himself”: Mitt Romney’s Supreme Burden
Congratulations to Mitt Romney! His signature contribution to American life, devising a health plan that became a model for the only major Western democracy without medical care for nearly all of its citizens, has been upheld. If Romney accomplishes nothing else in life, he will go down in history as the man who first proved, in the laboratory of Massachusetts, where he once governed, that an individual mandate could work.
Jeers to Mitt Romney! As the presumptive Republican nominee for president, he stood in front of the Capitol just after the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday and promised to fight in the coming campaign against one big idea — his own.
Now Romney has no choice but to run against himself. It was Rick Santorum who put it in blunt political terms during the Republican primary. Romney, he said, “is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama” because he is the intellectual godfather of the most consequential act of the Obama presidency.
If Romney was honest, and his party less locked in the grip of its far-right base, he could point with pride to the progress that Massachusetts has made. In the Bay State, compliance with the law is high, and nearly two-thirds of the people support it. The cost of insurance fell significantly in the first year after the law took effect. And fewer than 1 percent of the people chose to pay the penalty — or tax, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. helpfully clarified for Obamacare — rather than sign up for health insurance.
But the days of Romney praising his plan, which he did as recently as 2009, are long gone. Remember, it was in a moment of debate candor that Romney turned to Newt Gingrich and acknowledged the free-market, Republican origins of the mandate.
“We got the idea from Newt,” said Romney. “And Newt got it from the Heritage Foundation.” And the idea is a simple one: freeloaders cost the system billions and indirectly raise insurance for those who do the right thing.
To please a Republican Party that waves its gnarled fists at progress, Romney promises, crosses his heart and swears on his mother’s grave that he will repeal Obamacare on Day 1 of his presidency.
Except that, hedge, hedge, he wants the law’s most popular features — preventing insurance companies from dumping people who get sick or denying care to those with pre-existing conditions — to remain on the books.
All of this just reinforces Romney’s worst character flaw — the weasel factor. Every time he opens his mouth to denounce the individual mandate, he contradicts one of the most successful things he ever did as governor.
Plus, the Republican majority in the House has no intention of passing any measure that would keep the most popular parts of the health care act intact. Instead, the House will most likely vote next month to repeal the whole law, and from there it will sit in the Senate and await the election outcome in November.
The mandate is unpopular, without doubt. But big pieces of the law are supported by large majorities. People love the fact that insurance companies no longer have lifetime caps on coverage — an especially crucial element for those with long-term, chronic illness. Older Americans like closing the so-called doughnut hole in prescription drug coverage. Families like the part that allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26. And the medical community likes the law’s emphasis on preventive care.
We can expect a great deal of histrionic stewing and stomping from the Tea Party. Some of its followers have already called for Justice Roberts to be impeached or step down. Too bad Romney’s campaign Web site says he will nominate judges “in the mold of” John Roberts. We’ll see if that statement remains by next week.
The Tea Party, even with the flares that will light up after the court ruling, is a spent force, and most Americans have turned against it.
But Romney still has to carry the Tea Party’s anger at a time when independents — the key to the election — are sick of hyper-partisan scraps and want real solutions to national problems.
The health care law, if tweaked to help small businesses and properly implemented, can join Medicare and Social Security — which are, after all, mandates through taxes — as popular programs that elevate American life and help average people.
President Obama now gets a chance to resell his biggest legislative achievement. He did just that on Thursday, in a brief (for him) and very effective summary of the principles of the health care law: “People who can afford to buy health insurance should take the responsibility to do so.”
Sound familiar? It’s very close to what Romney said in 2009: “Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages free riders to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass on their medical costs to others.”
Wait till the presidential debates, when Obama can use the words of Mitt Romney, health care pioneer, against Mitt Romney, health care obstructionist.
By: Timothy Egan, The New York Times Opinionator, June 28, 2012
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