“Promises, Promises”: The Elusive Policy That’s Always On The Horizon
In 2009, as Democrats advanced the Affordable Care Act, congressional Republicans promised to produce an alternative plan to prove to the public that the GOP approach was superior. It sounded very nice.
But Republicans, working in secret, missed their own deadline. Then they missed another. Eventually, GOP lawmakers threw together a half-hearted package, which was a bit of a joke. As Matt Yglesias noted at the time, the Republican approach to reform sought to create a system that “works better for people who don’t need health care services, and much worse for people who actually are sick or who become sick in the future. It’s basically a health un-insurance policy.” The CBO found that the plan would leave “about 52 million” Americans without access to basic medical care.
Four-and-a-half years later, we find ourselves in a surprisingly similar situation. For reasons they sometimes struggle to explain, congressional Republicans still hate “Obamacare,” and just as importantly, are still working in secret on an alternative reform plan that will prove their superior policymaking skills. One of these days, they keep saying. Just you watch. It’ll be **awesome.
Except, of course, the elusive policy is always just out of reach. It sits at the horizon, but it never draws closer.
Suddenly, a House vote on a Republican alternative to Obamacare seems less likely.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declined to commit to an alternative measure coming up for a vote this year but said GOP leadership is going to “continue to having conversations with our members” about items like tax reform and replacing President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation.
And what about the recent promises from House Republican leaders that they will present an ACA alternative – and vote on it – sometime in 2014? “We’re going to continue to go through a lot of ideas,” Boehner said yesterday, using the most non-committal language possible.
By any fair standard, this is quickly becoming a rather ignominious fiasco.
Jon Chait published a gem this week, highlighting the recent Republican rhetoric.
* On Jan. 30, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA.) vowed, “This year, we will rally around an alternative to ObamaCare and pass it on the floor of the House.”
* On Feb. 21, Cantor said Republicans are working “to finalize our Obamacare replacement plan.”
* On Feb. 24, Cantor’s office said it’s prepared to “begin” working on the party’s alternative.
* On Feb. 27, Boehner said he’s prepared to “have conversations” with Republicans about what might be in an alternative policy.
Notice the pattern? Over the course of four weeks, we’ve gone from a guaranteed vote on an alternative to descending assurances about whether an alternative will ever even exist. Chait explained:
Lots of people treat the Republican Party’s inability to unify around an alternative health-care plan, four years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, as some kind of homework assignment they keep procrastinating on. But the problem isn’t that Cantor and Boehner and Ryan would rather lay around on the sofa drinking beer and playing video games than write their health-care plan already.
It’s that there’s no plan out there that is both ideologically acceptable to conservatives and politically defensible.
Quite right. Republicans could present an alternative policy that they love, but it’ll quickly be torn to shreds, make the party look foolish, and make clear that the GOP is not to be trusted with health care policy. Indeed, it would very likely scare the American mainstream to be reminded what Republicans would do if the power over the system were in their hands.
On other hand, Republicans could present a half-way credible policy, but it would have to require some regulations and public investments, which necessarily means the party’s base would find it abhorrent.
And so we get … nothing. Years of promises later, the GOP can’t meet its own commitment to the public, not because Republicans are lazy, but because it’s a post-policy party.
They sure are great at complaining, though, aren’t they?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 28, 2014
“The Real Job Killers”: Forget What Republicans Say, The Real Job Killers Are Lousy Jobs At Lousy Wages
House Speaker John Boehner says raising the minimum wage is “bad policy” because it will cause job losses.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says a minimum wage increase would be a job killer. Republicans and the Chamber also say unions are job killers, workplace safety regulations are job killers, environmental regulations are job killers, and the Affordable Care Act is a job killer. The California Chamber of Commerce even publishes an annual list of “job killers,” including almost any measures that lift wages or protect workers and the environment.
Most of this is bunk.
When in 1996 I recommended the minimum wage be raised, Republicans and the Chamber screamed it would “kill jobs.” In fact, in the four years after it was raised, the U.S. economy created more jobs than were ever created in any four-year period.
For one thing, a higher minimum wage doesn’t necessarily increase business costs. It draws more job applicants into the labor market, giving employers more choice of whom to hire. As a result, employers often get more reliable workers who remain longer – thereby saving employers at least as much money as they spend on higher wages.
A higher wage can also help build employee morale, resulting in better performance. Gap, America’s largest clothing retailer, recently announced it would boost its hourly wage to $10. Wall Street approved. “You treat people well, they’ll treat your customers well,” said Dorothy Lakner, a Wall Street analyst. “Gap had a strong year last year compared to a lot of their peers. That sends a pretty strong message to employees that, ‘we had a good year, but you’re going to be rewarded too.’”
Even when raising the minimum wage — or bargaining for higher wages and better working conditions, or requiring businesses to provide safer workplaces or a cleaner environment — increases the cost of business, this doesn’t necessarily kill jobs.
Most companies today can easily absorb such costs without reducing payrolls. Corporate profits now account for the largest percentage of the economy on record. Large companies are sitting on more than $1.5 trillion in cash they don’t even know what to do with. Many are using their cash to buy back their own shares of stock – artificially increasing share value by reducing the number of shares traded on the market.
Walmart spent $7.6 billion last year buying back shares of its own stock — a move that papered over its falling profits. Had it used that money on wages instead, it could have given its workers a raise from around $9 an hour to almost $15. Arguably, that would have been a better use of the money over the long-term – not only improving worker loyalty and morale but also giving workers enough to buy more goods from Walmart (reminiscent of Henry Ford’s pay strategy a century ago).
There’s also a deeper issue here. Even assuming some of these measures might cause some job losses, does that mean we shouldn’t proceed with them?
Americans need jobs, but we also need minimally decent jobs. The nation could create millions of jobs tomorrow if we eliminated the minimum wage altogether and allowed employers to pay workers $1 an hour or less. But do we really want to do that?
Likewise, America could create lots of jobs if all health and safety regulations were repealed, but that would subject millions of workers to severe illness and injury.
Lots of jobs could be added if all environmental rules were eliminated, but that would result in the kind of air and water pollution that many people in poor nations have to contend with daily.
If the Affordable Care Act were repealed, hundreds of thousands of Americans would have to go back to working at jobs they don’t want but feel compelled to do in order to get health insurance.
We’d create jobs, but not progress. Progress requires creating more jobs that pay well, are safe, sustain the environment, and provide a modicum of security. If seeking to achieve a minimum level of decency ends up “killing” some jobs, then maybe those aren’t the kind of jobs we ought to try to preserve in the first place.
Finally, it’s important to remember the real source of job creation. Businesses hire more workers only when they have more customers. When they have fewer customers, they lay off workers. So the real job creators are consumers with enough money to buy.
Even Walmart may be starting to understand this. The company is “looking at” whether to support a minimum wage increase. David Tovar, a Walmart spokesman, noted that such a move would increase the company’s payroll costs but would also put more money in the pockets of some of Walmart’s customers.
In other words, forget what you’re hearing from the Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce. The real job killers in America are lousy jobs at lousy wages.
By: Robert Reich, The Robert Reich Blog, February 28, 2014
“Willful Republican Obfuscation”: The GOP Takes Another ObamaCare Study Way Out Of Context
It’s no secret that Republicans are pinning their midterm election hopes on ObamaCare.
So it should be no surprise that the GOP has tried to cast virtually all news about the health care law as proof that ObamaCare will kill jobs and send insurance costs soaring. The only problem with that strategy is that the underlying arguments are often disingenuous.
In the latest case, a new report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimates that ObamaCare could raise insurance premiums for nearly two-thirds of small businesses, affecting some 11 million employees. Before ObamaCare, those small businesses were paying below-average rates — often by having younger, healthier workers whom insurers could charge less to cover — but new rules designed to level the insurance marketplace will cause those rates to rise, according to the report.
Naturally, right-wing blogs and Republican lawmakers seized on the report to bash ObamaCare. The report revealed another “broken promise” from the Obama administration, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement, calling it “another punch in the gut for Americans already struggling in the president’s economy.”
The reality of the report’s conclusions, though, are a bit more nuanced.
While the report did find that insurance premiums would probably go up, it did not determine that insurance costs overall would spike. That’s because the report focused only on the impact of ObamaCare’s new rules, and not, crucially, on the impact of its new benefits.
ObamaCare contains a wealth of subsidies, tax breaks, and the like — many of them geared specifically toward small businesses — that are intended to drive down individuals’ insurance costs. When you factor in all the positives, “Obamacare may well be the best thing Washington has done for American small business in decades,” The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki wrote last year.
The CMS report acknowledged that fact, hedging that there was “a rather large degree of uncertainty associated with this estimate” and that the true impact “will be based on far more factors than the three that are focused on in this report so understanding the effects of just these provisions will always be challenging.” And the report specifically mentioned one nongovernmental analysis of the entire law which found that it would have a “minimal” impact on small business premiums.
Moreover, the report estimated that costs would drop for the remaining one-third of small businesses. Why? They’re currently paying above-average rates, so the market-leveling rules will actually benefit them.
The GOP hand-wringing comes on the heels of its failed attempt to claim a separate federal report confirmed that ObamaCare will be a job killer. That nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report actually found that the law would lead to a reduction of labor, not jobs, as incentives made it easier for people to work less or retire early. The GOP’s claim was so bogus, in fact, that the CBO released a follow-up statement thoroughly debunking it as an egregious distortion of the truth.
Republicans understandably want to make the health care law look bad to boost their election prospects. But skewing the findings on ObamaCare only hurts their credibility and reveals the party’s willful obfuscation on the issue.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 25, 2014
“Didn’t See That One Coming”: How Paul Ryan Helped Save Medicare And Social Security By Trying To Gut Them
President Obama’s new budget will not include a proposal to implement “chained CPI” to slow the growth of Social Security benefits, according to White House officials.
And there’s one man who deserves most of the credit for making sure there will be no cuts to benefits to seniors until at least 2017 — ironically the politician who has worked the hardest to reduce the promises made to America’s retirees — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
The president had included the reform measure in his 2013 budget as an attempt to provoke a so-called Grand Bargain with House Republican leaders. Such a deal would have required them to end some tax breaks for the rich. That was never going to happen and the White House’s acceptance of this fact helps focus the 2014 elections on votes most Republicans in Congress have taken in the past to cut both Social Security and Medicare, thanks to Paul Ryan.
The chairman of the House Budget Committee’s first budget plan in 2011 not only privatized Social Security — a proposal that President George W. Bush could not even get a vote on when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress — it remade Medicare into a voucher program that radically shifted the financial burden to seniors without doing much to reduce the overall cost of health care. The plan was so popular — at least with Republican donors — that it instantly made Ryan a national hero and possible presidential candidate.
The chances of enacting the plan with President Obama in office were zero, but Ryan, buoyed by his new stardom, helped guide House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) into a debt-limit crisis that shook global markets still dizzy from the financial crisis. House Republicans demanded a dollar in cuts for every dollar the debt ceiling was raised and President Obama obliged with a plan that not only included chained CPI, but also raised the Medicare eligibility age. To sell this plan to Democrats, the president demanded a small percentage of new revenues by ending tax breaks on upper-income Americans.
Boehner was about to make the deal, when Ryan “dropped a bomb” on it, fearing it would guarantee Obama’s re-election. Instead both sides settled on the sequester.
Ryan released another budget in 2012 that dropped Social Security privatization and added a public option to his Medicare plan. Desperate for Tea Party credibility, Mitt Romney selected Ryan to be his running mate after being forced to embrace the congressman’s budget during the primary. Together, the two men re-elected the president.
After Obama’s re-election, Speaker Boehner reportedly tried to take the offer Ryan had rejected in 2011. The president told him it was off the table, and likely will be for the rest of his term unless Republicans consider higher taxes on the rich, which they won’t.
In the past two years, the deficit has been cut in half and is projected to be even lower within 10 years as a share of GDP than if the Simpson-Bowles debt plan or Paul Ryan’s first budget had become law. If the reforms to Medicare implemented in the Affordable Care Act continue to slow the growth of costs as they have since 2010, our long-term debt crisis may be solved, despite Paul Ryan’s best efforts.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, February 20, 2014
“Lacking The Will, Not The Votes”: Yet Another Year Of A Do-Nothing Republican Congress
Election Day 2014 is 258 days away, which in political terms, is an extraordinarily long time. In theory, in 258 days, policymakers in Washington could identify several national priorities, consider worthwhile legislation, and pass meaningful bills into law.
But Robert Costa makes clear in a new report that for House Republicans, the year that is just now getting underway is already effectively over. Three weeks after President Obama presented a fairly ambitious agenda to Congress in a State of the Union address, the GOP House majority fully expects to get nothing done between now and November.
After a tumultuous week of party infighting and leadership stumbles, congressional Republicans are focused on calming their divided ranks in the months ahead, mostly by touting proposals that have wide backing within the GOP and shelving any big-ticket legislation for the rest of the year.
Comprehensive immigration reform, tax reform, tweaks to the federal health-care law – bipartisan deals on each are probably dead in the water for the rest of this Congress.
“We don’t have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?” said Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), an ally of House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio).
I feel like this assumption – legislating simply isn’t feasible because major bills can’t get 218 votes in the lower chamber – comes up quite a bit. Note that Boehner recently told Jay Leno, “I like to describe my job as trying to get 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to pass a bill. It’s hard to do.”
Except, it’s not that hard to do.
What we’re hearing isn’t an explanation for inaction and passive indifference towards governing, but rather, an excuse. GOP leaders look at their to-do list and wistfully imagine how nice it would be to tackle priorities like immigration and tax reform, but they quickly do imaginary head-counts and throw up their arms in disgust. As Nunes put it, “We don’t have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?”
It doesn’t have to be this way.
If House Republican leaders brought the popular, bipartisan immigration reform bill to the floor, it’d likely get 218 votes. If they brought the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to the floor, it’d have a decent shot at 218, too. The same goes for a minimum-wage increase and a variety of other measures that the public would be glad to see.
The missing ingredient isn’t votes. It’s political will.
It’s precisely why House Democrats are increasingly invested in discharge petitions – if only a sliver of House Republicans agreed to help bring popular bills to the floor for an up-or-down vote, Dems believe Congress can do more than spin its wheels for the next 258 days.
It is, to be sure, a longshot, and discharge petitions very rarely work. But the alternative is yet another year of a do-nothing Congress.
Postscript: Costa’s piece also quoted former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), who said, “If you’re a Republican in Congress, you’ve learned that when we shut down the government, we lose. Now that we’ve had some success in avoiding another shutdown, our fortunes seem to be rising, so maybe we don’t want big things to happen.”
That’s quite an inspiring message: “Vote GOP 2014: We only shut down the government once, not twice.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 18, 2014
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