“Vitter’s Mind-Boggling Obamacare Crusade”: Cutting Benefits For Congressional Staffers Could Have Real Consequences
For those who oppose President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, there’s a lot to campaign against. Many of the arguments in the health care debate arise from differences in philosophy and opinion about the future of health care in this country. For example, there’s the ongoing discussion over the appropriate size of the federal government’s role in the provision of health insurance.
Some arguments, however, are mind boggling. One Republican senator’s recent campaign seems to fall in this category.
For about two years, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana has been on a mission to eliminate the employer subsidy that members of Congress and their staffs receive to buy their health insurance. Thanks to a provision added on to the Affordable Care Act during its consideration, members of Congress and their staffs are required, for the most part, to get their health insurance from the exchanges established by the new law. According to Politico, a ruling by the White House allowed members and staffers to retain the employer health insurance subsidy that they had been receiving before the changes in the Affordable Care Act took effect. Vitter objects to the ruling and claims that it effectively gives Congress an “exemption” from the law.
Although Vitter’s effort may be a good talking point, from a policy perspective, it doesn’t make sense. The senator is clearly approaching the issue from the standpoint of good government and making sure that Congress adheres to the laws it passes for the rest of the nation. However, if he is successful, his efforts will not make government better and they will not make Obamacare better or prove a weakness in the law. All he will accomplish is putting a thorn in the side of the staffers who work hard to make Congress run.
For most staffers, the loss of the subsidy would result in a substantial pay cut. As a former congressional staffer myself, I know that’s a cut many won’t be able to afford. Further, the White House’s actions didn’t give congressional staff a new benefit, nor did it “exempt” them from the Affordable Care Act. They are still required to purchase their insurance from the exchange. Additionally, as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., pointed out to Politico, Congressional staff “aren’t getting anything that any government workers don’t get.” Or anyone else who works for a large employer, for that matter. Under the health care law, employees of large employers still receive health care subsidized by their employer. Members of Congress and their staff should be treated the same way.
It’s also possible that the senator’s efforts, if successful, could hurt Congress. Faced with a significant reduction in benefits, many staff would probably choose to leave the hill and recruiting for their replacements would become more difficult. Less effective Congressional staff ultimately means a less effective Congress and, at the end of the day, that only hurts the country further. Although it may seem a bit intangible for people outside of Washington, Vitter’s drive to eliminate health care subsidies for members of Congress and their staffers has real consequences for the people who serve the institution and their families. The crusade should be dropped. There are more important things to do than take health care away from government workers.
By: Cary Gibson, Government Relations Consultant, Prime Policy Group; Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, May 15, 2015
“Fraternity Of Failure”: GOP Men And Women United By A Shared History Of Getting Everything Wrong, And Refusing To Admit It
Jeb Bush wants to stop talking about past controversies. And you can see why. He has a lot to stop talking about. But let’s not honor his wish. You can learn a lot by studying recent history, and you can learn even more by watching how politicians respond to that history.
The big “Let’s move on” story of the past few days involved Mr. Bush’s response when asked in an interview whether, knowing what he knows now, he would have supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He answered that yes, he would. No W.M.D.? No stability after all the lives and money expended? No problem.
Then he tried to walk it back. He “interpreted the question wrong,” and isn’t interested in engaging “hypotheticals.” Anyway, “going back in time” is a “disservice” to those who served in the war.
Take a moment to savor the cowardice and vileness of that last remark. And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Mr. Bush is trying to hide behind the troops, pretending that any criticism of political leaders — especially, of course, his brother, the commander in chief — is an attack on the courage and patriotism of those who paid the price for their superiors’ mistakes. That’s sinking very low, and it tells us a lot more about the candidate’s character than any number of up-close-and-personal interviews.
Wait, there’s more: Incredibly, Mr. Bush resorted to the old passive-voice dodge, admitting only that “mistakes were made.” Indeed. By whom? Well, earlier this year Mr. Bush released a list of his chief advisers on foreign policy, and it was a who’s-who of mistake-makers, people who played essential roles in the Iraq disaster and other debacles.
Seriously, consider that list, which includes such luminaries as Paul Wolfowitz, who insisted that we would be welcomed as liberators and that the war would cost almost nothing, and Michael Chertoff, who as director of the Department of Homeland Security during Hurricane Katrina was unaware of the thousands of people stranded at the New Orleans convention center without food and water.
In Bushworld, in other words, playing a central role in catastrophic policy failure doesn’t disqualify you from future influence. If anything, a record of being disastrously wrong on national security issues seems to be a required credential.
Voters, even Republican primary voters, may not share that view, and the past few days have probably taken a toll on Mr. Bush’s presidential prospects. In a way, however, that’s unfair. Iraq is a special problem for the Bush family, which has a history both of never admitting mistakes and of sticking with loyal family retainers no matter how badly they perform. But refusal to learn from experience, combined with a version of political correctness in which you’re only acceptable if you have been wrong about crucial issues, is pervasive in the modern Republican Party.
Take my usual focus, economic policy. If you look at the list of economists who appear to have significant influence on Republican leaders, including the likely presidential candidates, you find that nearly all of them agreed, back during the “Bush boom,” that there was no housing bubble and the American economic future was bright; that nearly all of them predicted that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight the economic crisis that developed when that nonexistent bubble popped would lead to severe inflation; and that nearly all of them predicted that Obamacare, which went fully into effect in 2014, would be a huge job-killer.
Given how badly these predictions turned out — we had the biggest housing bust in history, inflation paranoia has been wrong for six years and counting, and 2014 delivered the best job growth since 1999 — you might think that there would be some room in the G.O.P. for economists who didn’t get everything wrong. But there isn’t. Having been completely wrong about the economy, like having been completely wrong about Iraq, seems to be a required credential.
What’s going on here? My best explanation is that we’re witnessing the effects of extreme tribalism. On the modern right, everything is a political litmus test. Anyone who tried to think through the pros and cons of the Iraq war was, by definition, an enemy of President George W. Bush and probably hated America; anyone who questioned whether the Federal Reserve was really debasing the currency was surely an enemy of capitalism and freedom.
It doesn’t matter that the skeptics have been proved right. Simply raising questions about the orthodoxies of the moment leads to excommunication, from which there is no coming back. So the only “experts” left standing are those who made all the approved mistakes. It’s kind of a fraternity of failure: men and women united by a shared history of getting everything wrong, and refusing to admit it. Will they get the chance to add more chapters to their reign of error?
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 15, 2015
“Florida Gov Scott No Help In Time Of Crisis”: When The Going Gets Tough, Rick Scott Heads Straight For The Airport
Florida Gov. Rick Scott removed his Harry Potter invisibility cloak and flew to Washington the other day.
There he begged for billions of federal dollars from a person he is suing, Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Burwell patiently listened to the governor and, predictably, sent him back to Florida with nothing.
Last summer the feds informed Scott that the government was phasing out a fund that reimburses local hospitals for taking care of low-income patients, basically replacing it with an expanded version of Medicaid.
At first Scott was in favor of the Medicaid move, even though it was a tangent of Obamacare. Then the governor changed his mind. Later, as an afterthought, he sued Burwell and the HHS.
The state Senate supports Medicaid expansion; the House doesn’t. Tallahassee has been paralyzed by the dispute.
In a snit, the House packed up and adjourned the session early, leaving Florida with no budget. Leaders in the Senate were furious.
Remember, these are all Republicans, ripping at each other like addled meerkats.
And where was the newly re-elected Republican governor, leader of the party?
Gone, is where he was — jetting to crucial functions such as the grand opening of a Wawa gas and convenience store in Fort Myers and the debut of a humongous Ferris wheel in Orlando.
It’s impossible to imagine any of the fully functioning governors in Florida’s past — Lawton Chiles, Bob Graham, Jeb Bush, to name a few — vanishing from Tallahassee during a Code Red meltdown of the Legislature.
But Scott isn’t a functioning governor. He is the emptiest of empty suits — no talent for leadership, no muscle for compromise, no sense whatsoever of the big picture.
When the going gets tough, Scott heads straight for the airport. This is what happens when you elect a guy with his own private jet.
Last week’s trip to Washington was pure theater. Scott’s lawsuit over the low-income health funds is a loser, and he knows it. He was trying to do something to give the impression he was awake and experiencing cognitive activity.
In fact, he has been laser-focused on the future — not Florida’s future, but his own. He’s looking ahead to a possible bid for the U.S. Senate in 2018.
(We’ll pause here while you choke on your cornflakes.)
It’s astounding but true — while the legislative process disintegrated in bitter confusion, the governor was airing TV commercials cheerily touting his imaginary accomplishments.
Yes, they were short commercials. And, yes, little of what he claimed to have done for Florida had actually happened, lawmakers having already tossed his proposed budget into the metaphorical Dumpster.
There were no tax cuts, no hefty increase in spending for public schools, no big boost for Everglades funding. Yet Scott’s commercials made it sound like a done deal.
Relax, Florida. All is well!
Perhaps that’s how it looks from 38,000 feet, though not from the rotunda of the Capitol.
It’s weird for a politician to openly resume campaigning so soon after being re-elected, but weird is the norm for the Scott administration. Since the law prohibits a third term as governor, he can only be thinking about Bill Nelson’s Senate seat.
This would be a far-fetched scenario almost any place except Florida, where Scott has already proven that, if you’re rich enough, there’s no such thing as baggage.
Currently he remains one of the state’s most unpopular political figures. He won the November election mainly because his opposition was Charlie Crist.
Yet with money from his “Let’s Get To Work” political committee, the governor has begun the uphill task of inventing a positive legacy upon which to run three years from now.
In the TV commercials, he plays the role of a hard-charging, hands-on visionary, leading Floridians to prosperity one new job at a time. He smiles. He talks. He is, briefly, visible.
Tallahassee is one of the cities where Scott showed his commercials, yet it didn’t move the needle. He was on the plane when he should have been on the ground.
While the Legislature didn’t need any help disgracing itself, Scott’s disappearing act made things worse by validating the public’s view of all state government as insular and incompetent.
As the House and Senate prepare to reconvene next month, desperately trying to salvage some credibility, the governor seems content with his role on the sidelines, essentially a cheerleader for himself.
Coming soon to a Wawa near you.
By: Carl Hiaasen, Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, May 11, 2015
“The Tragedy Of Ben Carson”: How A Brilliant Doctor Turned Into A Right-Wing Provocateur
The Ben Carson phenomenon is a case lesson in how some really smart, impressive figures in certain fields should never talk about politics.
Carson is now an official presidential candidate, representing a subset of grassroots conservatives who enjoy being played. This is not an insignificant number of people. He is, to the horror of the people who run the Republican party, polling viably. No would-be candidate has a more dedicated corps of volunteers supporting him. Whether it’s CPAC or the First in the Nation Summit in New Hampshire, the Carson people are everywhere, handing out stickers and buttons and t-shirts and assorted other tchochkes from dusk till dawn.
But why? What is it that they like about someone who’s quite obviously trying to separate conservative movementarians from their money?
Carson’s rise to prominence among Tea Party conservatives, or whatever we’re calling that element of the GOP now, should be bizarre to everyone. It’s especially baffling, though, to people like your trusty Salon writer, who grew up in the mid-Atlantic in the 1990s. Most elementary and middle school students from Maryland were at some point assigned to read Ben Carson’s autobiography, Gifted Hands — typically ahead of a visit from the man himself. Carson was raised in Detroit, rising from abject poverty to Yale, eventually becoming the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, one of the best medical centers in the world. To children and adults alike, he was the reigning regional saint. (Along with Cal Ripken Jr., who didn’t pull off masterful feats of neurosurgery but did play in thousands of consecutive baseball games.)
Carson launched his second, lucrative career as a conservative movement celebrity at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. This is one of those grand annual Washington events, sponsored by a Northern Virginia cult, that merits a visit from the President of the United States. Carson made President Obama sit through a chaotic 27-minute political rant against political correctness, progressive taxation, the national debt, etc., and conservative media went nuts. He went on a vapid spiel to President Obama’s face! He should run for president??
Who knew Carson would actually take them up on this? But here we are, replete with a gospel choir singing Eminem.
It’s sad that such a brilliant surgeon and role model for children has committed himself to a path of spectacular humiliation. Because that same free-flowing style he showed at the National Prayer Breakfast has been subject to diminishing returns in the last two years. The novelty is wearing off, and now he’s in a position where he makes a fool of himself just about every time his mouth opens.
The trademark of Carson’s brief political career is an all-out assault on the common literary devices of metaphor and analogy. Obamacare is slavery, and the United States under President Obama is Nazi Germany. ”I want to be clear and set the record straight: I don’t think Obamacare is worse than 9/11,” Carson found himself compelled to say at one point. He has compared criticizing police to criticizing plumbers.
He knows not one thing about foreign policy but speaks about it anyway. This produces comedy.
He recently opined that being gay is a choice and people become gay when they go to prison.
Carson says that he’s learned over the past couple of years not to “wander off into those extraneous areas that can be exploited” by the gotcha media. The problem here, as with so many other complaints about the gotcha media, is that the media simply transcribes the crazy things that he says. He might think that he has an off switch, but that’s doubtful. People who become conservative media stars become conservative media stars by saying crazy things. It’s part of their nature.
Carson’s legacy will not include a stint as President of the United States. It’s a shame that he’s decided to risk his real legacy, as a brilliant world-renowned doctor who came from nothing, by playing right-wing also-ran in a presidential contest.
By: Jim Newell, Salon, May 4, 2015
“A Supreme Sham”: They Call’m As They Prefer To See ‘Em
We can’t know yet how the Supreme Court will rule on same-sex marriage in June, but we already do know this: The decision won’t be based on a dispassionate reading of the Constitution. The 5-4 (or perhaps 6-3) ruling will be a reflection of the political orientation, values, and visceral feelings of each justice; as their “questions” (actually pronouncements) showed this week, every justice except perhaps Anthony Kennedy came into this case with his or her mind made up.
Each side will present elaborate rationales to justify its views, but legal merit will not determine which side prevails. The ruling will simply represent the results of a mini-election on a court as nakedly partisan and polarized as the country itself — a court with four “blue” justices, four “red” ones, and one swing vote. “It becomes increasingly difficult to contend with a straight face that constitutional law is not simply politics by other means,” says University of Chicago law professor Justin Driver, “and that justices are not merely politicians clad in fine robes.”
It was not always thus. Until recent decades, the court’s landmark decisions often came in one-sided rulings (Brown v. Board was 9-0). Presidents sometimes nominated distinguished jurists with indistinct ideologies, such as Byron White and David Souter, whose philosophies evolved over time. That hasn’t happened since Ronald Reagan appointed Kennedy, and it isn’t likely to happen again. So let’s drop any remaining pretense that the justices are impartial arbiters calling “balls and strikes” on the issues that divide us: gay marriage, ObamaCare, voter ID, campaign finance, religious freedom, et al. They call ’em as they prefer to see ’em.
By: William Falk, The Week, May 1, 2015
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