“And Here We Go Again”: Republicans Are Really, Really Bad At Hostage Negotiations
For some time, I’ve been arguing that we should not just extend the debt ceiling but get rid of it altogether. It’s a weird historical anomaly that serves no practical purpose other than allowing the opposition party, should it be sufficiently reckless, to threaten global economic catastrophe if it doesn’t get its way. I assumed that your average Washington Democrat would share this view, but now I’m beginning to think that if you’re someone like Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama, the debt ceiling is actually quite helpful, and you’d be sorry to see it go.
Because here’s what keeps happening: The debt ceiling approaches. Republicans begin making threats to torpedo the country’s economy by not raising it, and thereby sending the United States government into default, if their demands aren’t met. We then have a couple of weeks of debate, disagreement, and hand-wringing. Republican infighting grows more intense, and their reputation as a bunch of radicals who are willing to burn down the country to serve their extreme ideology is reinforced. At the end of it, the Republicans cave, the ceiling is raised for some period, and we do it all again in a few months.
And here we go again. The debt ceiling is going to have to be raised in the next month or so. Since the deficit is now at its lowest point since Barack Obama took office, it’s hard for Republicans to say that slashing the budget is so urgent that it justifies threatening to send America off an economic cliff. So what will they demand as their price for assenting to a debt ceiling increase? The answer is…they can’t decide. Yesterday, the House leadership proposed that they demand either a repeal of the “risk corridor” provision in the Affordable Care Act, which protects against a “death spiral” in the individual insurance market (here’s a good explainer on that), or approval of the Keystone pipeline. As Jonathan Chait pointed out, “Republicans have decided that one of these policy demands is so vital that they can insist its fulfillment justifies the threat of global economic calamity. They’re just not sure yet which one.” But it turned out that they couldn’t even unite around one of those two things, and that proposal of the leadership’s is now dead.
So here’s where we are. The Republican position is that something or other, let’s call it the Policy Change To Be Named Later, is so urgent, so pressing, so essential to the future of this great nation that if they don’t get it, whatever it turns out to be, they will force the government into default. And as soon as they figure out what the PCTBNL is, they’ll let us know.
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ position is simple: the debt ceiling needs to be raised, without conditions. Period. And that’s just what’s going to happen. There’ll be some hemming and hawing between now and then, but Democrats are going to win this, and Republicans are going to lose, and look like fools. Given that, if you were Barack Obama, wouldn’t you be perfectly happy to go through this routine a few more times?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 5, 2014
“Running Out Of Excuses”: Boehner’s ‘Trust’ Issues On Immigration
The odds of congressional success on immigration reform tend to swing wildly from one day to the next. Reform’s chances are either “likely” or a “long shot” depending on the latest quote, headline, hearing, poll, or rumor.
But this morning, the man who largely has the future of the policy in his hands made it sound as if immigration reform simply will not happen anytime soon.
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that House leaders cannot move immigration reform legislation until President Barack Obama restores “trust” among Republicans.
But the GOP leader did not say what rebuilding that trust might entail.
The Speaker told reporters, “There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. And it’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.”
Boehner added, “The president’s asking us to move one of the biggest bills of his presidency, and yet he’s shown very little willingness to work with us on the smallest of things.”
As a factual matter, some of this is just odd. Obama has generally shown overwhelming willingness to work with Congress on just about anything, large or small. There’s probably a reason Boehner didn’t mention any examples to bolster his argument.
But the real significance of the Speaker’s comments were their likely bearing on the immigration debate. As Boehner sees it, House Republicans aren’t confident that the Obama administration will enforce federal law, and as such, they don’t want to vote for reform. As the argument goes, even if Congress approves sweeping border-security measures intended to satisfy GOP lawmakers’ demands, Obama may simply blow off laws (or parts of laws) whenever it strikes his fancy.
Indeed, it’s not just Boehner making this argument. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) pushed the same case on the Sunday shows.
It’s a deeply flawed argument, though the motivation behind it is quite clear.
Note, if the argument sounds familiar, there’s a good reason – the “we can’t pass immigration reform because Obama’s an untrustworthy tyrant” tack first came up last summer. At the time, some congressional Republicans argued that a delay in the implementation of Affordable Care Act provisions was undeniable proof that “we have a president that picks and chooses the laws that he wants to obey and enforce. That makes him a ruler. He’s not a president, he’s a ruler.”
As we discussed at the time, the complaint isn’t persuasive. When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, the administration has some discretion in implementing various provisions. It’s not unusual and it’s not unique to health care. Plenty of parts of the Dodd/Frank financial-regulatory reform law were delayed, too. This has long been the norm, and using it as an excuse not to trust the entire executive branch on literally every issue is kind of silly.
As Brian Beutler wrote in July:
The administration isn’t unlawfully writing the employer mandate out of existence, just like it wouldn’t unlawfully refuse to send thousands of agents to the border if an immigration reform law required them to.
And because immigration reform will be a bipartisan law if it passes, Republicans in Congress will have less incentive to stand in the way if the implementation process reveals real problems with its drafting. Which means the administration won’t be left, as it is with the ACA, facing a suboptimal choice between implementing the law poorly or taking clunky administrative steps to smooth the process out.
So, if “we don’t trust Obama” is such a weak pretense for killing immigration reform, why are congressional Republicans so heavily invested in it? A few reasons, actually.
First, the GOP desperately hopes to convince the American mainstream that the president is an out-of-control, “lawless” radical. It’s not true – Obama’s actually a fairly moderate technocrat – but the manufactured narrative has become a convenient way for Republicans to raise money, rile up the base, and kill popular legislation.
Second, as a policy matter, it’s possible GOP lawmakers hope to use this excuse to tilt the policy playing field in their favor. As Greg Sargent noted on Monday, Republicans may very well insist that increased border security begin well in advance of any other part of immigration reform, insisting that it’s the only way for Obama to prove his “trustworthiness.” In other words, the legislation would give Republicans everything they want, with the understanding that other provisions could come later, once GOP lawmakers are satisfied the president isn’t a big liar.
And finally, let’s not lose sight of the blame game. Congressional Republicans, who have zero major legislative accomplishments since the 2010 midterms, are prepared to kill a popular, bipartisan immigration-reform effort that’s been endorsed by business leaders, labor leaders, economists, immigration advocates, and the faith community. If they refuse to pass legislation, as now appears likely, GOP leaders will need an extraordinary excuse to justify failure on this level.
According to Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan, that excuse effectively boils down to this: “Republicans don’t like Obama.” If they think that’ll work in persuading the public, they may want to consider a back-up plan.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 6, 2014
“Something To Celebrate”: Affordable Care Act Gives Workers Freedom, Republicans Enraged
Since I wrote about postal banking this morning, I’ve decided to continue the day’s shameless, lowest-common-denominator clickbaiting by talking about a new Congressional Budget Office report and the Affordable Care Act. Hang on to your hats.
With all the hype of a new Beyonce album, the CBO dropped its latest report on government finances and other related topics, which includes the news that the deficit has dropped to its lowest level since Barack Obama took office. This may prove inconvenient for Republicans still invested in fomenting deficit panic, but they’ll be helped by the fact that most Americans actually believe the deficit has gone up in the Obama years. According to a new poll from the Huffington Post, not only do 54 percent of people think so, but 85 percent (!) of Republicans think so.
In any case, the part of the CBO’s report that’s getting more attention is their projection that as a result of the ACA, the labor force will be reduced by 2 million in 2017, rising to 2.5 million in 2024. Unsurprisingly, Republicans rushed to the trumpets to shout that “Obamacare is going to cost 2.5 million jobs!!!” even though that’s not actually what the CBO said. Even news organizations who ought to know better made the mistake; earlier today, a headline at the Washington Post‘s web site read, “CBO: Health Law to Mean 2 Million Fewer Jobs” (it has since been corrected to read, “CBO: Health Law to Mean 2 Million Fewer Workers”).
The important thing to understand about the reduction in the labor force is that this is exactly what was supposed to happen. When you eliminate “job lock,” where people who’d like to leave their jobs can’t because if they do they won’t have health insurance, a certain number of people are going to take advantage of their newfound mobility. In some cases you might be able to construe it as a loss to the economy, say if a productive full-time worker cuts back to part time because she can. But in many cases it’s something to celebrate: an American exercising their freedom.
Imagine, for instance, a couple. The wife is a lawyer in private practice; the husband is an accountant at a large firm. Since she’s a cancer survivor, he has stayed at his job for the health insurance it provides, because if he didn’t they wouldn’t have been able to get coverage, what with her pre-existing condition. But now, he can make a different choice. And it happens that her business is doing pretty well, and he’d rather stay home with the kids and work on his novel than be an accountant. So he has the freedom to quit his job, and they can still get covered. When he does so, he’s no longer in the labor force. But that doesn’t mean there’s one fewer job in the economy. His firm will just hire someone else.
That isn’t to say there will be zero net loss to the economy; without his income, the couple will probably spend less. But their children may also grow up happier and more well-adjusted, and who knows, he might write the next great young-adult dystopian fight-to-the-death trilogy with the extra time he has between 9 and 3 every day. These are good things.
That’s just one kind of person who leaves the labor force because of the ACA; there will also be lots of people who leave jobs to start their own businesses, and some who decide to retire early because now they can. If people are making those decisions freely—just like people have the freedom to do in every other advanced economy in the world—it would be crazy to think of it as something to be lamented.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 4, 2014
“Don’t Even Give Them A Fig Leaf”: Democrats Should Call The GOP’s Debt Ceiling Bluff
“We don’t want ‘nothing’ out of this debt limit,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in December.
With a deadline to raise the debt ceiling approaching this Friday (though Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said he can manage until the end of February), House Republicans are indeed talking about what they’d like in exchange for upping the nation’s borrowing limit. However, their internal talks aren’t going so well.
The GOP’s two leading ideas for handling the debt ceiling — tying it to a provision mandating the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, or one tweaking ObamaCare — fell apart Wednesday due to a lack of Republican support. Both would have included a one-year extension of the debt ceiling.
More from The Washington Post’s Robert Costa:
Both ideas were debated at a conference meeting and members expected the conference to coalesce around one of the plans by later this week.
That playbook soon fizzled, however, once GOP leadership aides fanned out throughout the Capitol to take the temperature of members about the plans. Instead of finding growing support, they found unease and complaints, with myriad concerns raised by the House’s right flank. [Washington Post]
Sound familiar?
It should. Republicans folded twice last year on their debt ceiling demands after realizing that threats to plunge the nation into potential financial chaos aren’t too popular with voters.
Just a few months ago, Republicans entered the debt ceiling and government funding talks with a fantastical list of demands. The ask rapidly shrank, though, when Democrats refused to budge. Yet House leadership, fearful of angering the party’s right wing, refused to give in either.
The plan backfired, and Republicans came away with nothing except historically low poll numbers:
For Republicans to think they have any more leverage now is just delusional.
President Obama has insisted that Congress send him a clean debt ceiling bill, meaning one free of any extraneous provisions. Public opinion is on his side. A recent CNN survey found that 54 percent of Americans would blame the GOP if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Only 29 percent would blame Obama.
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly has a Plan B in the works that would swap the debt ceiling hike for the restoration of some military benefits. Yet there is no guarantee the plan could overcome the objections on the right, since it would technically raise spending, something anathema to Tea Partiers. And even if it were to somehow get the support of a majority of the GOP caucus, House Democrats reaffirmed Wednesday that they wouldn’t bargain, period.
The whole standoff is reminiscent of Rep. Marlin Stutzman’s (R-Ind.) oblivious remark about the debt ceiling standoff back in October: “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” Republicans want something, anything, in exchange for a debt ceiling vote, but they can’t even settle on what that something might be.
The bottom line is that since Republicans caved in the past, there’s no reason to believe they won’t cave again. Boehner himself admitted earlier this week that “there’s no sense picking a fight we can’t win.”
The GOP can’t win. Democrats should call that bluff and not even give them a fig leaf.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 6, 2014
“Willful Stupidity In The Obamacare Debate”: Fat Chance, Republicans Are Not Looking For Enlightenment
One of the best arguments for health-insurance reform is that our traditional employer-based system often locked people into jobs they wanted to leave but couldn’t because they feared they wouldn’t be able to get affordable coverage elsewhere.
This worry was pronounced for people with preexisting conditions, but it was not limited to them. Consider families with young children in which one parent would like to get out of the formal labor market for a while to take care of the kids. In the old system, the choices of such couples were constrained if only one of the two received employer-provided family coverage.
Or ponder the fate of a 64-year-old with a condition that leaves her in great pain. She has the savings to retire but can’t exercise this option until she is eligible for Medicare. Is it a good thing to force her to stay in her job? Is it bad to open her job to someone else?
By broadening access to health insurance, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ends the tyranny of “job lock,” which is what the much-misrepresented Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study of the law released Tuesday shows. The new law increases both personal autonomy and market rationality by ending the distortions in behavior the old arrangements were creating.
But that’s not how the study has been interpreted, particularly by enemies of the law. Typical was a tweet from the National Republican Congressional Committee, declaring that “#ObamaCare is hurting the economy, will cost 2.5 millions [sic] jobs.”
Glenn Kessler, The Post’s intrepid fact checker, replied firmly: “No, CBO did not say Obamacare will kill 2 million jobs.” What the report said, as the Wall Street Journal accurately summarized it, is that the law “will reduce the total number of hours Americans work by the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time jobs.”
Oh my God, say opponents of the ACA, here is the government encouraging sloth! That’s true only if you wish to take away the choices the law gives that 64-year-old or to those parents looking for more time to care for their children. Many on the right love family values until they are taken seriously enough to involve giving parents/workers more control over their lives.
And it’s sometimes an economic benefit when some share of the labor force reduces hours or stops working altogether. At a time of elevated unemployment, others will take their place. The CBO was careful to underscore — the CBO is always careful — that “if some people seek to work less, other applicants will be readily available to fill those positions and the overall effect on employment will be muted.”
The CBO did point to an inevitable problem in how the ACA’s subsidies for buying health insurance operate. As your income rises, your subsidy goes down and eventually disappears. This is, as the CBO notes, a kind of “tax.” The report says that if the “subsidies are phased out with rising income in order to limit their total costs, the phaseout effectively raises people’s marginal tax rates (the tax rates applying to their last dollar of income), thus discouraging work.”
But the answer to this is either to make the law’s subsidies more generous — which the ACA’s detractors would oppose because, as the CBO suggests, doing so would cost more than the current law — or to guarantee everyone health insurance, single-payer style, so there would be no “phaseout” and no “marginal tax rates.” I could go with this, but I doubt many of the ACA’s critics would.
The rest of the CBO report contained much good news for Obamacare: Insurance premiums under the law are 15 percent lower than originally forecast, “the slowdown in Medicare cost growth” is “broad and persistent” and enrollments will catch up over time to where they would have been absent Obamacare’s troubled rollout.
The reaction to the CBO study is an example of how willfully stupid — there’s no other word — the debate over Obamacare has become. Opponents don’t look to a painstaking analysis for enlightenment. They twist its findings and turn them into dishonest slogans. Too often, the media go along by highlighting the study’s political impact rather than focusing on what it actually says. My bet is that citizens are smarter than this. They will ignore the noise and judge Obamacare by how it works.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 5, 2014
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