“A Deliberate Coyness”: The Farce Of Paul Ryan, Serious Man
Like a phoenix risen from the ashes of Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is back.
The conservative budget guru is once again being hailed as the Ideas Man who will lead the GOP to electoral salvation. But this time, he’s supposedly toning down his idealism a bit and, as is his party in general, putting on a softer, gentler face.
From Politico’s Jake Sherman, we hear that Ryan “is sifting through the lessons of his political past to shape a new persona” and, after trying to radically redraw the federal budget toward his conservative vision in the past, now “betting that incrementalism — legislative half-steps toward conservative solutions is the best look for Republicans.”
“The brand Ryan is cultivating is deliberate, serious, and aims to be inclusive of other political parties and voters who haven’t considered Republicans,” he adds.
Ah, there it is, the “S” word: Serious.
Ryan is often portrayed as the lone adult in the room, the man with serious ideas when the rest of Washington is embroiled in partisan sniping. Whether or not he’s truly offering sound policy — and there have been many questions on the front — he’s incessantly framed as being above-the-fray, concerned only with making Washington work right. In a word: Serious.
The trouble is that the mystique is largely media-crafted. A quick Lexis-Nexis search of U.S. newspapers for “Paul Ryan” and “serious” returned more than 3,000 results from the past year alone.
To be sure, Ryan does offer up a lot of policy proposals, an anomaly in D.C., and especially for a party that has voted to repeal ObamaCare more than 40 times without offering, until now, any semblance of an alternative. Yet his policy ideas don’t always hold water. Sometimes, they’re deeply flawed.
His previous budget plans were widely criticized for relying on highly suspect data, and for following a formula along the lines of: Cut spending + pixie dust = economic growth.
“If Obama tried to claim that his policies would achieve anything like this,” the liberal Paul Krugman wrote of Ryan’s 2011 budget plan, “he’d be laughed out of office.”
As for Ryan’s big new anti-poverty crusade, the details there, too, are suspect. His ideas — placing work requirements on safety-net programs, tax breaks, and so on — are “supply-side policies that don’t change the overall level of poverty” says Ryan Cooper in The Washington Post, making them no more than “vague rhetoric and window dressing.”
Other thorough assessments of his anti-poverty campaign have been similarly harsh. Meaning, it’s not so much that Ryan has changed, but rather that he’s tucked his old ideas into new packaging and — voila! — become the serious man once again.
Consider it the Republican rebrand writ small.
Part of Ryan’s enduring “seriousness” is actually deliberate coyness, which allows pundits to hang the simple narrative on him. He’s deflected questions about his political ambitions with a “Who, me?” shrug, while insisting he’s just trying to do his job. It’s an effective though farcical facade. Ryan has a knack for shrewdly self-promoting his supposed quiet humility and wonkish credentials. As the economist Jared Bernstein wrote, Ryan “is the classic example of the adage that if you’ve got a reputation for being an early riser, you can sleep til noon.”
To be sure, Ryan did help craft the mini budget compromise that passed earlier this year to avoid another government shutdown. But absolutely no one — okay, maybe Ted Cruz — wanted another shutdown, especially the GOP leadership, considering how badly the last one hurt the party. In that sense, Ryan was merely ensuring the GOP didn’t self-immolate once again.
Ryan’s big rebrand doesn’t prove that he’s a “serious” lawmaker. It does, however, prove he’s serious about looking serious.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, January 30, 2014
“Nobody Is Falling For This”: House Republicans Make Their Regularly Scheduled Threat To Destroy The Global Economy
House Republicans will huddle at their annual retreat next week to decide what will they demand in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
If the limit on how much the government can borrow to pay off debts Congress has already voted to incur is not raised by late February, the U.S. will default purposely for the first time in American history, triggering a financial crisis that many experts feel would be at least as devastating as the economic meltdown of 2008, which put millions out of work and destroyed trillions in wealth.
The government shutdown in October dominated the discussion during the weeks leading up to the last debt limit crisis. Republicans released a comical list of demands. The White House offered nothing, and that’s essentially what Republicans accepted when they folded on the government shutdown.
Earlier in 2013, Republicans demanded that the Senate pass a budget in exchange for raising the debt limit. The Senate agreed and House Republicans followed the strategy of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and refused to go into conference with Democrats in the upper house — 18 times. And that’s how we got the shutdown.
Of course, you only have to feed a stray once to keep it scratching at the door. In 2011, House Republicans successfully used the debt limit to extract the automatic cuts known as the sequester, while triggering a near-panic that erased some 1,200 points from the Dow. Because the House has folded twice since then, Wall Street now takes the GOP’s threats as seriously as a Sarah Palin presidential bid, even when America was just hours from a default in October.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) seems to have taken the reins of his caucus after the shutdown disaster and has since passed a two-year budget with little drama over the objections of the outside groups that backed Cruz last year. But the man who negotiated that deal — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — was one of the driving forces behind the 2011 crisis and is saying the House will demand something in exchange for raising the debt limit. The chairman of the Budget Committee has keyed in on the so-called “Obamacare Bailout,” which not a bailout at all, but a complex set of mostly deficit-neutral mechanisms that could help insurers if they are forced to take on too many sick customers, or could help cut the deficit if they don’t.
The problem for the GOP is the same mechanism exists in Medicare Part D, which was signed into law by George W. Bush and passed by Republicans — including Paul Ryan.
Still, Republicans plan to dare the president to default “to preserve a massive bailout for insurance companies” knowing that what they’re saying is “one enormous lie.”
Will Republicans give in when they recognize that the president will not cave to their demands, as he has vowed not to over and over again?
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait believes they will.
Chait — who called the last debt ceiling standoff a domestic “Cuban Missile Crisis,” which the president won — notes that the House GOP’s argument has devolved from sanctimonious prattle about the debt to a straight-up demand for scattershot “concessions,” which only makes sense if they want to destroy the economy and need some incentive not to do so.
“But you can only try this bluff once,” Chait wrote. “The only way it could still work would be if Obama either paid a ransom or Republicans shot the hostage. Once the mark knows you’re bluffing, it’s over. You can’t do it again. Nobody is falling for this.”
The GOP’s debt scaremongering made a little sense in 2010 when the deficit was over $1 trillion and the long-term debt projections were skyrocketing — though threatening default increased the deficit and an actual default would have exploded it astronomically. But the deficit has been cut in half, mostly thanks to the end of some of the Bush tax breaks for the rich, and any threat of a long-term debt “crisis” may be disappearing, thanks to Obamacare.
Now the GOP’s theatrics just play into the notion that they blind obstructionists. And if they go too far, they could actually blow the 2014 elections.
Speaker Boehner needs his bluff to be taken seriously by only one constituency — a majority of his caucus.
The 50-70 members of the “suicide caucus” who are more aligned with outside conservative groups than the Speaker are already furious about the budget deal. They’re plotting a rebellion over piecemeal immigration reform that Boehner is preparing to take up, and they’re even planning on joining a retreat organized by Heritage Action that will immediately follow the one being held by leadership.
Boehner has to appear that he’s willing to default up until the exact moment when the pressure from the business community forces him to cave. And hopefully then there will be enough Republicans behind him when he does, so he can prevent a needless catastrophe at the last possible moment.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, January 24, 2014
“Mitch Has Got Some ‘Splainin’ To Do”: McConnell Recycles His Own Ad, Ignores 188,130 Kentuckians Whose Insurance He’d Repeal
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) failed in his goal to make President Obama a one-term president, but he’s still one of the most crafty and ruthless campaigners in politics, as his latest ad proves.
McConnell’s new ad recycles a message the senator knows works because it helped him win in 2008. The new ad is far more affecting. It focuses entirely on Robert Pierce, a worker from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, where exposure to radiation left several employees with cancer. Pierce says throat cancer has weakened his own whispery voice, but he praises the senator for using his voice to help him.
McConnell is boldly trumpeting his help to the plant with the testimony of a man few will want to question. The record is much more complex, according to The Huffington Post‘s Jason Cherkis and Zach Carter.
The senator didn’t “spring into action” on Paducah until 1999, 14 years after the first workers became sick, when a Washington Post article uncovered that radioactive exposure was still occurring at the plant. But once the story was in the limelight, McConnell pushed for a practical solution: “He worked to pass what amounted to a new entitlement that allowed plant workers over age 50 access to free body scans and free health care.” Recently McConnell’s absence from the debate about the plant’s potential closing has led a union leader to say the senator has “given up on Paducah.”
An ad touting the ability to get people government-run health care is an unlikely way to open the campaign of a man who has vowed to repeal Obamacare “root and branch.”
Thanks to the president’s health reforms, 188,130 residents of McConnell’s state now have health coverage; of those, 100,359 have completely subsidized health insurance through Medicaid or SCHIP.
McConnell needs to explain what will happen to the more than 100,000 people who would lose coverage if his goal of repealing Obamacare is accomplished, says The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent.
“McConnell’s new ad tells us he should be re-elected because his efforts to bring health coverage to people who lack it shows his willingness to ‘knock down walls’ for Kentucky’s ‘working families,’ helping ‘save people’s lives,’” Sargent writes. “So what about all the working people who would lose coverage if McConnell got his way?”
Unfortunately for McConnell, 2014 isn’t 2008.
Six years ago the senator could brag about providing some deserving workers with government health care without having to go into his actual policies on health care. In 2014, Obamacare is no longer theoretical; millions of Americans have gained coverage through Obamacare exchanges or by remaining on their parents’ coverage until age 26, thanks to the law.
If McConnell is arguing he did the right thing by helping those in need, he must also explain what would happen to these people if he gets his way and they lose their coverage.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, January 22, 2014
“GOP’s New Immigration Spin”: If We Can’t Pass Reform, It’s Obamacare’s Fault
If you’ll recall the recent legislative history of “comprehensive immigration reform,” this has been the cycle: Democrats and senior Republicans all agree that we should do it, some proposals are proposed, and then it dies, usually in the House, because conservatives are very opposed to comprehensive immigration reform. Some time passes, and then we all try again. There will be another doomed-to-fail attempt this year, according to Democrats and senior Republicans. As usual, Republicans have preemptively assigned blame for its failure to President Obama.
Before his 2012 reelection, Republicans frequently argued that Barack Obama wanted immigration reform to fail, so that he could make Republicans look bad to Hispanics and use that to win reelection. After his reelection, when Obama decided to make another push for reform, under the assumption that a chastened GOP would play along, it eventually became clear that no immigration bill that provided an opportunity for citizenship for currently undocumented residents could pass the House. The end, for Immigration Reform 2013. On to Immigration Reform 2014.
Here’s the latest: Speaker of the House John Boehner will “unveil a set of Republican principles for immigration reform before Obama’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address.” He and Majority Leader Eric Cantor told fellow Republicans that reform would be a priority this year. Barack Obama has been described by Senator Chuck Schumer as “cautiously optimistic” that the House would pass something this year. It’s all finally happening!
Or what is happening, at least, is that John Boehner has decided that Republicans once again need to appear open to the idea of creating a more humane immigration process.
This Politico piece basically explains Boehner’s strategy. His list of principles will include “beefed-up border security and interior enforcement,” and “earned legal status,” presumably instead of “citizenship,” for undocumented immigrants. Plus, it won’t be one big bill, because Republicans have spent the entire Obama administration decrying long bills, for their length.
The draft principles will also include a promise that immigration reform will be done on a step-by-step basis and will foreclose the possibility of entering into conference negotiations using the Senate’s comprehensive package — pledges that could soothe some Republicans.
Mm-hmm. Soothe some Republicans, and also allow those Republicans to vote for more border security without voting to legalize anyone. That’s always been the point of passing reform “step-by-step.” Not that anyone even actually expects this limited, piecemeal proposal to pass!
The secret talks are taking place even as leaders doubt that such efforts will be fruitful, in part because of opposition from conservatives who sank the prospects for reform last year. That dynamic hasn’t changed. But Republicans think stating their position is important and could help chart a path forward for reform in 2015 after the midterm elections.
And that’s the paragraph that should end all 2014 “could this be the year comprehensive immigration reform passes” pieces. (We finished early this year, everyone!) Republicans think “stating their position” — a position they will state by claiming it is their position, not by voting to make their ostensible position law — is important, for branding reasons, but the House is still full of conservatives, so there’s still no hope for reform.
That’s why this year, just like last year and the year before, immigration reform won’t happen: There aren’t enough votes for it in the House, because conservatives oppose it and Boehner won’t try to pass it with mostly Democratic votes.
There is an alternative explanation, though. One that, conveniently, makes the failure of immigration reform the fault of people other than the ones who explicitly don’t support it. This is the explanation Andrew Stiles takes for a test drive at the National Review. Maybe immigration won’t happen because … Obamacare!
A number of House Republicans, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), have argued that the Obamacare fiasco is to blame for their reluctance to tackle immigration reform.
I see. Please, Marco Rubio, regretful former member of the Senate immigration “gang of eight,” explain:
Other Republicans, including Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), one of the architects of the Senate bill, have suggested that President Obama cannot be trusted to properly implement a large-scale immigration reform, given the countless waivers and exemptions he has handed out with respect to Obamacare. Conservative skeptics have long argued that there would be little stopping the administration from fully implementing aspects of the new law it likes, such as legalization and citizenship for illegal immigrants, while completely ignoring the provisions it doesn’t like, such as increased border security and interior enforcement. As Rubio told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, “even people that would like to do something on [immigration reform] are finding it hard to argue against that.”
This is not a terribly surprising message from Rubio, who began trashing comprehensive immigration reform about 10 minutes after the bill he helped craft passed the Senate with his support, but it is a fun new variation on the classic Senate “I can’t support this thing I support because of this unrelated thing” argument. It certainly is strange that conservatives opposed immigration reform before the botched Healthcare.gov website rollout, if that botched rollout is why they can’t pass reform, isn’t it?
“Obamacare” is a great excuse to avoid ever doing anything. How can we trust this administration to go to war against Iran if it can’t build a website? We should probably destroy our nuclear arsenal, before the Obungler bungles his way into armageddon. And don’t get me started on the NSA! I didn’t do my homework because I cannot trust this administration to grade it correctly.
“We can’t pass reform because we don’t trust the president” isn’t really a better or more convincing argument than the last one (“the president doesn’t want us to pass reform because he wants us to look bad”), and I don’t expect it to make the Republican Party look more compassionate or appealing to people who currently (correctly) think conservatives are excessively hostile to immigrants in general and Latinos specifically. But the point isn’t really to make an immediate play for the Latino vote in 2014. It’s sort of light legislative extortion: If you want reform to pass, you’d better elect a Republican president. It would almost be convincing — a pro-reform Republican president would be more likely to convince or force congressional Republicans to vote for reform than a hated Democratic president has been — if it weren’t for the fact that Congress already tried this under President George W. Bush, and it failed. Because conservatives control the GOP and most conservatives oppose granting undocumented immigrants legal status. It’s that simple.
As the ACLU notes, there is still one thing that could upend the entire immigration debate: the potential deportation of pop superstar Justin Bieber. We can only hope that mere possibility will finally spur Congress to act.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, January 20, 2014
“A Moral Issue”: Blacks, Latinos To Pay Disproportionate Price Over Blocked Medicaid Expansion
Minorities are disproportionately affected by 25 states’ decision to opt out of Medicaid expansion, a report finds.
Blacks make up 13 percent of the nation’s population but will represent 27 percent of those who will lose out on Medicaid coverage because of these states’ refusal to expand the program’s eligibility to the national standard under Obamacare, according to the 11th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. State of the Dream Report.
Latinos make up 15 percent of the population and 21 percent of the coverage gap. Whites, meanwhile, will be underrepresented—they are 65 percent of the population but have only 47 percent in the gap.
Had the Affordable Care Act been fully implemented, half of the 50 million people who were uninsured before the 2010 law was passed would gain access to coverage through the state and federal health insurance exchanges or the Medicaid expansion. Because of the 2012 Supreme Court decision that ruled states’ expansion of the program optional, 25 states have chosen not to expand Medicaid to include wage earners up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
The Medicaid coverage gap will leave out 5 million of the 10 million who would have gained coverage, exacerbating existing racial health disparities in the United States, a focus of Thursday’s report from the equal-rights group United for a Fair Economy.
Poor blacks are 7.3 times—and poor Latinos 5.7 times—as likely as poor whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods that aggravate health problems. That gap is because of minorities’ limited access to health services and good food, as well as the great stresses from crime and racism, according to the report.
The data also find that 29 percent of Latinos, 19 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Asians, and 11 percent of whites were uninsured in 2012.
Republican governors are leading many of the states that have declined to expand the entitlement program. The federal government has committed to paying 100 percent of the expansion for the first few years, but the governors say they fear the feds will go back on their word, leaving states with unsustainable budget costs.
Other GOP governors have declined to expand the program out of ideological objections to an expansion of the nation’s social safety net.
The report’s authors are frustrated by the blocked expansion.
“With no expanded Medicaid, and little or no assistance to purchase insurance in the health exchanges, the actions of these elected leaders in these states are creating a vast hole in the new health care law—a 25-state coverage gap—through which nearly 5 million low income Americans will now fall,” UFE writes.
“Access to health care is, first and foremost, a moral issue,” the report continues. “It’s a question of right and wrong. Tolerating vast inequalities in health and health care along the lines of race or class sends the disturbing message that we as a society value the lives of people in various groups differently.”
Despite the blocked Medicaid expansion, the Affordable Care Act diminishes the racial health gap by expanding programs to promote diversity in health professions; supports cultural competency training to help doctors communicate with patients of color; and establishes research initiatives to explore the cause of health inequality. It also allows people with preexisting conditions—more common in impoverished neighborhoods due to the quality of life—to gain access to coverage.
But some people who do not have health insurance will continue to live without it. Others will be ineligible because of their immigration status. Still others won’t qualify because of their employment situation. Blacks and Latinos are more likely to work in lower-wage or part-time jobs where they are less likely to receive employer-sponsored coverage.
In addition to the lack of insurance and access to affordable health services, residential segregation and the stress of living in poverty are primary factors contributing to poor health in the black and Latino communities. Those types of communities are commonly found in “food deserts,” or areas of the country where people have little access to a grocery store with fresh produce and instead are surrounded by fast food joints. The report says that half of black neighborhoods lack a full-service grocery.
Among UFE’s recommendations to permanently close the racial health gap are the continued pursuit of a single-payer, universal health insurance system, where employment and work situations would no longer play a role in access, quality, and cost of care. They also, of course, hope to see all 50 states expand Medicaid and take the lead on fully implementing and supporting the Affordable Care Act.
They also propose increasing funding to permanently fund Medicaid at the federal level, heighten funding for outreach and education efforts, and allow undocumented immigrants to take part in the system. More systemic policies—more diverse housing, improved access to services in areas of extreme poverty, raising the minimum wage—would also help address the disparity between the races in overall population health.
By: Clara Ritger, The National Journal, January 16, 2014
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