“Stop Lying!”: GOP Congressman Daniel Webster Called Out By Constituents Over His Multiple Votes To Repeal Obamacare
Things got heated for Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) during a town hall question-and-answer session in Winter Haven, Florida on Thursday. His constituents called him out over his multiple votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his misleading claims that the law’s consumer protections are being dismantled by the Obama administration.
Webster was responding to several constituents’ questions about the consequences that repealing Obamacare — which House Republicans, including Webster, have voted to do on 40 separate occasions — would have for the people in his district. Attendees asked Webster if he had any plans to replace consumer protections included in Obamacare, such as guaranteed insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing medical conditions and free preventative health screenings for seniors:
QUESTIONER: What happens to us when Obamacare is repealed? What happens to people with pre-existing conditions that can’t get health care? What happens to those of us who finally have access to health insurance for the first time in nine or ten years? What happens to us? And you want to make this local, I’ll make this local. I’m a constituent, right now I can’t get health care. I’m waiting for this [insurance marketplace] to open and I’d like to know why we keep repealing [Obamacare]?
The congressman defended his repeal votes by saying the law would drive up Americans’ health care costs by requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. He then claimed that President Barack Obama himself thinks his signature law is unworkable. As evidence, Webster implied that the law’s protections — such as its cap on consumers’ annual out-of-pocket medical costs — were being dismantled by the Obama administration. That prompted an outcry from the audience, as people booed and countered Webster’s claims.
An event official interrupted at that point, asking the audience to be respectful and give Webster a chance to speak. One audience member replied by saying, “Well, tell him to stop lying!”
Watch it, courtesy of advocacy group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and its local Florida partner Organize Now.
The Obama administration did, in fact, delay the health law’s cap on Americans’ out-of-pocket costs through their co-payments and deductibles. But as the audience correctly pointed out, it is a temporary one-year delay that only applies to certain employer-based insurance plans. The cap still applies for health policies sold through Obamacare’s statewide marketplaces beginning in October.
Webster isn’t the first GOP congressman to get flak from his constituents over his opposition to the health law. Last week, constituents confronted Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) over his many votes to repeal Obamacare and asked why he wanted to take away protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions. One grieving mother in the audience had told reporters before the town hall that her own son had died of colon cancer after being denied coverage for having a pre-existing condition.
Obamacare critics who have incessantly demonized the reform law and pushed for its repeal have been brushing up against a growing number of people that support its consumer protections. A recent poll from the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm that was ostensibly meant to show Obamacare’s unpopularity by over-surveying Republicans inadvertently showed that it is actually popular. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) admitted that a “handful of things” in the law are “probably OK” in an interview on Wednesday.
By: Sy Mukherjee, Think Progress, August 16, 2013
“Marginalized By Louder Fringe Voices”: Barely A Blip On The National Radar, The Tea Party Is Losing August
August 2009 was the month of the Tea Party town hall.
We were just eight months into the Obama presidency, and Democratic congressmen headed home for recess only to get ambushed by mobs chanting their opposition to ObamaCare. As The New York Times reported at the time, “members of Congress have been shouted down, hanged in effigy, and taunted by crowds.” The August 2009 town halls certainly created obstacles on the road to health care reform, and in many ways, gave birth to the national Tea Party movement.
Now here we are in August 2013, when some observers thought that Tea Party groups would actually derail the tenuous legislative push for immigration reform. The anti-immigration group NumbersUSA is certainly trying, posting “Town Hall Talking Points” along with lists of congressional events at which to reel them off.
But midway through August, the Tea Party is barely a blip on the national radar. What happened?
1. The anti-immigration Tea Party crowd is being out-crazied
Despite the heroic efforts of Rep. Steve “Cantaloupe Calves” King, the anti-immigration faction of the Tea Party is being crowded out by voices even farther out on the fringe.
The news out of the town halls has featured Oklahoma’s “Birther Princess” and a Republican congressman casually musing about impeachment. Outside of the town halls, Republicans are publicly feuding with each other over whether to agitate for a government shutdown and conservative talk radio hosts are expending their energies defending the wisdom of turning a Missouri rodeo into a minstrel show.
The right wing’s summer cacophony is muffling the noise of the anti-immigration forces, as well as deepening the Republican image problem among moderates and people of color.
2. The Republican leadership wants no part of Tea Party agitation
For all we know, the Tea Party fizzle may be exactly what the Republican leadership wants. According to Politico, “House Republican leaders have spoken about immigration only when asked during the August recess.” That suggests Speaker John Boehner and his allies are looking to lower the temperature, creating a climate that eventually will allow compromise to win the day.
But it’s not just the formal Republican leadership that is refusing to join the anti-immigration crusade. Tea Party favorites like Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz haven’t been leading the anti-immigration parade either, despite their opposition to the bipartisan Senate bill. The Daily Caller‘s Mickey Kaus lashed out, saying, “If Amnesty Wins, Blame Cruz,” as Cruz is siphoning off conservative grassroots energy for his fight against ObamaCare.
The best NumbersUSA could book for its Stop Amnesty tour is Rep. King. A recent rally led by King, held in the congressional district of the second-highest ranking House Republican, attracted a mere 60 people. Meanwhile 1,500 pro-immigration-reform activists held a Wednesday rally in the heavily Latino congressional district of the third-highest ranking House Republican.
3. Republican money is on the other side
The 2009 town hall outbursts were nationally organized in part by conservative groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, which were funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.
But the Kochs support immigration reform, as do Karl Rove and 100 other major Republican donors. As of June, pro-immigration groups had outspent opponents more than 3-to-1.
These three factors are connected. Because the anti-immigration squad is so poorly funded and lacking in leadership, it is vulnerable to being marginalized by louder fringe voices and better organized mainstream voices.
The louder the fringe voices become, the stronger the case mainstream Republicans can make to their leaders to accept immigration reform, on the grounds that the party can’t survive if it remains associated with birthers and bigots. At the same time, since the Tea Party can’t get the conservative grassroots riled up now, they won’t have much of a case to make to incumbent congressmen that they will face fierce primary challenges next year if they agree to a compromise with Democrats.
Score August as a big win for immigration reform.
By: Bill Scher, The Week, August 16, 2013
“Camouflaging What They’re Up To”: GOP Bets Voters Aren’t Paying Attention To Their Obamacare Obstructionism
The House GOP leadership reportedly feels confident that they’ve defused the fanatical right’s push for a government shutdown fight over defunding Obamacare. The leaders apparently think that shutting down the government is, as a general matter, a bad idea because it tends to irritate voters who want those elected to govern to actually, you know, govern.
This prompts Greg Sargent to wonder why the GOP doesn’t get in more trouble for its general refusal to govern. The short answer, I think, is that Republicans think voters aren’t paying attention.
Sargent cites a new report from NRO’s Robert Costa outlining the House GOP leaders’ plans to avoid a shutdown and continue the battle to derail Obamacare. The latest idea: Demand an Obamacare delay in exchange for raising the debt ceiling (a legislative version of “delay Obamacare or the economy gets it”). Costa quotes veteran GOP pollster David Winston as saying that the GOP wants to avoid a shutdown because people expect them to govern.
Sargent writes:
The idea appear[s] to be that staging a shutdown to force the destruction of Obamacare — rather than offering an alternative — constitutes a failure to govern. But if that is so, why is not doing everything Republicans can to sabotage the law short of pushing for a shutdown, while offering no alternative, also a failure to govern?
I would think the answer is fairly obvious: A government shutdown is a high-profile and very unusual event and one that generally involves a fairly clear villain. If there’s a shutdown, it’s because one side is being obstinate – to wit, if House Republicans refuse to pass a bill to keep the government open without simultaneously defunding an existing law, they’ll be responsible for it regardless of how many times they claim that it’s Obama’s fault because he refuses to go along with their demands.
On the other hand, everything else the GOP is doing to make sure the law doesn’t work – from refusing to work on bills which would correct its faults to refusing to accept federal funding for a Medicaid expansion (Jonathan Chait has a great rundown of these tactics) – is not as eye-catching as a shutdown and falls into a different media narrative, one of generalized congressional gridlock. If Congress can’t pass a bill which would, to take an example from Chait, fix the law so it doesn’t force many church health insurance plans to disband, it’s easy to ascribe it to generalized gridlock (a pox on both their houses!) rather than GOP obstinacy in the larger context of a refusal to cooperate with the very routine legislative work of trying to fix a law’s problems.
Political junkies understand what the GOP is up to. But the party is gambling that medium- and low-information voters who couldn’t help but notice a shutdown won’t bother themselves with the ins and outs of daily governance (or lack thereof).
It seems a safe bet in the short term, but we’ll see whether voters figure it out as they actually start to tune in and get ready to vote next year.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, August 13, 2013
“We’re Done Getting Mugged”: Hey Republicans, Obamacare Is Off The Table!
There’s an increasingly obvious problem with the efforts of GOP congressional leaders to tamp down “base” support for a “defunding Obamacare” drive linked to a continuing resolution to keep the federal government operating this fall: they’re talking about other measures to cripple Obamacare–e.g., a delay in key provisions like the individual mandate–perhaps linked to other “hostages” like the debit limit, instead of talking about using whatever leverage they have to achieve other Republican objectives.
On Wednesday I compared these leaders to a parent trying to bribe an unruly child demanding ice cream with a double scoop sometime later. But what if ice cream production has come to a halt? Can the kids be talked into gorging themselves on some other kind of sugary treat?
I don’t know, but at Salon, the exceptionally well plugged-in Brian Beutler thinks it’s time for Republicans to stop talking about ice cream:
Even in the dour days of 2011, when Dems were defeated, morose, and willing to negotiate away almost anything, major provisions of Obamacare were off the table. In 2013, almost everything is off the table. They’re done getting mugged by the GOP. Funding the government and increasing the debt limit are fundamental responsibilities of Congress, and Republicans won’t get more than a couple fig leafs for marshalling enough votes to accomplish them….
I can imagine Democrats putting something genuinely marginal to the ACA on the table. Like I said, a fig leaf. But not the individual mandate. Getting many people into the insurance exchanges, and particularly young healthy people, is crucial to the law’s success, and the mandate is the only stick they have (and it’s a pretty flimsy one) to prod them in there. Everything else is carrots. It’s conceivable to me that the inducements, and the national enrollment outreach effort, will be successful enough on their own to render the mandate ancillary in 2014. But postponing it is too big of a risk.
Republicans should know this. I think GOP leaders do know it, and for the sake of stability and a calming autumn, I sure hope they do. If they don’t, they’ll blunder into these discussions completely blind to how empty they’re about to come up. They’ll feel like they got rolled, when in reality they’ll have simply been mistaken about the terms of the negotiation. And that’s the only way I can imagine these crazed theatrics transforming into a genuine crisis.
If, of course, GOP leaders talk their firebrands out of a frontal assault on Obamacare that they really, really want to undertake on grounds that it’s more realistic to pursue delays that Democrats won’t agree to under any circumstances, then the consequences will go beyond a turbulent autumn in Washington. The GOP congressional leadership really will suffer a massive loss of grassroots conservative confidence, and you could be looking at a national party unmistakably under the heel of Ted Cruz.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 16, 2013
“Koch Brothers Thriving On Confusion”: If Obamacare Is So Horrible, Shouldn’t It Be Easy To Attack Without Making Stuff Up?
Earlier this week, Reince Priebus, commenting on the Affordable Care Act, said, “People know what Obamacare is. It’s European, socialist-style type health care.” The quote struck me as fairly hilarious because the second sentence helps debunk the first — anyone who thinks the federal U.S. system is in anyway similar to European, socialist-style type health care clearly has no idea what “Obamacare” is.
The truth is, most Americans remain confused about the basics, and the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity apparently hope to make matters much worse on purpose. Watch on YouTube
Last month, AFP invested $1 million in support of a remarkably dishonest ad campaign, hoping to mislead Americans about the health care system, and this week, the right-wing group is at it again, making a six-figure ad buy in support of a radio ad.
The problem, of course, is that the message of the ad is pure garbage. Salon called it the “stupidest anti-Obamacare campaign ever,” and given some of the advertising in recent years, that’s no small claim.
The spot features a woman’s voice that tells listeners, “Two years ago, my son Caleb began having seizures … if we can’t pick our own doctor, how do I know my family is going to get the care they need?”
In reality, there’s simply nothing in the Affordable Care Act that stops consumers from choosing their own doctor. Literally, not one provision. Under a variety of HMOs, there are limits on out-of-network physicians, but that was an American norm long before “Obamacare” came around.
For that matter, if you’re a parent of a kid with seizures, the Affordable Care Act is perhaps the best friend you’ve ever had — not only does the law protect you and your family’s coverage, but it extends protections to those with pre-existing conditions, and ends annual and lifetime caps. And since treating children with seizures can get a little pricey, that’s important.
So why are the Koch brothers saying largely the opposite? Because they hope to use deceptions to scare people. It’s as simple as that.
Greg Sargent highlighted the other most obvious misleading claim.
[P]erhaps the most revealing thing of all is the ad’s warning of public confusion about the law. To buttress the impression that the ad is a catastrophe, the ad claims: “ABC News says confusion and doubt are prognosis for Obamcare.”
And it’s true: The ABC News article in question does bear that headline. But the article actually presents this not as a sign that the law itself is flawed, but as a sign that the public remains ignorant about what’s actually in it. The article is about how many Americans, even those who stand to gain from the law, are not yet aware of its benefits.
This neatly underscores the game plan behind ads like these: spread confusion about the law — in a deliberate effort to prevent folks from learning what’s actually in it — while simultaneously citing confusion about the law as evidence that it’s a disaster in hopes that folks will give up on it.
If Obamacare were really as horrible as right-wing activists and lawmakers claim, shouldn’t it be easier to attack the law without making stuff up? Wouldn’t conservatives be eager to simply give people the truth, rather than resort to ugly demagoguery?
Careful, Kochs, your desperation is showing.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 16, 2013
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