“And Then There Were 40”: The Madness Of The GOP Is The Central Issue Of Our Time
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters yesterday that President Obama and congressional Democrats are “in denial.”
Yeah, denial’s just awful, isn’t it?
Capping a legislative work period more noted for what it failed to pass than for what it completed, the House voted for the 40th time on Friday to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care reform law before heading home for a five week recess.
The GOP-controlled House voted to approve a measure to prevent the IRS from enforcing “Obamacare” in a 232-185 vote.
The legislation faces virtually no chance of advancing in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.
How many House Republicans voted for repeal? All of them who were on the Hill this morning.
If we include the Senate, the total number of votes held by congressional Republicans to repeal all or part of the federal health care law is 68.
We’re talking about a group of folks who are very slow learners.
At this point, what more can be said about such ridiculous congressional antics? Perhaps just this: with each one of these repeal votes, Republicans reinforce the impression that they’re not a serious governing party. On the contrary, they’re becoming rather pathetic.
Paul Krugman noted in passing last night, “[N]either you nor I should forget that the madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time.” This wasn’t in response to health care, but it might as well have been.
Whether GOP leaders are reluctant to do unglamorous work or not, Congress has an enormous amount of work it should be doing right now. This is especially true in the House, where lawmakers are supposed to be passing appropriations bills, working on the farm bill, negotiating on a budget, and if we’re really lucky, avoiding a debt-ceiling crisis in the fall.
Indeed, in the not-too-distant past, this was one of the more productive weeks of the year on Capitol Hill — before a four-week break, lawmakers traditionally scrambled to meet deadlines and get some work done so they’d have something to boast about during the August recess.
But that was before Republicans decided governing was for saps. Why get real work done when there are talking points to repeat, partisan stunts to execute, and “message votes” to push?
GOP lawmakers have already wasted months championing culture-war bills they know can’t pass and obsessing over discredited “scandals,” so there’s something oddly fitting about voting 40 times to take away Americans health care benefits, not because they expect their legislation to pass, but because vanity exercises like these make Republicans feel warm and fuzzy.
It’s as if Americans elected children to control half of the legislative branch of government.
Indeed, it’s been interesting of late to see President Obama give a series of speeches on the economy, and in nearly all of them, he takes time to mock congressional Republicans for these votes. Every time, the audience laughs — because in a way, this really is funny.
When lawmakers make fools of themselves, I suppose Americans should laugh at them.
It’s a shame Republicans aren’t in on the joke.
Update: Americans United for Change released a new video this afternoon, driving home exactly what the House GOP voted for (all 40 times).
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 2, 2013
“Kill The Law, Kill The Patient”: The Most Insane Conservative Anti-Obamacare Gambit Ever
In a last-ditch effort to stop Obamacare, Tea Party groups are trying to sabotage the healthcare law in a way that could leave young people without coverage and increase insurance premiums for everyone else. It assumes that the end of “repealing Obamacare” justifies the means of potentially years of worse health.
The gambit, as explained by Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post, is to convince young people to eschew the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges and the subsidies they offer in order to destabilize the insurance risk pools. And now the leader of the effort is talking to Salon about the idea.
First, some background. The “plan,” such as it is, works like this: Young people tend to be healthier and thus cheaper to insure, so they essentially subsidize the cost of older and sick people. If enough young people don’t sign up, and the pool is mostly older and sick people, costs will skyrocket. A price “death spiral” is health policy experts’ biggest fear with the law, but it’s exactly what the conservative groups want to artificially induce, thus dooming the law.
To that end, conservatives are trying to rally young people to skip the healthcare exchange and pay the fine for violating the individual mandate to have health insurance. They’re making their case with GIFs, Op-Eds and a campaign to burn Obamacare draft cards (which don’t actually exist, but can be downloaded from FreedomWorks’ website for later incineration). Americans for Prosperity is even considering setting up kiosks at Universal Fighting Championship matches and college football games to tell people not to enroll.
But, if this gambit is successful, wouldn’t that lead to millions of young people living without health insurance, and older and sick people paying higher health insurance premiums? And since Obama will never repeal his signature law, we’re talking about at least three years of intentionally inflicted misery, all for a shot at repealing Obamacare sometime in the future and replacing it with something that doesn’t even exist yet. What about the human toll?
We asked Dean Clancy, the vice president of FreedomWorks who is spearheading the effort. “Yes, we would like to hasten the collapse of the exchanges, but the purpose is not to drive up anybody’s insurance. The purpose is to get this law defunded or delayed so we can get to a patient-centered system,” Clancy said in a telephone conversation Thursday evening. “Without young people, Obamacare can’t work.”
Regardless of intention, wouldn’t it have the effect of driving up premiums? “I would not say it will drive up premiums for older Americans, I would say it will allow premiums to rise,” he said. “It would allow premiums to rise faster than they otherwise would if everybody bought the overpriced coverage, including the younger, healthier people.”
And what about young people who currently lack insurance – 90 percent of whom will qualify for subsidies in the Obamacare exchanges — what should they do? “You can get coverage outside the exchanges,” Clancy said, pointing to catastrophic care plans, healthcare savings accounts, or even Medicaid.
Even without the subsidies, which are only available through the exchanges, Clancy said, it would still be cheaper for young people to pay the fine and go their own way. “We encourage people to go for a health savings account with a high deductible policy, and to pay cash for repeat medical expenses. It’s a great way to save money and helps the system be more efficient,” he said. Plus, there’s always free-riding: “And they have to take you when you get sick, that’ll be in the law now.”
What if you get in a car accident or something and don’t have time to sign up for insurance? A pause as he consulted with the communications director, who was also on the call. “In that case, you may incur some costs,” Clancy acknowledged. “You may have to deal with, as people do today who don’t have funds available, paying it back in installments, or uncompensated care, or you can sign up for Medicaid.” In other words, you’re on your own. Most uninsured people can’t afford medical bills.
“Just to be clear, we’re telling people: ‘Do what you think is best for you,’” he added. “But understand that if Obamacare continues, you’re going to have to pay more and more to get less and less.”
For Judy Feder, a prominent health policy expert at Georgetown who supports the health reform law, this approach is “crazy.” “It’s not even killing the patient to save the patient — it would stick with killing the patient. They just want to kill the law, which doesn’t save anybody,” she said.
It’s hard to overstate how nihilistic this plan is. If the scheme succeeds — which it will not, since more than enough young people are saying they’ll purchase insurance through the exchange — not only would some people lack good health coverage they’d otherwise be entitled to, but costs would be higher on everyone else. “It is as outrageous as you say it is,” Feder confirmed.
This is basically the “Cloward–Piven strategy” Glenn Beck always rants about, but 1) applied to healthcare instead of the economy, and 2) real.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 2, 2013
“A One Trick Pony”: The Tea Party’s Unhealthy Obsession
Bipartisanship is a four letter word to the tea party zealots in Congress.
This week, Congressional Republicans dismissed President Obama’s proposal for corporate tax cuts out of hand. Last year, the president proposed the American Jobs Act, which House Republicans didn’t even consider despite the inclusion of tax cuts for businesses that hired new employees.
The president generously proposes and the House GOP caucus automatically disposes. Corporate tax cuts are the holy grail of the Republican Party, so the GOP’s resistance to the president’s proposals makes me think that House Republicans would automatically reject any proposal from the White House. I’m sure that Republicans would even find a reason to reject a plan initiated by Obama to build a memorial on the capital mall dedicated to conservative hero Ronald Reagan.
The president has given up on congressional Republicans, but he hasn’t given up on the American people.
In a series of speeches and proposals, Obama has discussed the urgent need to invest in projects that will put Americans back to work and rebuild our sagging infrastructure of bridges, water systems and transportation. The president has also explicitly denounced the politics of austerity as a road to prosperity. The sequester budget cuts have already slowed the economic recovery and the additional cuts that the tea party wants will reverse the fragile economic recovery.
The president has said that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s package of budget cuts, his so called Path to Prosperity, is really the path to austerity, which runs directly into the road of recession. Besides austerity, the only thing that congressional Republicans have to offer is the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which would, in turn, repeal the new restrictions against predatory health insurance company rip offs.
The public worries about jobs and the economy. Congressional Republicans have not only rejected the president’s constructive economic proposals, but they have an unhealthy obsession with destroying the progress created with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans have voted 38 times to repeal the new health care reform law. Now, Tea Party zealots like Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, want to force repeal of the law with the threat of a government shutdown.
The GOP would be a lot better off if it would bet the farm on a key economic issue. Playing chicken with a government shutdown to repeal Obamacare is a risky wager. Voting 38 times against the health care law makes it seem like the GOP is a one trick pony racing in the wrong direction.
The president is also trying to move his own party away from the politics of austerity. Democrats can’t beat Republicans in a battle of green eyeshades. Eyeshades have their uses, but mostly they limit vision.
The Grand Old Party’s obsession with the Affordable Care Act not only ignores the public concern about the economy, but it has created an internal Republic party crisis. This week, Cruz laid into Republicans who don’t want to play a game of chicken with ACA repeal and a government shutdown. The battle between the Tea Party radicals and establishment Republicans will be prime time TV for the next few months.
Gridlock has the economy in a headlock. Hopefully President Obama can use his bully pulpit to move Republicans off the dime.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, August 1, 2013
“Tea Party Radiation Fallout”: Damned If He Does, Damned If He Doesn’t, Mitch McConnell Has An Obamacare Problem
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has a major dilemma on his hands.
Throughout the past week, members of the Senate’s right wing — led by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — have been publicly lobbying their Republican colleagues to block the passage of any continuing resolution funding the federal government, unless it defunds the Affordable Care Act. The plan is functionally dead in the water — several reliable Obamacare opponents in the Senate have already derided the plan’s obvious flaws (first and foremost among them, that shutting down the government wouldn’t actually halt the Affordable Care Act’s implementation) — but it remains a politically potent symbol in Republican politics.
“There is a powerful, defeatist approach among Republicans in Washington,” Senator Cruz pointedly said on Tuesday. “I think they’re beaten down and they’re convinced that we can’t give a fight, and they’re terrified.”
The remarks were a thinly veiled shot at McConnell, who has thus far refused to take a position on the government shutdown plan.
“We’ve had a lot of internal discussions about the way forward this fall in both the continuing resolution and, ultimately, the debt ceiling, and those discussions continue,” McConnell said on Tuesday. “There’s no particular announcement at this point.”
McConnell may have to make a decision sooner rather than later, however. Matt Bevin, the Tea Party-backed businessman who is challenging McConnell for the Republican nomination in Kentucky’s 2014 Senate election, is seizing on McConnell’s reticence in an effort to outflank the four-term incumbent from the right.
“Mitch McConnell’s rhetoric on defeating Obamacare is nothing but empty promises,” Bevin said in a statement released Wednesday. “Obamacare is a disaster and if we can’t repeal it, we have a responsibility to the American people to defund it.”
“I challenge Mitch McConnell to join me in signing the pledge to defund Obamacare,” he continued. “Instead of playing political games, it’s time to stand up for the people of Kentucky.”
McConnell currently holds a massive lead over the largely-undefined Bevin, but if Bevin continues to attract right-wing support, the race could tighten significantly. If McConnell decides that the risk of shutting down the government for no tangible gain outweighs the risk of prolonged public attack from Tea Party favorites such as Cruz and Lee, then he could find himself very vulnerable in a Republican primary. Although Bevin remains an extreme long shot to steal the nomination from McConnell, a closely-contested primary could do serious damage to McConnell’s chances in the general election.
If McConnell does sign on to the Lee plan, however, it could cause him an even bigger headache. His likely Democratic opponent in 2014 — Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes — is already tailoring her campaign to paint McConnell as a “guardian of gridlock” who exemplifies the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. If McConnell agrees to attempt to shut down the government in a futile effort to repeal Obamacare, that image will be magnified — giving Grimes, who currently polls within striking distance of McConnell — a great political opportunity. Furthermore, due to McConnell’s status as the leader of the Senate Republicans, taking the extremist position could impact all the Republican senators on the ballot in 2014.
Whatever McConnell decides, it will not have a serious impact on the future of the Affordable Care Act. But it will have major ramifications in McConnell’s re-election battle — and could even decide which party ends up in control of the Senate.
By: Henry Decker, U. S. News and World Report, July 31, 2013
“The Character Of The Caucus”: Thanks To Republican Intrasigence, It’s All About 2016 Now
It wasn’t the House Republicans’ refusal to take up the president’s jobs plan before the last election. Or their reckless games with the debt ceiling when Paul Ryan’s budget called for trillions in fresh debt itself. Or House intransigence when it comes to the Senate’s bipartisan immigration fix. Or even its recent call to nix high, common school standards.
Not that these steps weren’t awful. But somehow they could be put down to “normal” petty politics. The “out” party never wants the jobs picture to improve before an election. The debt ceiling is one of a handful of “forcing devices” that pols of all stripes seize on in a town where nothing really has to happen. One can argue that immigration reform isn’t as urgent as, say, jobs. And stoking phony fears of a federal school takeover is the oldest slander in the book (never mind that these “common core” standards were adopted by states voluntarily, and that the world’s top-performing school systems all have something like them).
No, what finally made me lose it was House Republicans’ warped obsession with Obamacare. This fixation showcases so many noxious traits simultaneously that it reveals the ultimate character of the caucus.
At bottom, Obamacare is a moral assertion that it is wrong when a wealthy nation has 50 million people without health insurance, when medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy for families and when millions of luckless souls are unable to get coverage because they have preexisting conditions. The House GOP today says these are not real problems.
Obamacare addressed these problems with precisely the mechanism that conservative thinkers and Republican policymakers favored (subsidies to buy insurance from competing private carriers with a requirement that everyone be in the insurance pool). Yet the House GOP effectively has said: Even if you adopt the approach our party favors for a problem we used to say was real — a problem that our presidential nominee addressed successfully in his state — we still can’t be with you. We have to damn you as un-American. We have to deceive the public about your aims and methods. We have to do everything in our power to stop you from using our preferred approach to bring a measure of security to the middle class.
It’s the most perverse, irredeemable bait-and-switch since Lucy pulled the football away from Charlie Brown. Even Lucy didn’t do it 39 times.
I’ve long been a critic of the House GOP. But something in their poisonous Obamacare stance has made me snap. It’s one thing to think you can’t do business with these people. It’s another to realize these people aren’t operating in the same moral and economic universe.
So here we are. The only question for those seeking American renewal is what will break this gridlock. The only certain answer is that the president’s speech Wednesday will not. Obama is calling for an economy built from the “middle out” (hats off to progressive activists Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu, who pushed this smart messaging so relentlessly for two years that it’s become the official Democratic creed).
By: Matt Miller, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 24, 2013
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