“A Gaping Void Of Their Own Making”: No Republican Is Fit, Able, And Willing To Run The House Of Representatives
If House Speaker John Boehner secretly had no intention to resign, and was instead using the threat of retirement to teach Republican House members that they need him—not the other way around—he’s doing a masterful job. But Boehner was engaged in no such ruse, and the Republican Party is drastically worse off as a result.
After making a series of ill-considered remarks over the past week that underscored his unfitness for the job, Boehner’s heir presumptive, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, withdrew his candidacy for the Speakership at a conference meeting Thursday afternoon. McCarthy, who helped recruit a huge class of conservative freshmen ahead of the GOP’s 2010 midterm landslide, had significant support within the conference. But he lacked the trust of a few dozen conservative hardliners, some of whom comprise the House Freedom Caucus, who have grown frustrated with the existing leadership team for its strategic reluctance to use legislative deadlines—especially those governing appropriations and the debt limit—as leverage to seek substantive concessions from Democrats. As doubts about McCarthy’s candidacy grew, it became clear that conservatives would resist a clean succession and fight his election on the House floor.
This creates a void almost nobody in the House Republican conference is fit, able, or willing to fill. Minutes after McCarthy announced his decision, Representative Paul Ryan, whom most House Republicans consider the only senior member with the skill to bridge strategic divisions in the party, reiterated his absolute unwillingness to run.
“Kevin McCarthy is best person to lead the House, and so I’m disappointed in this decision,” Ryan’s statement read. “Now it is important that we, as a Conference, take time to deliberate and seek new candidates for the speakership. While I am grateful for the encouragement I’ve received, I will not be a candidate. I continue to believe I can best serve the country and this conference as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.”
The most rational outcome, and the most ironic, would be for Boehner to rescind his own resignation, and to cite the chaos that took hold after his announcement as a reminder that the reactionaries who deposed him are completely lost without his leadership. When the people who threatened to fire you beg you not to quit instead, their bluff has been called.
But Boehner’s decision to resign was almost certainly not a feint. He has vowed to serve as Speaker until a replacement is selected, but not on a permanent basis. Somebody else—a somebody we don’t yet know, and whose motives and capabilities won’t be well understood—will have to emerge to fill the power vacuum. Representative Jeb Hensarling—a wily, far-right Republican from Texas—has played footsie with the idea. As a Boehner surrogate, Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole’s name has been kicked around, too, but he’s probably been too critical of Boehner’s antagonists to easily secure the gavel. None of the plausible candidates enjoys Ryan’s unique mix of support among conservatives and trust among the party establishment. But as willing members with broad support begin to express interest, the leadership race will resume, and the election that was supposed to occur today will be rescheduled.
What’s more clear now than it was two weeks ago—and it was fairly clear back then—is how crucial it is for Boehner to use his numbered days to clear the deck for the next Speaker, and most importantly to increase the national debt limit in advance of an anticipated lapse in borrowing authority early next month. The consequences of a default on the national debt are too high to hand the debt limit to an untested speaker, or to allow Freedom Caucus members and other conservatives to hijack the issue. Boehner has committed, again, to remaining Speaker until a new one is selected. If Boehner hands responsibility for the debt limit over to this crew, instead of increasing it unconditionally while he has control, it’ll be his most reckless, cowardly, shameful moment.
Brian Beutler, Senior Editor, The New Republic, October 8, 2015
“There’s Nothing But Chaos In The Republican Ranks”: GOP Leader Shocks Colleagues, Withdraws From Speaker’s Race
Thirteen days ago, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) shocked the political world by announcing his plan to resign. This morning, Boehner’s successor followed up with a shock of his own.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has abruptly pulled out of the race for Speaker of the House on the same day that he was widely expected to be nominated for the position.
The nominating contest in the GOP conference set for Thursday afternoon in the House has been postponed.
There is a degree of irony to all of this: Benghazi didn’t bring down Hillary Clinton, but it did prevent Kevin McCarthy from becoming Speaker.
The California Republican faced two challengers for his party’s Speaker nomination, but by all appearances, he had the support he needed to go to the floor as his party’s official choice. As recently as last night, McCarthy’s bid was on track to move forward.
The problem was the looming floor vote on Oct. 29 – the opposition to his promotion from the far-right was significant and he faced a real challenge in pulling together 218 GOP votes.
Even if he prevailed, McCarthy would have immediately taken the gavel and become an even weaker Speaker than Boehner.
A week ago, the landscape seemed relatively clear. The GOP establishment had rallied behind McCarthy, and though there were some questions about the other top posts, we’d have a sense of the new Republican leadership team by this afternoon.
Now, however, there’s nothing but chaos in the Republican ranks. It’s reminiscent of late 1998, when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) resigned in disgrace, and his successor, Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-La.), also had to resign in disgrace after a sex scandal came to light.
The difference now is, the only scandal is the radicalization of Republican politics.
So what happens now? All of the leadership elections that had been scheduled for today have been postponed. The date of the new elections is unclear. McCarthy reportedly intends to stay in Congress – indeed, he apparently wants to keep his Majority Leader position – though it seems everything is unsettled right now.
The party’s establishment will have to rally behind a new standard bearer, though no one has any idea who that might be. All eyes will, of course, quickly turn to Paul Ryan, but the far-right Wisconsin congressman reiterated again this morning that he does not want to be Speaker of the House.
Because House rules allow members to elect anyone for Speaker – including those who are not current lawmakers – don’t be too surprised if GOP officials start looking to potential leaders outside of Capitol Hill.
What’s more, let’s not discount the possibility that John Boehner himself may stick around, indefinitely, while the chaos continues, House Republicans turn on each other, the chamber unravels, and Congress struggles mightily to find a suitable leader.
Finally, I heard one rumor a short while ago, which is admittedly hard to believe, about some less-conservative Republicans turning to Democrats to try to elect a “coalition-style Speaker,” in a scheme that would disempower the chamber right-wing extremists.
It’s far-fetched, to be sure, but after the last 13 days, it’s now best to expect the unexpected.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 8, 2015
“Moneyed Elites Get Richer The Old-Fashioned Way; Stealing”: Preferential Tax Treatment For The Narcissistic Money Manipulators
With the 2016 presidential campaigns in full swing, the burdens of the working middle class have taken center stage. And believe it or not, there is bipartisan support from the frontrunners on a key issue brought up over and over again. Donnie Trump is for it. Hillary Clinton is for it. Jeb Bush is for it. Bernie Sanders is for it. Even Barack Obama is for it. And the American people are overwhelmingly for it.
The “it” that’s drawing such broad support is the idea of ending a ridiculous tax loophole that was written by and for the richest, most pampered elites on Wall Street. An obscurely titled “carried interest” tax break allows billionaire hedge-fund hucksters to have their massive incomes taxed at a much lower rate than the one retail workers, Main Street businesses, carpenters, and other modest-income people must pay.
Keep that carried interest tax loophole in mind when I tell you this number: 158,000. That’s the number of kindergarten teachers in America. Their combined income in 2013 was $8 billion. Here’s another number for you: 25. That’s the number of America’s highest-paid hedge fund operators whose combined income in 2013 was $21 billion. Yes, just 25 Wall Street greedmeisters hauled off $13 billion more in pay than was received by all of our kindergarten teachers — the people we count on to launch the education of the next generation.
Which group do you think is rewarded by law with the lowest rate of income tax? Right: the uber-rich Wall Streeters! Incredibly, Congress (in its inscrutable wisdom) gives preferential tax treatment to the narcissistic money manipulators who do practically nothing for the common good. Even flamboyant celebrity narcissist Donnie Trump sees through the gross inequality of this tax scam: “The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country,” The Donald recently barked. “These are guys that shift paper around, and they get lucky. The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.” Indeed, while dodging through this loophole, they pay about half the tax rate that kindergarten teachers are assessed. In effect, Wall Street’s puppets in Congress let this tiny group of moneyed elites steal about $18 billion a year that they owe to the public treasury to finance the structure and workings of America itself.
This privileged treatment of pampered paper- and money shufflers over people who do constructive work in our society adds to America’s widening chasm of inequality. It’s so unfair and unpopular that even Donald, Hillary, Jeb, Bernie and others are saying that it has to go. So it’s bye-bye, loophole, right?
Ha — just kidding! Trump can mouth all he wants, but no animal hath such fury as a hedge funder whose special tax boondoggle is threatened. Trump had barely gotten the word “unfair” out of his puffy lips before the tax-loophole profiteers deployed battalions of lobbyists, PR flacks, and front-group operatives out to defend their precious carried-interest provision. One group, with the arcane name of Private Equity Growth Capital Council, rushed a dozen Gucci-clad lobbyists to Capitol Hill to “inform” lawmakers about the virtues of coddling Wall Street elites with tax favors.
Of course, “informing” meant flashing their checkbooks at key members of Congress. After all, even the loudest blast of political talk is cheap — and it’s the silent sound of a pen writing out a campaign check that makes Washington World keep spinning in favor of the rich.
Sure enough, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) , the two lawmakers who head Congress’ tax-writing committees, quickly announced that — the will of the people aside — there would be no repeal of the hedge-fund loophole anytime soon. The inequality that is presently ripping our society apart is not the result of some incomprehensible force of nature, but the direct result of collusion between financial and political elites to rig the system for the enrichment of the few — i.e., themselves — and the impoverishment of the many. There’s a word for those elites: thieves.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, September 30, 2015
“Expand Medicare, You Damn Idiots”: On Its Anniversary, We’re Going To Start Hearing The Usual Attacks On Medicare
Every so often—okay, not very often actually, but more often than I hunt, or “take” (what a verb!), lions—I feel a little wistful about the Republican Party we all once knew. And that feeling is never stronger than when I reflect on the history of Medicare and Medicaid, which I spent part of yesterday doing, what with it being the 50th anniversary of the passage of the bill and all.
Lyndon Johnson went into the 1964 election knowing that he wanted to pass a universal health-care bill. He figured he couldn’t get full-bore socialized medicine, so he settled on socialized medicine for old people, reckoning that was a winner. Immediately upon winning election, he directed aides to get cracking, saying as I recall something to the effect that he was going to lose a little political capital every day, so the sooner the better.
It was big and messy and complicated, just like Obamacare, and frankly, Johnson lied about the cost, back in those pre-Congressional Budget Office days. But it passed, and it passed in a way that wasn’t just like Obamacare at all. Thirteen Republican senators voted for it, and 17 against; and in the House, 70 Republicans supported it, while 68 voted no. In other words, almost exactly half of all voting congressional Republicans, 83 out of 168, voted for the program that Ronald Reagan at the time was warning heralded the arrival of Marxism on our shores.
Pretty different GOP, eh? Well, now check out the numbers from 1983. This was, to be sure, more of a compromise piece of legislation. The Social Security Trust fund was in trouble at the time, so the 1983 amendments raised the payroll tax while increasing the retirement age to 67 for those born in 1960 or after, with the new revenue going to Medicare and Social Security. And of course you had a Republican president then, and not just any Republican president; so if Ronald Reagan was okay with a tax increase, they were, too. It passed both chambers overwhelmingly; House Republicans backed the 1983 changes 97-69, while Republican senators supported them by 47-6. (PDF)
It’s worth recalling all this on the anniversary of this great law because soon enough, we’re going to start hearing the usual attacks on Medicare. Wait, did I say soon enough? We already are! And not from the wingnut caucus. It was the, uh, moderate, Jeb Bush, who said just last week that Medicare is “an actuarially unsound system” and that “we need to figure out a way to phase out this program.”
All right. Now I’ll grant that times have changed since 1965 and 1983, and that we’re going to see all those Baby Boomers retire in the coming years. But let’s be clear about a central fact. The Medicare Trust Fund is not in big trouble right now. A few years ago, it was; there were desperate predictions that it was going to go broke in five years, three. I remember 2017 being mentioned as the ominous year, and 2017 is pretty close.
But that has changed. Now, the experts say Medicare is stable until 2030. Now 2030 isn’t infinity and beyond, but it’s not tomorrow either. The crisis has eased, and it has eased considerably.
What changed? Some of the reasons are just too wonky for me to go into with you in any detail, having to do with things like new strategies to reduce preventable hospital admissions. But another seems to be…wait for it…Obamacare. Ever since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, per-enrollee Medicare costs have decreased a little and are rising more slowly than overall health-care costs, and somehow or another the Medicare trustees have added 13 years to the program’s solvency.
In fact, let’s go mildly wonky here. This is worth knowing. Before the ACA passed, projections of Medicare bankruptcy were pegged, as noted, at 2017. Then shortly after the ACA became law, that was pushed to 2024. Then in 2013, it was nudged to 2026. Now it’s at 2030. See a pattern here? The main reason is simple. Overall spending is lower. You might remember Mitt Romney’s famous attacks on Obama for cutting $716 billion from Medicare, which took some cheek given that a) Republicans’ own projected cuts under Paul Ryan’s budget were far more severe and b) Ryan and other Republicans used the same budgetary assumptions Obama used for all their Medicare “reform” plans.
Just remember all this, will you, as you hear more from the Republicans on this topic. They are all going to say: Medicare is a disaster; it’s broke; Obamacare has made it far worse. They’ll say things that one can hardly believe can be said by a person we’re allegedly supposed to be taking seriously, like Marco Rubio’s amazing comment that Social Security and Medicare “weakened us as a people.”
None of what they say will be true. But they’ll say it and say it, and the conservative media will repeat it and repeat it, and we’ll be in that “no, the sky is green and the grass is blue” territory that we know so well. And of course, their “reform” plans are, aside from being just mean, a total fantasy. The way Medicare works is so complicated and so embedded into our national life that the disruptions to doctors and hospitals and service providers of all kinds would be horrific. Only rich people, who don’t really need Medicare, and ideologues, who despise it, think you can do this. They might as well propose rerouting every single Interstate highway in America.
But most of all, it doesn’t need changing. Or actually it does, but in the direction of being expanded, as Bernie Sanders says. That’s probably not in the cards for the foreseeable future, although it will certainly come one day, perhaps by the time of Medicare’s own 65th birthday, when the people will surely be due for another “weakening.”
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, July 31, 2015
“Zombies Against Medicare”: The Right Has Never Abandoned Its Dream Of Killing The Program
Medicare turns 50 this week, and it has been a very good half-century. Before the program went into effect, Ronald Reagan warned that it would destroy American freedom; it didn’t, as far as anyone can tell. What it did do was provide a huge improvement in financial security for seniors and their families, and in many cases it has literally been a lifesaver as well.
But the right has never abandoned its dream of killing the program. So it’s really no surprise that Jeb Bush recently declared that while he wants to let those already on Medicare keep their benefits, “We need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others.”
What is somewhat surprising, however, is the argument he chose to use, which might have sounded plausible five years ago, but now looks completely out of touch. In this, as in other spheres, Mr. Bush often seems like a Rip Van Winkle who slept through everything that has happened since he left the governor’s office — after all, he’s still boasting about Florida’s housing-bubble boom.
Actually, before I get to Mr. Bush’s argument, I guess I need to acknowledge that a Bush spokesman claims that the candidate wasn’t actually calling for an end to Medicare, he was just talking about things like raising the age of eligibility. There are two things to say about this claim. First, it’s clearly false: in context, Mr. Bush was obviously talking about converting Medicare into a voucher system, along the lines proposed by Paul Ryan.
And second, while raising the Medicare age has long been a favorite idea of Washington’s Very Serious People, a couple of years ago the Congressional Budget Office did a careful study and discovered that it would hardly save any money. That is, at this point raising the Medicare age is a zombie idea, which should have been killed by analysis and evidence, but is still out there eating some people’s brains.
But then, Mr. Bush’s real argument, as opposed to his campaign’s lame attempt at a rewrite, is just a bigger zombie.
The real reason conservatives want to do away with Medicare has always been political: It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful. But when they make their case to the public they usually shy away from making their real case, and have even, incredibly, sometimes posed as the program’s defenders against liberals and their death panels.
What Medicare’s would-be killers usually argue, instead, is that the program as we know it is unaffordable — that we must destroy the system in order to save it, that, as Mr. Bush put it, we must “move to a new system that allows [seniors] to have something — because they’re not going to have anything.” And the new system they usually advocate is, as I said, vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance.
The underlying premise here is that Medicare as we know it is incapable of controlling costs, that only the only way to keep health care affordable going forward is to rely on the magic of privatization.
Now, this was always a dubious claim. It’s true that for most of Medicare’s history its spending has grown faster than the economy as a whole — but this is true of health spending in general. In fact, Medicare costs per beneficiary have consistently grown more slowly than private insurance premiums, suggesting that Medicare is, if anything, better than private insurers at cost control. Furthermore, other wealthy countries with government-provided health insurance spend much less than we do, again suggesting that Medicare-type programs can indeed control costs.
Still, conservatives scoffed at the cost-control measures included in the Affordable Care Act, insisting that nothing short of privatization would work.
And then a funny thing happened: the act’s passage was immediately followed by an unprecedented pause in Medicare cost growth. Indeed, Medicare spending keeps coming in ever further below expectations, to an extent that has revolutionized our views about the sustainability of the program and of government spending as a whole.
Right now is, in other words, a very odd time to be going on about the impossibility of preserving Medicare, a program whose finances will be strained by an aging population but no longer look disastrous. One can only guess that Mr. Bush is unaware of all this, that he’s living inside the conservative information bubble, whose impervious shield blocks all positive news about health reform.
Meanwhile, what the rest of us need to know is that Medicare at 50 still looks very good. It needs to keep working on costs, it will need some additional resources, but it looks eminently sustainable. The only real threat it faces is that of attack by right-wing zombies.
By: Paul Waldman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, July 27, 2015
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