“Just Don’t Say It Out Loud”: Every Member Of Congress Who Gets Coverage Through An Exchange Will Be Participating In Obamacare
In the very near future, congressional Republicans have some important decisions to make when it comes to health care policy. Will they threaten a government shutdown over funding for the Affordable Care Act? Will they use the issue as the basis for a debt-ceiling crisis?
And perhaps more directly, will they personally sign up for subsidized insurance through an exchange created by the health care law?
As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, the right is heavily invested in the idea that members of Congress are “exempt” from “Obamacare.” The claim is plainly untrue — thanks to a scheme Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) stumbled into, lawmakers will give up their current health care coverage and get coverage through a marketplace where insurers compete for their business.
There are, however, some complications — these exchanges were designed for the uninsured and small-business owners looking to cover their employees, not wealthy federal lawmakers who already have perfectly good coverage. It’s why the Obama administration had to work out a fix for members of Congress and their aides a few weeks ago.
But for Republicans this creates yet another problem: if they sign up for coverage, doesn’t that mean they’re necessarily participating in the health care system they claim to hate? As far-right groups urge the uninsured to stay that way on purpose by staying out of the exchange, won’t those same lobbying efforts apply to lawmakers themselves?
If conservatives genuinely believe that Obamacare is a threat to the country they will extend their campaigns to convince people to skip Obamacare from nameless powerless young people to elected officials and their aides. And if those members and aides have the courage of their convictions they’ll follow suit.
To the extent that none of this happens — that conservative groups keep quiet, and conservative members and aides enroll in the exchanges — it’ll expose the right’s anti-Obamacare activism as a shallow enterprise undertaken by people who are happy to see millions go without insurance, so long as it’s not themselves or their families.
So, what are far-right lawmakers going to do? I’m glad you asked.
As Igor Volsky reported, so far, two current members are prepared to bypass the system on purpose.
[North Carolina Republican Robert Pittenger has] voluntarily withdrawn from health coverage altogether. [North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows] added that his staff has also voluntarily declined the subsidies. And while most members of Congress may be able to afford to forfeit the government contribution — Meadows has a net worth between $1,674,034 to $12,017,998 [and] Pittenger is worth between $18,615,005 to $48,551,997.
Two GOP members out of 233 in the House obviously isn’t a large number, but don’t be surprised if this number grows as right-wing lobbying becomes more intense.
Also note, a lot of these folks have convenient outs — if they have spouses with employer-based coverage of their own, members and staffers can get insurance anyway. For that matter, if you’re a multi-millionaire lawmaker, you can afford to get coverage without a subsidy anyway.
But the underlying point remains the same: every member of Congress, in both parties, who gets coverage in the coming months through an insurance exchange will be participating in “Obamacare,” even conservatives who will be reluctant to say so out loud.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 26, 2013
“It’s Not Good For Republicans”: This Is How Not To Defend Voter Suppression In North Carolina
Two weeks after North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) approved the most sweeping voter-suppression law seen in the United States in a generation, the political world is taking note of the disaster in growing numbers. Last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned the state’s new voting restrictions, and yesterday, pundit Cokie Roberts said, “[W]hat’s going on about voting rights is downright evil.”
But don’t worry, the Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent leader of the religious right movement for decades, has a new defense. In a WorldNetDaily column, the right-wing activist offered an unexpected explanation of why some of North Carolina’s new restrictions are worthwhile.
The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama’s national field director admitted, shortly before last year’s election, that “early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election.”
The Obama technocrats have developed an efficient system of identifying prospective Obama voters and then nagging them (some might say harassing them) until they actually vote. It may take several days to accomplish this, so early voting is an essential component of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaign.
Have you ever heard a political figure accidentally read stage direction, unaware that it’s not supposed to be repeated out loud? This is what Schlafly’s published column reminds me of.
For North Carolina Republicans, the state’s new voter-suppression measures are ostensibly legitimate — GOP officials are simply worried about non-existent fraud. The response from Democrats and voting-rights advocates is multi-faceted, but emphasizes that some of these measures, including restrictions on early voting, have nothing whatsoever to do with fraud prevention and everything to do with a partisan agenda.
And then there’s Phyllis Schlafly, writing a piece for publication effectively saying Democrats are entirely right — North Carolina had to dramatically cut early voting because it’s not good for Republicans.
Remember, Schlafly’s piece wasn’t intended as criticism; this is her defense of voter suppression in North Carolina. Proponents of voting rights are arguing, “This is a blatantly partisan scheme intended to rig elections,” to which Schlafly is effectively responding, “I know, isn’t it great?”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 26, 2013
“The Impeachniks Roar”: Like Raged Unhinged Primates Shrieking And Pounding Their Chests
There have been only two presidential impeachments in the 224 years since George Washington became America’s first president. Both—of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and of Bill Clinton in 1998—failed to get the required two-thirds majority in the Senate. And Richard Nixon, of course, was about to be impeached in 1974 when he chose to resign instead; unlike the other two, there would have been nothing partisan about Nixon’s impeachment and he almost certainly would have been convicted. There are always some partisans of the party out of power who would like to impeach the president, simply because it’s the only way to get rid of him if you can’t beat him at the polls. But a presidency without too much actual criminality shouldn’t produce too many such armchair prosecutors. Or so you’d think.
But these are no ordinary times, and the Republican thirst for impeaching Barack Obama (or “Barack Hussein Obama,” as impeachniks inevitably call him) has gone mainstream, as evidenced by the fact that The New York Times featured a story about it over the weekend. The pattern is becoming familiar: at a town hall meeting, a member of the House or Senate is confronted by a constituent practically quivering with anger and hatred at the President. The constituent demands to know why impeachment hasn’t happened yet. The Republican politician nods sympathetically, then explains that though he’d like nothing more than to see Obama driven from office, it would require a vote of the House and then a trial and conviction vote in the Senate, and that just isn’t going to happen.
As Steve Benen said, “I remember the good old days—back in 2011—when unhinged conservative Republicans in Congress used to come up with pretenses of high crimes when talking up presidential impeachment. Lately, they don’t even bother. Obama is the president; he’s a Democrat; the right doesn’t like him; ergo impeachment is a credible option. QED.” Take, for instance, Representative Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan. When the ritual question came to him, Bentivolio said it would be “a dream come true” for him to submit a resolution to impeach Obama. But he lamented the fact that “Until we have evidence, you’re going to become a laughingstock if you’ve submitted the bill to impeach the president.” I mean, come on—evidence? What is this, Judge Judy or something? No constitutional scholar he, the congressman only realized this bit about “evidence” after doing some careful research. “I’ve had lawyers come in—and these are lawyers, PhD.s in history, and I said, ‘Tell me how I can impeach the president of the United States.’ [They replied,] ‘What evidence do you have?'” The nerve!
Meanwhile, out in the ideological hinterlands, the rabble are getting roused. People are putting “Impeach Obama” signs on overpasses! There’s a Facebook page! “Movement To Impeach Obama Snowballing” shouts World Net Daily (along with a plea to “Visit WND’s online Impeachment Store to see all the products related to ousting Obama”).
To be sure, it isn’t that there aren’t plenty of Republicans who reject impeachment out of hand, because there are. But they’re regarded by many in the base as contemptible quislings; within the party, the moderate middle position is now occupied by those who wouldn’t mind impeaching Obama, but realize that the practical hurdles are too difficult to overcome. And yes, there were liberals who wanted to impeach George W. Bush back in the day, but they were almost all fringe characters. They weren’t the people making our laws. As always, on the right the extremism goes much farther up the tree.
There will come a point—around October of 2016, I’m guessing—where this insanity will just peter out. But between now and then it could well grow more intense, with more and more members of Congress (not to mention 2016 presidential candidates) forced to take a position of sympathy toward impeaching Obama. For the base, disappointment long ago turned to anger, which is now turning to a kind of guttural explosion of rage. Like early primates who find that all the shrieking and pounding of chests has failed to drive off the interlopers who had the temerity to walk right in and think they could coexist in this part of the forest, they’re left with nothing to do but to fling their shit in the general direction of those they hate and fear. But hey, America is “polarized” and both sides are equally to blame, right?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 26, 2013
“Threatened By The Armageddon Caucus”: GOP Leaders Have Given Right-Wing Members Veto Power That Impedes Governing
Are you ready for the Big Magilla of American politics? This fall, every important domestic issue could crash into every other: health-care reform, autopilot budget cuts, a government shutdown, even a default on the national debt.
If I were betting, I’d wager that we will somehow avoid a total meltdown. House Speaker John Boehner seems desperate to get around his party’s Armageddon Caucus.
But after three years of congressional dysfunction brought on by the rise of a radicalized brand of conservatism, it’s time to call the core questions:
Will our ability to govern ourselves be held perpetually hostage to an ideology that casts government as little more than dead weight in American life? And will a small minority in Congress be allowed to grind decision-making to a halt?
Congress is supposed to be the venue in which we Americans work our way past divisions that are inevitable in a large and diverse democracy. Yet for some time, Republican congressional leaders have given the most right-wing members of the House and Senate a veto power that impedes compromise, and thus governing itself.
On the few occasions when the far-right veto was lifted, Congress got things done, courtesy of a middle-ground majority that included most Democrats and the more moderately conservative Republicans. That’s how Congress passed the modest tax increases on the well-off that have helped reduce the deficit, as well as the Violence Against Women Act and assistance for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
All these actions had something in common: They were premised on the belief that government can take practical steps to make American life better.
This idea is dismissed by those ready to shut down the government or to use the debt ceiling as a way of forcing the repeal or delay of the Affordable Care Act and passing more draconian spending reductions. It needs to be made very clear that these radical Republicans are operating well outside their party’s own constructive traditions.
Before their 2010 election victory, Republicans had never been willing to use the threat of default to achieve their goals. The GOP tried a government shutdown back in the mid-1990s, but it was a political disaster. Experienced Republicans are trying to steer their party away from the brink, the very place where politicians such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and a group of fourscore or so House members want it to go.
Particularly instructive is the effort to repeal health-care reform. The very fact that everyone now accepts the term “Obamacare” to refer to a measure designed to get health insurance to many more Americans is a sign of how stupidly partisan we have become. We never described Medicare as “Johnsoncare.” We didn’t label Social Security “FDRsecurity.”
Tying the whole thing to Obama disguises the fact that most of the major provisions of the law he fought for had their origins among conservatives and Republicans.
The health-care exchanges to facilitate the purchase of private insurance were based on a Heritage Foundation proposal, first brought to fruition in Massachusetts by a Republican governor named Mitt Romney. Subsidizing private premiums was always a Republican alternative to extending Medicare to cover everyone, the remedy preferred by many liberals.
Conservatives even once favored the individual mandate to buy insurance, as MSNBC columnist Tim Noah pointed out. “Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seatbelts for their own protection,” the Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler said back in 1989. “Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance.” Since all of us will use health care at some point, Butler argued reasonably, it makes sense to have us all in the insurance pool.
But that was then. The right wing’s recent rejection of a significant government role in ending the scandal of “a health-care system that does not even come close to being comprehensive and fails to reach far too many” — the words were spoken 24 years ago by the late Sen. John Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican — tells us why Congress no longer works.
The GOP has gone from endorsing market-based government solutions to problems the private sector can’t solve — i.e, Obamacare — to believing that no solution involving expanded government can possibly be good for the country.
Ask yourself: If conservatives still believed in what both left and right once saw as a normal approach to government, would they speak so cavalierly about shutting it down or risking its credit? This is what’s at stake in the Big Magilla.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 25, 2013
“An American ‘Hyphenated’ Idiot”: Bobby Jindal Blames Racial Inequality On Minorities Being Too Proud Of Their Heritages
One day after thousands rallied at the March on Washington 50th anniversary demonstration, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) pitched the Republican civil rights vision…by criticizing minorities for not assimilating into American culture.
In a Politico op-ed Sunday, Jindal lamented that minorities place “undue emphasis” on heritage, and urged Americans to resist “the politically correct trend of changing the melting pot into a salad bowl” comprised of proudly ethnic identities.
Jindal insisted that, “while racism still rears its ugly head from time to time” since Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I have a dream” speech, the major race problem facing modern America is that minorities are too focused on their “separateness”:
Yet we still place far too much emphasis on our “separateness,” our heritage, ethnic background, skin color, etc. We live in the age of hyphenated Americans: Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Indian-Americans, and Native Americans, to name just a few.
Here’s an idea: How about just “Americans?” That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing undue emphasis on our “separateness” is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot.
There is nothing wrong with people being proud of their different heritages. We have a long tradition of folks from all different backgrounds incorporating their traditions into the American experience, but we must resist the politically correct trend of changing the melting pot into a salad bowl. E pluribus Unum.
If he had done even cursory research before writing his editorial, Jindal may have discovered some systemic inequities preventing minorities from assimilating to his satisfaction. Though Jindal is right that Americans have made “significant progress” since the March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom, the national black unemployment rate has steadily remained double the white unemployment rate for the past 60 years.
In urban areas like Chicago, the poverty rate and median income for black families is also about the same as it was in 1963.
Even segregation, once vanquished by the civil rights movement, is rebounding aggressively. Since 2001, urban schools and neighborhoods have become increasingly re-segregated through lax integration enforcement and so-called “white flight.” Research shows this resegregation intensifies poverty and violence in minority neighborhoods, trapping black families in an endless cycle. Jindal himself has helped this trend along in New Orleans with his school privatization plan, which has worsened racial inequality in 34 historically segregated public schools and, according to the Justice Department, “reversed much of the progress made toward integration.”
By: Aviva Shen, Think Progress, August 25, 2013
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