As I wrote yesterday, GOP leader Mitch McConnell decided the Republicans would unanimously oppose Obama’s entire agenda before Obama was even sworn in. Now the Democratic National Committee has picked up on that story with a new ad blasting McConnell as “what’s wrong with Washington.”
The ad isn’t very good in my opinion, but that’s not really the point. this is something big that I think Democrats can really start to push. Branding the Republicans the “party of no” has been relatively successful — well, this gives the Dems license to ratchet up that criticism by an order of magnitude.
The message is simple: The GOP isn’t just the party of no. They don’t even care enough to think about their constituents’ needs. They said “no” back in early 2009, and they haven’t given any policy so much as a passing thought since then.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post on this earlier. There was huge news this morning as the CBO estimated the final health care bill would cover 95 percent of all Americans and save $130 billion in the first 10 years. In the next 10 years, it would save $1.2 trillion.
Seems like a good reason to support reform. What’s the GOP’s argument against it now? Chairman Michael Steele claims the CBO is lying.
A New York Times article Tuesday revealed a couple of shocking things about the Republicans’ unprecedented unity in opposing every single bill offered by the Democrats:
It didn’t just arise spontaneously as the result of policy differences; it was a calculated political strategy by minority leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell decided on the strategy before Obama was ever sworn in.
I really don’t know what to say here. Why do the Republicans even bother showing up to the Capitol? If they don’t even care what’s in any of the bills, they may as well just stay home.
The non-partisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute have just released a study that simulates the growth of health care costs in the absence of health reform. They found that within ten years, premiums could soar by as much as 79 percent, bringing the ranks of the uninsured from 49.4 million to 67.6 million by 2020.
Let’s compare that with the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of health care costs under health reform. The CBO estimated health care costs in 2016, so we’ll use the RWJF study’s estimates for 2015, instead of 2020. The RWJF study estimated that without reform, premiums could increase by 34 percent by 2015. The CBO estimated that with reform, they would increase by 10 to 13 percent, and that’s before subsidies that would be extended to millions of recipients.
Opponents of health reform are arguing that the system doesn’t need fixing. Whatever insurance plan they’re on, I want it, because the reality is that health care costs are out of control and nobody is doing anything about it. After more than a year of debate, and after nearly a century of attempts by various presidents, it’s time to finally pass health reform.
Al Franken was one of a number of Senate Democrats that went on the offensive yesterday, criticizing Republicans for their constant use of the filibuster in even the most routine situations. Franken highlighted one judicial nominee who was filibustered despite an eventual unanimous vote — 99 to 0 — to confirm her. He noted that the filibuster has become nothing but a crass stall tactic:
It used to be that the filibuster was reserved for matters of great principle. Today, it has become a way to run out the clock.
I’ll take it a step further than Franken. The filibuster used to be reserved for situations when Senators were strongly in disagreement with a proposed policy. Now, it’s used to stop Congress from enacting policy at all. The endless filibusters are a Republican effort to paralyze our government, so they can then claim that Obama has been ineffective.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) admitted yesterday that Senate Republicans will opt to win political points instead of trying to improve the health reform bill. Once the House passes the Senate’s health reform bill, health reform will become law with or without reconciliation. Reconciliation will simply make a number of small changes, most of which can be agreed on by both sides. The GOP, though, will of course vote against reconciliation en masse. Ezra Klein explains why this is ridiculous:
At that point, they’re not opposing health-care reform and instead opposing small, popular changes that make the bill better. They’re literally obstructing good government that fits with their recent rhetoric.
For instance, Alexander himself has railed against a deal in the Senate health bill made to gain Sen. Ben Nelson’s support, which he likes to refer to as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” Democrats will remove that kickback through reconciliation, but Alexander and his fellow Republicans will oppose reconciliation anyway. When asked to explain, Alexander’s answer was really quite shocking:
…basically, the Senate Republicans are not going to bail the House Democrats out by fixing a bill we all voted against.
When Barack Obama proposed a deficit commission to develop a long-range plan for balancing the budget, for some bizarre reason Republicans were against it. I think they simply opposed it because their knee-jerk reaction is to oppose every single thing Obama says. Heck, when the Obama girls got their puppy, I was surprised not to see the GOP attack puppies as anti-American.
But Obama established the commission anyway, because it looks highly unlikely that Congress will be able to put aside its bickering enough to do the work we will desperately need once the economy is righted. Here’s how The Hill describes the work of the commission:
[The commission will] produce a package of proposals aimed at bringing the deficit down to a sustainable level by 2015.
The panel may consider tax increases, spending cuts and entitlement reforms. As Obama has said, “everything is on the table.”
Except now, a whole lot of things aren’t on the table. Republicans have almost exclusively appointed hard-line, reactionary conservatives to serve on the budget panel, suggesting that they are only willing to consider slashing services and not raising revenues. Sounds like the same old story: Democrats want to put everything on the table, with the full understanding that they will have to make major concessions, while Republicans refuse to move an inch.
For months, the White House has been establishing deadlines for the passage of health reform, and for that entire time, Congress has been missing those deadlines. It makes Democrats look weak and ineffectual, which is really not so far from the truth. Which is why I had to groan when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs did it yet again:
“We’ll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week,” Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Gibbs added that those on next week’s Sunday talk shows “will be talking about healthcare not as a presidential proposal but I think as the law of the land.”
I’m sure that yet another arbitrary deadline will really help Nancy Pelosi pick up the votes she needs.
Some new information has recently come to light about Republican Paul Ryan’s “shadow budget,” and it’s looking like an even worse idea than I first thought. Initially, I wrote that I respected Ryan for producing a bill that would eliminate the deficit, even if I though it was a bad plan overall:
I’m certainly willing to admit that the Republicans’ ideas would eliminate our deficit, eventually. There are only two problems:
I don’t really think we can wait 50 to 60 years to balance the budget.
Even if it does balance the budget, is it really worth it if we have to destroy Social Security and Medicare
Well, it turns out the shadow budget won’t reduce the deficit — not even over 50 years. Here’s the thing. When he asked the Congressional Budget Office to score his proposal, Ryan made what could charitably be called a major assumption: He asked the CBO to assume that revenue under the plan would stay exactly the same as it is now. But an analysis by the non-partisan tax policy center shows that’s not even close to reality:
For those of you who haven’t seen it, the New York Times on Sunday published a chart created by Congressional scholars showing the history of reconciliation. The chart shows a brief summary of every bill that has been passed via reconciliation, and there’s a very wide range of circumstances it’s been used for. In the accompanying text, the authors sum things up:
Reconciliation was intended to be a narrow procedure to bring revenues and spending into conformity with the levels set in the annual budget resolution. But it quickly became much more. The 22 reconciliation bills so far passed by Congress (three of which were vetoed by President Bill Clinton) have included all manner of budgetary and policy measures: deficit reductions and increases; social policy bills like welfare reform; major changes in Medicare and Medicaid; large tax cuts; and small adjustments in existing law. Neither party has been shy about using this process to avoid dilatory tactics in the Senate; Republicans have in fact been more willing to do so than Democrats.
By the way, a quick note for those of you who would love to stop hearing about reconciliation: So would I, but the fact is, this is the most important subject in national news right now. Let’s hope the Democrats will get this thing done so I can stop writing about it.
Talk about a tricky balancing act. For weeks now, Republicans have been claiming that reconciliation would be the “end of the Senate” and just generally hyperventilating about the prospect. They’ve screamed bloody murder at the idea of health reform passing with a simple majority, ignoring that the vast majority already passed the Senate with a full 60 votes, and that a small number of changes are going to be made through reconciliation. But now, they’re suddenly saying that reconciliation is irrelevant:
And when they get those votes and they pass the big bill, that will go down to the president and it will be signed. And this side bill, which is called the reconciliation bill, will really become almost irrelevant. [Judd Gregg, everyone’s favorite almost-cabinet-member, on CNBC, via The Wonk Room]
What’s this all about? Well, Republicans have realized that they’re not winning the battle against reconciliation. So now, they’ve moved onto a new tactic — trying to convince House liberals that reconciliation won’t actually happen to get them to vote against passing the Senate bill in the House.
Mark my words, though — they won’t stop arguing that the reconciliation bill is a democracy-killing catastrophe. That means Republicans will be in the very awkward position of simultaneously claiming that reconciliation is both of huge importance and completely irrelevant. And do you think anybody in the media will ask them about the contradiction?
Senate leaders finally got Jim Bunning to consent to allow a vote on extending unemployment benefits yesterday (Side note: Do you realize how insane that sounds?), ending nearly a week of outrageous obstruction. But don’t worry, America — Jim Bunning still has plenty of obstruction to keep him occupied:
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY)… apparently placed a hold on all presidential nominees last week.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office confirms to TPMDC that Bunning has placed the holds.
“It turns out that not only has he been blocking the unemployment insurance bill, he has also been blocking the confirmation of nominees since last week as well,” said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.
First is was Richard Shelby holding Obama’s nominees hostage, and now it’s Bunning. When Shelby placed his holds, I wrote “Surely this will be the last straw for people who are fed up with Republicans’ outrageous abuse of arcane Senate procedures.” Now we’ve had Bunning do far worse. How long will we allow Republicans, who have a tiny minority, completely subvert Senate business?
Busted! The video below features Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, emphatically defending the process of reconciliation. Reconciliation, he says, is “the rule of the Senate,” and one that allows for “majority rule.” “Is there anything wrong with majority rule?” he asks. “I don’t think so.
I know that the American people want to Democrats to compromise in order to gain bipartisan support for health reform. But the word compromise implies a mutual decision. It’s impossible to compromise when the other side won’t budge.
CNN anchor Kiran Chetry twice tried to ask Cornyn if there is “anything Republicans would be willing to give on in return,” but Cornyn responded by criticizing the existing legislation:
CORNYN: Really, I think it’s not possible to take this bill or this proposal, this 11 page summary and to work with it around the edges. We’re going to have to put it on the shelf. That’s what the American people want us to do and start over and we would be glad to do that.
If anything useful has come out of this past year, one can hope it’s taught the Democrats a thing or two about negotiation. The Dems started out by deliberately crafting a very moderate bill, hoping to win Republican support, which showed that their intentions were good, but their tactics were not. Because this is what happens:
A new CNN poll finds that Americans think both Democrats and Republicans are failing to act in a bipartisan manner — and that the Democrats should be the first ones to give up some of their proposals.
Democrats should be the first ones to give something up?? They’ve already given everything up! They gave up single-payer right from the start, and now they’ve given up the public option as well. What else should they give up — trying to insure every man, woman, and child? And what have the Republicans given up? They haven’t moved an inch from their stance of do nothing.
Frankly, though, this is the Democrats’ fault. They should have come out with a proposal for a strong single-payer system and gotten bargained down to the public option. Instead, they came out of the gate with a relatively weak version of the public option, and then they were (surprise!) forced to drop that.
There’s still a lot of work ahead, so hopefully the Dems have learned their lesson — make sure you leave yourself room to negotiate.
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