Tag: Mitch McConnell

LAST RUSH TO REPEAL OBAMACARE IS AN ENDGAME ONLY BECKETT COULD LOVE

Samuel Beckett, theatre of the absurd playwright extraordinaire, would have been absolutely enchanted with the U.S. Congress and its over-the-top obsession to repeal Obamacare. Mindlessly repeating actions, completely unattached to any rational or meaningful result, is the heart and soul of absurdist theatre. In one of his early writings, Beckett captured the utter despair and pointlessness of his character’s life with this line: “If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question of what am I doing.” Beginning to see the connection to this Congress?

Then, in his critically acclaimed play, “Endgame”, Beckett constructs a dialogue reeling with hopelessness between two characters as they shuffle through repetitive actions totally void of meaning. As they talk, a rat scurries across the floor. Clov says to Hamm, “If I don’t kill the rat, he’ll die.” And Hamm says, “That’s right.” Republicans insist that Obamacare is either dead or is dying, but they are rushing to kill it because, if they don’t, it just might live. Worse yet: it could grow into single payer healthcare. No, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to. Welcome to Government of the Absurd.

Senate Republicans are just a couple votes away from passing a health care bill most of them don’t like nor fully understand. It is, most analysts say, far more Draconian than the one voted down in July. It will leave tens of millions of Americans without insurance, drastically reduce Medicaid benefits, and remove protections for those with pre-existing conditions. And the list goes on. Republican senators who earlier voted against less egregious versions are either supporting or thinking of supporting this monstrosity. Why? It’s the “last train” available to Obamacare repeal. That’s what a high ranking GOP Senate staffer told Vox this week. Under Senate rules, between now and September 30, Republicans need 51 votes to move that train. Come October 1, it will need 60 votes. With 52 Republicans in the Senate, and a united Democratic opposition, the train isn’t going anywhere after next Saturday.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) used a different transportation metaphor to describe the party’s dilemma: “Look, we’re in the back seat of a convertible being driven by Thelma and Louise, and we’re headed toward the canyon. . . So we have to get out of the car, and you have to have a car to get into, and this is the only car there is.” Neither of the analogists said a word about what the bill would do for people who need healthcare. That’s because, to Republicans, unlike the motivational posters, it’s all about the destination, not the journey. The destination is Obamacare’s death.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said he could come up with at least 10 reasons why the bill is bad and should never be considered. Yet, he’s a yes vote. His ringing endorsement is right out of a Beckett script: “. . . Republicans campaigned on this (Obamacare repeal) so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign.”

Look, Congress has taken its share of slings and arrows over the years. Legislating is a messy process and most outcomes leave something to be desired. But this is a whole new height of absurdity. Senators like Roberts and Grassley freely admit that this legislation, this massive thrashing of our healthcare system, sucks. But they are on board – whether by way of the last train or the only car – because the party has been mindlessly chanting “Obamacare Repeal” for seven years.

The Washington Post’s Paul Kane suggested this week that Senate Republicans made a calculated decision that it was better to fail once more in trying to repeal Obamacare than not to even give it a shot. According to Kane, the August recess was really tough for Senate Republicans, given their narrow healthcare bill defeat in July. They faced, he said, “an unrelenting barrage of confrontations with some of their closest supporters, donors and friends,” all pounding them for not making good on their Obamacare repeal promise. Those flames were fanned, of course, by regular tweets (here, here and here) from President Trump on how disgusted he was with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not delivering the votes on repeal. A Republican donor in Virginia even filed suit against the GOP on grounds that it repeatedly solicited funds for an Obamacare repeal it couldn’t produce. The suit alleges fraud and racketeering. So the party clings to an obsolete goal.

That kind of bizarre thinking is the result of intellectual inertia. From a Republican standpoint, Obamacare repeal made sense in 2010. For all its faults, it was the most progressive national insurance legislation passed in 50 years. Conservatives understandably wanted to attack it and try to undo it. But that window doesn’t remain open indefinitely. Republicans used it effectively for several years, even leveraged it to take control of Congress. Meanwhile, millions of people were added to the health insurance rolls. There was no discrimination for pre-existing conditions. Adult children were covered by their parents’ policies. For the past year, a growing majority of Americans say they like Obamacare and don’t want to lose it. The Republican establishment, however, has not changed gears. It just keeps forging down the same archaic path, mindlessly committed to repealing a program that people now want.

The best outcome for Republicans at this juncture is that their repeal efforts fail once again. A bruised ego ought to be preferred over the wrath of voters stinging from the loss of their healthcare. It’s a result, however, that can’t be taken for granted. Best to call those Republican senators now and urge a no vote. When they answer, ask them just what it is they think they are doing. See if they are honest enough to offer a Beckett answer: “I have no idea.”

TRUMP’S ‘GOOD WEEK’ IS JUST MORE OF THE SAME

To hear Donald Trump tell it, he had his best week yet in Washington. The president bitch slapped his own party’s Congressional leaders. Then he hugged Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and even let House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dictate a Twitter message for him. Not only that, he helped secure rare bipartisan support for a bill that will get Texas some hurricane relief and keep the government open for three more months. Could this, the Donald’s 137th reinvention, be the one that really sticks? Could it be that he has finally become presidential?

Naaaa, of course not. This was just one more iteration of Trump being Trump. When it comes to his core values, he has always been consistent. And what he really values, at his core, is himself, and how he looks to the world at any moment in time. “It’s all over the news,” the president bubbled in a call to Schumer. “The coverage is incredible; everyone is praising me. Even MSNBC is saying nice things about me.” (Here and here.)

And that’s what it takes for Donald Trump to have a very good week. There was a time he had to really work to create the public illusion of grandeur. Like when he impersonated his own press agent in order to spread lurid reports about his love life to gossip columnists. It’s so much easier now. All he has to do is make nice with a couple of Democrats he spent the last six months vilifying.

Back in the real world, North Korea is polishing its nukes, 800,000 young Americans face deportation, and there is no assurance our government will be funded past December 8. Trump’s feel-good days of early September offer no nourishment for a body politic that has been ailing since January 20. For that, we need skilled leadership, someone with credibility, vision, a sense of direction and an ability to subjugate ego needs for the sake of getting the job done. Alas, Trump is a dismal failure in all four areas. He is constitutionally incapable of getting outside of himself in order to lead others. The president’s euphoric week was packed with evidence supporting the previous sentence.

It started with the dreamers, the now young adults whose parents brought them into the country illegally as children. Through a 2012 executive order, the Obama administration protected them from deportation. Trump excoriated Obama for that action during the campaign, promising, if elected, to send them all back to the countries of their birth. Then he softened a bit, telling the dreamers not to worry because he loves them. However, as the songwriter noted, love hurts. On Tuesday the administration pulled the plug on the dreamers, announcing that they would be subject to deportation in March if Congress did not resolve the issue through legislation. That was it. The president took no position on what Congress should do – protect them or evict them. He just wanted the monkey off his back. Amazingly, the New York Times quoted White House aides saying their boss did not appear to fully understand the meaning of his announcement an hour before it was delivered.

The public response was overwhelming negative. So Trump, naturally, turned to Twitter for a mood adjustment. His message: if Congress doesn’t act, he will “revisit” the issue. For someone who fancies himself as a master negotiator, this was an incredibly insipid move. It instantly deflated the leverage he created by linking the dreamers’ deportation to a failure of Congress to act. But it made him feel better for a while.

Then came the infamous Oval Office meeting with Congressional leaders. The Republicans, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, wanted to raise the debt limit and keep government funded for 18 months, getting them past the mid-term elections. Schumer and Pelosi wanted only a three-month extension because it would give them leverage in a year-end funding battle. Ryan called the Democrat’s three-month proposal “ridiculous and disgusting.” Trump’s partner in the meeting, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had just delivered a defense of the Republican’s 18-month plan when Trump shocked the room by siding with the Democrats, whose three-month deal was soon summarily passed by both houses, much to the chagrin of frustrated Republicans.

It was the news of that meeting that gave Trump his good week. He could view himself as a bipartisan deal-maker. Basking in the mania of that image, Trump upped the ante, by joining with “Chuck and Nancy” in supporting a law protecting the dreamers. A day later, he went even further and said he agreed with Schumer that Congress should end the requirement of regularly approving the government’s debt limit, a sacred conservative ritual if there ever was one.

The pundits have had a field day with it all. Some compared it to Bill Clinton’s triangulation. Some wondered if Trump was finally finding his footing. Others, noting that the president was once a Democrat, speculated he might be returning to his roots. The analysis is about as meaningful as trying to figure out why a leaf suddenly falls from a tree. That’s what a leaf does. And this is what the Donald does: grab whatever attention he can to make him look and feel good in the moment. As Poe says, “merely this and nothing more.”

The problem is that moments are outlived by their consequences. Strategies are designed to build a multiplicity of moments that will get you to where you want to go, assuming you know where that is. Trump doesn’t get any of that. He’s too wrapped up in watching himself on cable news to realize that when you blindside associates – on either side, when you yank the rug out from under your treasury secretary, when you love dreamers one day and move to deport them the next, you lack the credibility, integrity and probity needed to lead. You’re just a leaf sailing through the breeze. ‘Tis the wind and nothing more.

GOP’S NO HEALTHCARE CUT LEFT BEHIND BILL IS PARTICULARLY CRUEL TO WOMEN

If Republicans have their way, women with reproductive health issues will soon be sent to dentists, food banks or nursing homes for help. That’s why the horrifically misnamed Better Care Reconciliation Act may one day be more accurately known as the Population Growth Act of 2017. This is what happens when 13 male senators draft a health care bill in secret.

Apparently, it was not enough for the GOP to simply take insurance away from 22 million people and jack up premiums for those least able to pay. It’s not every day a political party gets to make a real difference in social policy. So the Senate bill, quietly and secretly crafted by that body’s majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and a dozen of his closest bros, went all out and cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit organization that provides vital health care services for millions of low income patients, mostly – but not exclusively – women.

Despite its role as a lightning rod for the anti-abortion crowd, Planned Parenthood outlets offer the gamut of health services, including birth control, cancer screenings and STD testing and treatment. Abortion accounts for only 3% of its services and is not even available at many clinics. Yet, as if this consensus-free healthcare debate was not divisive enough, conservatives tossed in their long dreamed of plot to defund Planned Parenthood.

The Senate legislation cuts off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood for only one year. Why just a year? A compromise with those who support the program? Alas, the maneuver is far more conniving and diabolical. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office costs out every change in the healthcare bill, and that math plays a huge role in rounding up votes, both for and against. According to the CBO, the cost of not funding Planned Parenthood carries a ten-year price tag of $130 million. That’s how much budget crunchers say it will cost Medicaid for the obstetrical care of women unable to get contraceptive assistance through Planned Parenthood. So the Gang of 13 Senate guys came up a smoke-and-mirrors workaround: cut the funding for just one year, win a better overall CBO score and then come back, once the limelight of healthcare battles has faded, and make the cutoff permanent.

The bill’s Republican sponsors insist that there are many other federally qualified health providers offering family planning services and that the legislation would transfer funding from Planned Parenthood to those other facilities. The CBO, however, noted that one in five counties served by Planned Parenthood have no federally qualified clinics offering contraceptive services. The New York Times took a look at those alleged Planned Parenthood alternatives cited by the Republicans. The list included, inexplicably, hundreds of ophthalmologists, nursing homes, dentists, cosmetic surgeons, audiologists, addiction treatment centers and food
banks. Pity the poor woman who goes looking for contraceptive services at a dentist office or a food bank, and walks away with a cheap toothbrush and a box of Cheerios.

Anyone suggesting that the CBO’s projected population expansion is crude guesswork should check out a paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine. That research focused on Texas where the state cut off Planned Parenthood funding in 2013. Medicaid pregnancies increased by 27% in the first 18 months. Alina Salganicoff is the Kaiser Family Foundation’s director of women’s health. She told CBS news recently that the burden of this funding cutoff “disproportionately impacts the young and low income, or people who want to get confidential care.” “For a lot of women,” she said, “Planned Parenthood is their only source of care.”

Sadly, complete and utter disregard for women’s health, has been at the heart of the political battle over abortion since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Poor women have been denied Medicaid assistance for abortions since the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976. Yet, this legalized economic discrimination, renewed by Congress every year since 1976, has never been enough for the anti-abortion forces. They know that Planned Parenthood performs 35% of the abortions that occur in this country, even though the procedure represents only a small part of its medical practice. They want them shut down completely, even if doing so will prevent Planned Parenthood’s low income patients from getting family planning assistance or being screened and treated for diseases. When it comes to their never-ending war on abortion, women without money are always fair game for collateral damage.

However, their leverage this time around, while not great, is better than it was during the Hyde Amendment days of 1976. The Senate had no female members then. There was no need for a select male cabal to secretly legislate away women’s rights; the entire Senate was a male cabal. Today there are 22 women in the U.S. Senate, and two of them – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – both Republicans, are opposed to the Planned Parenthood defunding. Majority Leader McConnell can afford to lose only two Republican votes, and he has a growing list of senators who are shaky over various other aspects of the legislation.

It takes a lot of chutzpa and cynicism to call this bill the “Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017”. There is absolutely no “better care” in this act for anybody. And the only thing being reconciled is a tax cut for the rich, on the backs of less fortunate Americans who will lose access to critical health services. If the Republican leadership wants genuine reconciliation, it will deep-six this monstrosity and work with Democrats to pass meaningful legislation that makes “better care” a reality for everyone.

OBAMACARE REPEAL PROMISE SHOWS ITS AGE, AND IT’S NOT PRETTY

For one brief shining moment, the left and the right have come together in a chorus of Kumbaya. All it took was a singularly pernicious piece of legislation that simultaneously offended all of their principles. You’ve got to hand it to Republican congressional leaders: they came up with a health care bill that almost anyone can hate. Who could have imagined such a collection of odd couples – Planned Parenthood and the Koch brothers, MoveOn.org and the Tea Party, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz – all locking arms in battle?

Yet, even with depleted and exhausted troops, these determined generals – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan – keep trying to climb that seemingly unscalable mountain in order to pound a stake through the heart of Obamacare. It’s a seven-year-old elusive dream that has not aged well. This bizarre mission is draped in a misplaced notion of integrity, of promises to keep. “We’re keeping our word,” Ryan told ABC news. “That’s very important.” Our promise, McConnell has repeatedly insisted, is to “repeal Obamacare root and branch.” The repeal mantra worked for Republicans back in the day. But political slogans need to change with the times. Even George Wallace knew that his 1963 “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” line wouldn’t play in the 1980s. Too much had changed. The health care swing was less dramatic but just as real.

The frenzy to pass this legislation is all about a promise that is no longer operative. It served conservative political interests a few years back, when the new health insurance system was confusing, unsettling and, thanks to Republican demagoguery, unpopular. However, people have gotten used to it, including the estimated 17-20 million who now have insurance for the first time. Suddenly, polls show that a majority of Americans like Obamacare. Meanwhile, NPR/Marist polling on the Republican health bill this week gave it a 17% approval rating. In that same survey, 63% of the respondents favored either leaving Obamacare unchanged or strengthening it.

From a pure standpoint of self-interest, the GOP’s health care strategy makes no sense. Politicians have two constituencies: voters and campaign contributors. So far, every health care permutation Republicans have come up with alienates both groups. If anything resembling their current bills pass, between 22 and 23 million Americans will lose insurance. Lower income families and the elderly will see premiums rise by 280%. Taking benefits away from people – or overcharging for them – is not an effective way to win votes. Republican governors get that, which is why many of them oppose their party’s mindless drive to repeal and replace. It’s a promise that has lost its predicate.

And now come the financial heavies, the real power behind the anti-Obamacare movement, all angrily insisting that the Republican bills aren’t a repeal at all. The repeal promise, of course, was not born out of a desire to create a better health care system. It was all about appeasing the Koch brothers and other titans of the corporate right. Americans for Prosperity, the Koch network’s political arm, and a number of similar groups, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of candidates committed to a total dismantling of Obamacare. They are all thoroughly disgusted with the House and Senate bills that upend insurance for millions and slash Medicaid spending. It’s not enough for them, not nearly enough. AFP leader Tim Phillips called the Republican legislation “a slight nip and tuck”, according to the Associated Press. He said it was “Obamacare-lite” and that AFP is poised to go after Republicans who support it. In other words, the only way McConnell and Ryan can satisfy their financial benefactors is to cut much deeper, leaving millions more without insurance, and passing their subsidies on to the rich in the form of tax cuts.

The Washington Post reported today that McConnell was gingerly rearranging pieces of his Senate bill in an attempt to address objections launched from every possible direction. Reportedly, this would involve scaling back tax cuts for the rich in favor of helping lower income people get insurance. That might appease some moderates but will further frustrate the right. To compensate, says The Post, he may strike some Obamacare coverage mandates from the bill. Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the bill’s reduction in Medicaid coverage would be significantly higher than originally calculated. Bottom line: the bill is not headed toward a Palm Sunday reception.

McConnell and Ryan are not in this promise trap by themselves. President Trump spent his campaign promising to slay Obamacare on day one. Of course, the president could cram everything he knows about health care and the legislative process into a single tweet, and have 140 characters left over. He says he wants a Senate bill that is not as “mean” as the House version. Yet, Trump threw a Rose Garden celebration for passage of that “mean” House bill, calling it “very, very, incredibly well-crafted . . .a great plan.” Unlike the president, McConnell and Ryan know what they are doing. They just made a huge stumble.

There is a certain nobility attached to fulfilling a promise, but nobility can quickly turn into dung when the underlying conditions behind the promise change. This is one more example of Republicans ignoring science at their peril. Remember the uncertainty principle from physics class? You can determine a particle’s position or its momentum, but you can’t accurately measure both at the same time. That’s because positions and momentum change. The Republican leadership built their repeal strategy on 2010 measurements. Once people who never had health insurance got it, the public’s position on the particle called Obamacare started to change. It’s been moving ever since, but the Senate majority leader and House speaker are just now taking stock of its momentum.

TRUMP DROPS A DIME ON CHRISTIE TO PROTECT THE RUSSIANS

In trying to defend the Russians against accusations of hacking the Democrats’ emails, Donald Trump first suggested that the culprit could be a 400-pound guy “sitting on his bed.” Now he says it might have “been a guy in New Jersey.” Put the clues together, people. Trump is clearly fingering Chris Christie. There just aren’t that many 400-pound New Jersey Republicans with a propensity for dirty tricks. (See Bridgegate.)

Pity the poor governor from the Garden State. Once the GOP’s king of the hill, before being vanquished by the president-elect, Christie spent all fall clinging to Trump like a hostage to his captor. He was rewarded for his blind subservience by the then-dubious distinction of heading up Trump’s transition team. Of course that was back when not even The Donald thought he would ever have anything to actually transition to. Within days of his unanticipated victory, Christie was summarily transitioned out. He has now been reduced to playing Trump’s imaginary foil in his unwavering and unnerving defense of Vladimir Putin. Poor Chris Christie. He was, for one brief shining moment, a credible presidential candidate. Now, to Trump, he’s a just a fat guy sitting on his bed in New Jersey, tying up bridge traffic and hacking John Podesta’s emails.

Fantasy? Sure, but it’s not all that far outside the realm of our new normal. Is it just me, or does our new normal really resemble a bad dream sequence, or maybe an old “Twilight Zone” episode? The first half of the weekend was devoted to an esoteric battle between the CIA and the FBI over whether Russia interfered with our presidential election in order to help Trump win or just to mess with us. The second half was filled with Trump defending the Putin crowd from any wrongdoing and preparing to nominate as secretary of state an oil company executive with close ties to Russia.

I keep having flashbacks to my elementary school years. At precisely 1 p.m. central time on the first Wednesday of every month, an air raid siren went off and we had to crawl under our desks until it stopped. This was how we prepared for a Russian attack. It was traumatic for me. I was too big to fit under my desk, so I sort of curled up next to it, certain that I would be the first to die when the bombs started dropping. Fast forward 60 years: these sneaky Russians have moved on from bombing elementary schools to screwing with our elections.

I get the fact that the cold war is over, but Putin’s regime has been a stubbornly unpleasant thorn in our side for years. The Washington Post’s incredible reporting Friday that the CIA has evidence of Russia’s interference in our presidential election was blockbuster stuff. It was almost enough for me to crawl under my desk. I could fit there now but am way too old and arthritic to get up again.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when credible reports of Russian election tampering would have triggered a strong, swift bipartisan response on the part of our country’s political players. And the Republicans would have been out front banging the war drums. Yet it took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell more than 48 hours to issue this remarkably tepid statement: “The Russians are not our friends.” His initial reaction to the Post’s report was to express doubt over the accuracy of the CIA’s findings, echoing with subdued language the more verbosely articulated sentiment of President-elect Trump who called the claim of Russian interference “ridiculous.” By this morning, however, McConnell reversed course and supported the call for a congressional investigation.

Of course, long-time Republican Russian critics like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham were not swayed by Trump’s affinity for Putin. Both were quick to criticize Russian interference and call for a thorough investigation. Neocon hawk and former UN Ambassador John Bolton would have ordinarily joined that chorus. However, he is now looking for a top state department job in the new administration. He told Fox News that he thinks the Russian election flap may be a “false flag” planted by the Obama Administration in order to rile the Russians. That motion appeared to die for lack of a second.

That pretty much leaves Trump and his hangers-on sticking with the Russia-can-do-no-evil position. Putin is one of the few players on the world stage never to get so much as a vindictive late night tweet from the incoming president. Trump is fond of recalling how Putin once described him as brilliant. If that’s all it takes to influence this administration, O.J. Simpson should get himself a thesaurus of superlatives and a pardon application. And when he’s done, he should pass them both on to poor old Chris Christie.