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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (192820)	6/29/2012 11:33:47 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542907

Not surprisingly, of course, I like Krugman's column today. It's a serious effort to build the case for the importance of ACA as social policy. We all know Krugman's reservations about it, but he's willing to be a good soldier and make the best possible argument for it that he can. Very well done.

To: JohnM who wrote (192820)	6/29/2012 12:05:07 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 542907

That’s accurate history, as is Matt’s reminder of how then-Majority Leader Trent Lott dealt with a Senate parliamentarian who was too scrupulous about reconciliation when Republicans were whipping the Bush tax cuts through the Senate in 2001 (Lott fired him). I had forgotten about that little episode. I wish I had remembered it when I heard a self-described conservative express [faux] outrage over the Obama's use of reconciliation. And the guy doing it was in the Bush admin, and had something to do with the prescription drug program--you know, the one where they also used reconciliation, and where they held the House vote open for 3 hours or something like that while they twisted arms to get their necessary votes. Maybe these loonies who say that they are moving to Canada are right; the Republic is dead. But, like Roberts on the ACA, they right for the wrong reason.

To: JohnM who wrote (192820)	6/29/2012 12:33:18 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542907

And one more memory that has arisen in response to Rebublicans all jumping in now and calling the mandate a tax--when Reagan pushed what was then the biggest tax increase in history back in '85, they called them "user fees," and all of the good little Republican boys and girls marched in lockstep with that language, so that they could avoid calling it a "tax." Now they are saying, "Roberts called a spade a spade, it is a tax." Matt Yglesias is right about what the Republicans will do if they get Congressional majorities. Nothing is too shameless for them. They will contradict previous positions in a flash, or will vote lockstep against a bill that just a few years earlier was virtually their own proposal, or came out of a place like Heritage. And scream that that bill is a socialist plot to end the Republic. Really quite incredible. P.S. I finally heard this morning a member of the press--John Harwood--say that the Republicans had just completely made up their story of Fast and Furious, that is, their claim that F&F was a plot of the Obama admin to make things in the Southwest so bad that there would be popular support for gun control. FINALLY, some one in the press says that. They make this stuff up, and then they find confirmation of it by having it repeated by so many nutjobs who don't ask for a shred of proof other people talking about it.

To: JohnM who wrote (192820)	6/29/2012 5:46:34 PM
From: koan	Respond to of 542907

I would point out those 10 or 15 blue dog dems, that hindered reconciliation, are the moderates, so many feel are the rational dems. Obama constantly placated those dems, like allowing Lieberman to keep his chairmanship. He and harry Reid should have put the fear of god in them, like Trent Lott did. <<And that brings us to the “repeal” scenario. Several pundits (notably David Frum and Ryan Lizza) have rejected the idea a Republican-controlled Congress would have the power or will to repeal ACA. Lizza in particular leans on the procedural difficulties of using “reconciliation” to achieve repeal, though missing, I suspect, the important fact that the Court’s construction of the individual mandate as a “tax” will make it much easier for a hostile Congress to treat its repeal as a budget measure. For my money, Matt Yglesias is dead-on in rejecting these breezy assurances: n the real world there are very few practical constraints on reconciliation. The operational issue the Obama administration had with reconciliation is that there were a clutch of 10-15 Democratic Senators who preferred a 60-vote Senate because it put shifted the pivot point and put policy outcomes closer to their personal ideal points. It was those Senators who raised a lot of niggling objections about reconciliation rules. The GOP is more ideologically unified and more focused on advancing a broad conception of the national interest rather than parochial concerns of individual legislators. That’s accurate history, as is Matt’s reminder of how then-Majority Leader Trent Lott dealt with a Senate parliamentarian who was too scrupulous about reconciliation when Republicans were whipping the Bush tax cuts through the Senate in 2001 (Lott fired him). So all in all, I’d say implementation of ACA remains pretty strictly contingent on the November elections. If Republicans win the White House and control of both Houses of Congress (and the two outcomes remain likely to be linked), the odds are high they would attempt a total (or near-total) repeal of ACA in the context of enacting a Ryan Budget that would, of course, radically reverse progress towards universal health coverage far beyond where we were in 2010. If they lose in November, or (for the sake of argument) fail to get control of the Senate, then the big question is whether an enraged conservative movement begins looking for other options for mucking up ACA implementation, at which point demands on Republican state lawmakers to block the Medicaid expansion will be ratcheted up to a high-pitch chattering whine. UPDATE: Note this New York Times piece from Kevin Sack and Reed Abelson outlining what states must do when to implement ACA, which confirms much of the above about the “keep all options open” position of Republicans in the states at the moment.