Category Congress

The House GOP Proposal Is Still Extortion

Danny Vinik 5 Comments

There seems to be some confusion over why the House GOP’s new proposal is still extortion while the Senate deal that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell brokered yesterday isn’t so let’s break this down.

In both deals, the continuing resolution lasts until January 15 and the debt ceiling is raised until February 7. As the White House has made abundantly clear, these are not concessions from either side. This is simply Congress doing its job.

Here’s how the Senate proposal shapes up:

Republicans get:                                               Democrats Get:

  • Income verification                                        •  Delay of reinsurance fee

There will also be a budget negotiation that occurs under the McConnell-Reid deal. See how both sides get something from each other?

Here’s the new House GOP plan:

Republicans get:                                               Democrats Get:

  • Income verification
  • Two-year delay of medical device tax
  • Version of Vitter Amendment
  • Ban on extraordinary measures

So, what exactly do Democrats get out of this? Nothing. House Republicans are still demanding concessions in return for funding the government and not defaulting. It’s the same hostage-taking tactics they’ve been using all along. Boehner and Co. have reduced their ransom demands significantly, which is why there is a lot of optimism that a deal will eventually get done, but it’s still ransom. That’s why the White House and Senate Democrats are vehemently against this plan. They are adamant that they will not agree to any deal that sets a precedent for using the debt ceiling as an extortion device and the House GOP plan still does that.

SHOCKER: It Was All A Bluff

Danny Vinik 2 Comments

Looks like the House is moving forward with their own bill this morning. Here are the details, from Robert Costa:

  • Continuing Resolution until 1/15
  • Debt Ceiling increase until 2/7
  • Vitter Amendment for members and cabinet members
  • Two-year medical device tax delay
  • Income verification
  • Ban on the use of extraordinary measures

That’s it. Nothing that really undermines Obamacare and no risk of heading over the debt limit. It’s still unclear if this can pass the House. It will likely get little, if any, Democratic support and many House conservatives are not going to be happy. In addition there isn’t anything that Senate Democrats will like so I’m sure they will reject it. I imagine Boehner may still have to break the Hastert Rule in the end with a bill somewhere in between what currently exists in the Senate and this one.

But look at how far the House has come! Boehner was never going to allow us to default. That’s abundantly clear now. In addition, he watered down the Vitter Amendment at the last second because he knew all along how awful it would be for congressional aides. It’s what everyone has been clamoring about for weeks. The House GOP finally admitted it at the last second. As for income verification, this is already part of the law and a number of conservatives have already rejected it as meaningless. A ban on extraordinary measures is a minor concession (and something I support).

That’s what House leadership is now PROPOSING. That’s their offer for opening the government and raising the debt ceiling. In addition, it seems that House Republicans are relatively unified behind this plan (Robert Costa reporting that there won’t be a revolt). We’ll see if that holds true in the end, but it’s important to realize how far the House GOP has come in their demands. They said all along they were willing to breach the debt ceiling if Obamacare wasn’t stopped. Instead, they’re accepting a corporate tax delay, a benefit cut for members, enforcing a part of Obamacare that already exists and a ban on a technical method to extend the debt ceiling. It confirms they were bluffing the entire time.

The Obamacare Fight May Not Be Over

Danny Vinik Leave a comment

Yesterday, Steve Benen wrote a post titled, “ACA repeal crusade over, ‘delusional folks notwithstanding’.” Here’s part of it:

Last year, Republican officials up and down the ballot argued the 2012 elections were the party’s last chance to derail the Affordable Care Act. Once they lost those elections, Republican officials declared, “Never mind what we said before; this budget fight really is our last chance to derail the Affordable Care Act.” And now they’ve lost this round, too.

There won’t be a third. The repeal crusade was a flop.

Sure, it’s possible congressional Republicans will vote a few more times to gut the law — at last count, I think we’re up to 46 repeal votes in the House — but it’s slowly dawning on the party that their dream will not be realized.

They can try to go through the motions in the months and years ahead, but it’s more likely to create eye-rolling than results.

I’m so tempted to agree with Benen. The law has been through so many challenges the past couple of years that it is just about set in stone. But I see one more possibility for how Republicans could derail it:

We’re two weeks into the open-enrollment period for Obamacare. This period lasts until March 31 and it’s the time when individuals can sign up for health insurance on the exchanges. On January 1st, Obamacare goes live and those health plans kick in. That’s when the law really starts. Right now, we’re still in the sign-up phase. So far, that sign-up phase has been an unmitigated disaster. If you’re an Obamacare supporter, you should be very, very concerned. By all accounts, the flaws in the online exchanges aren’t a result of traffic overload or glitches. They are much more systemic and widespread and will require a huge amount of work to get them operating properly. The Administration still has a lot of work to do.

In addition, the government shutdown has masked these problem. Some people think the problems are actually a result of the shutdown, which isn’t true. Once we’re past these fiscal fights, the media’s attention will turn to the mass problems with the exchanges. People will start realizing that there are serious issues here.

The question is how long they will last. If December comes and there are still issues, the Administration should become very worried that people will start seriously turning against the law. Of course, it will have nothing to do with the policy behind Obamacare, but a technical failure can still switch public opinion fast. If people lose faith that the government has the capability to implement it. they may give up. Imagine January 1st coming and people still having trouble signing up on healthcare.gov. That would be a colossal failure.

Two weeks after that, the continuing resolution in the Reid-McConnell plan expires. This would give Cruz and Co. yet another chance to try to spur grassroots support and demand a delay in Obamacare in exchange for funding the government. That plan blew up in their faces the last couple of weeks, but the Tea Party would have a lot more support this time around. Independents may start looking at those demand as reasonable if the exchanges are still having major troubles.

This is the final challenge for Obamacare: does it work? For months, the focus has been on rate-shock and whether the policy would help most Americans. Few people wondered whether the exchanges would actually function correctly. Now, that question is at the forefront of the debate. Under normal circumstances, a Democratic president and Democratic Senate would ensure that the law has plenty of time to work out its kinks, well past January 1st if necessary. They would accept the bad media coverage and keep working on healthcare.gov until they got it right. But the McConnell-Reid deal presents a potential opportunity for Cruz and the Tea Party to mount a grassroots effort that really could force the president to reexamine his greatest legislative achievement. It’s timed perfectly for Republicans to mount a serious challenge to defund or delay the law on legitimate grounds. The Administration ultimately controls the viability of this challenge, but the McConnell-Reid makes it possible. The Obamacare battles never seem to end.