Tag Government SHutdown

Being Honest with the Tea Party Doesn’t Work

Danny Vinik 1 Comment

One of the main criticisms of House Republican leaders, particularly Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), the past two weeks is that they lied to the Tea Party about what they could actually accomplish during these fiscal fights. It’s not particularly surprising that Obama isn’t negotiating or that Republicans are being overwhelmingly blamed for the shutdown. The thinking goes that if only Boehner had informed his members at the beginning that they had no chance in these fiscal fights, then it would be easy to cut a deal right now. But why?

What makes anyone think that the Tea Party would be less intransigent if Boehner and Co. hadn’t overpromised at the beginning?

Here’s a counterfactual: On September 28, Boehner holds a meeting with all his members and tells them the truth. President Obama really isn’t going to budge. He’ll allow a government shutdown and may even allow a default if necessary, because he believes these fights are about more than Obamacare. He believes they are about not setting the precedent for the minority party to use the budget and debt ceiling as leverage to extract policy concessions from the majority. Boehner says he doesn’t agree, but that’s the president’s stance and he’s not going to budge. He also tells them that it’s highly likely that Americans will blame Republicans for any shutdown or default and it could potentially risk their House majority in the midterm elections. Boehner even tells them that a default would be catastrophic and they can’t allow it to happen.

How do the Tea Party members react to that? Do they listen, synthesize everything the speaker said and agree to fight another day? Not at all.

That’s because, as Business Insider’s Josh Barro put it, they are living on another planet. Polling doesn’t mean anything. Breaching the debt ceiling wouldn’t be that bad. President Obama caved in 2011 so he’s bound to this time too.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. But these conservative members don’t care. They are on a blind crusade against Obamacare and will do everything in their power to stop it. It doesn’t matter what Boehner tells them. His words affect their mood, not their perception of reality.

If Boehner says that the president will cave and they have a real shot at taking down Obamacare, they cheer and support the speaker. That’s exactly what they want to hear.

If he tells them the truth like I outlined above, they sit in silence and find ways to undermine him. They simply won’t believe what the speaker says.

Being honest with these conservative members doesn’t work, because they simply don’t believe it.

Some journalists think that Boehner raised their expectations over these fiscal fights and that the intense Tea Party opposition is a result of their expectations not being met. But the Tea Party expected to stop Obamacare, no matter what the speaker said. Boehner just convinced them that he believed that they could stop Obamacare. That may have stoked their enthusiasm, but it didn’t change their expectations or their willingness to do anything to stop the law.

From Boehner’s perspective, this lie kept his party unified for a little bit longer while he searched for any way out. The Tea Party was always going to be furious by whatever deal he cuts, because it won’t substantially undermine Obamacare. If he had told them that at the beginning, he would’ve immediately split his party in half and put himself in an even worse negotiating position. Lying to them kept his members united and gave him time to work out a deal. It didn’t stoke their anger or increase their opposition to the eventual deal. That was coming no matter what.

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.