Watching the Republicans react to John Roberts’ ruling on ObamaCare is a lot like going to an exotic zoo and seeing animals you’ve never seen before. Their behavior is unfamiliar and fascinating. I guess we’re used to the collective freak-out aspect of it, but they seem so stunned and disoriented. It’s also kind of revealing in the sense that many conservative politicians are showing that they really believe their own horseshit.
On the one hand, you have savvy politicians like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who came out and said he wasn’t surprised because the mandate was clearly a tax. He knows the GOP has been engaged in pure political posturing. But then you have guys like Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, who tweeted that he felt like he had lost two friends today: John Roberts and America.
Let’s be honest. Most of these pols are smart enough to know that making people pay a small fine if they aren’t insured isn’t going to change the fundamental character of this country. It’s not a slippery slope that will soon find the government taxing people for having children or getting married, as Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina suggested today. What these folks are afraid of is something different.
They are afraid that people will like these reforms when they are fully implemented and demand that the government continue to regulate and improve the system. Let’s start with the CBO estimate that the bill will eventually result in 30 million people getting health insurance who would not otherwise have it. Think about that number for a minute. And then ask yourself, “who could possibly think that is a bad thing?”
The answer is obvious. If you don’t like the Democratic Party, you are not going to like the idea of 30 million voters out there who only have health insurance because of the Democratic Party. Republicans don’t like this bill because they know it makes the Democratic Party stronger.
If there is a slippery slope, it isn’t that the government will use today’s ruling to start infringing on people’s rights in other areas. The slippery slope is created when a family of four, making four times the poverty rate ($88,200 annually) gets a $1,480 subsidy to help them afford their health insurance and sees their maximum out-of-pocket annual premium capped at $8,379 (or 9.5% of annual income).
The Affordable Care Act benefits too many people. Once people see those benefits they will be grateful for them and think the government is doing something nice and valuable for them. Anyone who tries to lower their subsidy or raise their cap is going to get punished. And the party that tried to destroy all of this at the Supreme Court? They’re the new enemy.
At the most basic, the Affordable Care Act will put a lot of money in a lot of struggling folks hands. And that is not good for the Republican Party that desperately needs struggling people to see the government as an unhelpful antagonist.
The new national health care plan was implemented several years ago by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. It now covers over 98% of the citizens of the Bay State. No one thinks the bill is tyrannical, because it isn’t. It does matter whether something is done on the state of federal level, but health care isn’t an issue where the jurisdictional origin makes any difference in people’s lives. The sting of being coerced into buying private health insurance you don’t want isn’t any lesser or greater if it comes from the governor’s office or the Oval Office. Republicans that have convinced themselves otherwise are delusional.
Republicans should be happy that America came up with a solution for health care that preserved a robust private health insurance industry. In that sense, the right won. But so many of them seem genuinely to believe that this health care reform spells doom for our country. Some of them are actually confused. The rest realize that the Democrats just won a great victory by winning many new adherents who will make it tougher for them to win elections and enact the kind of policies in other arenas that they would like to enact.
On the one hand, you have savvy politicians like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina …
Objection!! This assumes facts not in evidence!! The only thing he’s savy about is mutually fluffing Mr. Fluffyhead.
You neglected to mention the Medicaid expansion. Because states can opt out, and because the states who are most likely to opt out are the ones that are most full of poor people (and usually the most Republican hmm…) you’re going to get less than the 30 million that was projected.
You can say they won’t opt out, and maybe they won’t in the long run. But in the short run? Yeah.
Maybe in the short-term, but states won’t turn down free money for long when it crushes their budget to do so.
And isn’t the Fed money only offered for a limited time, like two years? So it’s come and get it while it lasts…
It’s 100% for 3 years, then goes down to 90% forever, IIRC.
We’ll see. I’m still not convinced Teahadist Governors will take it. Some Governors, like Kenneth(aka Bobby Jindal), have done nothing to prepare for the ACA.
I thought the ruling was such that refusing didn’t crush their budget.
My brother has been making an argument that seems like it might have some validity to it, but I just don’t know enough to counter it: the Constitution gives the HOUSE the authority to enact taxes, which the Senate may amend. But the ACA is the Senate bill, passed through reconciliation, not the House bill amended by the Senate. So if the mandate is a tax as the court has ruled, it violates Article 1, Section 7, which states:
“All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
Can anyone who knows more than I do please comment on this? My brother has been posting this over and over again on Facebook, and I would love to shut him up.
Huh? From what I understand it was a combined bill. Your brother wants to take this to the Supreme Court too? Tell the dude to give it up already.
Right. The lawyers from the R’s are so stupid that they missed this point … all 7000 of them.
I used to volunteer with the ACLU. For most of that time period I got to answer the letters from Texas inmates about how they were illeagally being incarcerated. Generally, their arguments fell into two different camps:
The innocents went to the lawyers so they could have a laugh over lunch. The paperwork guys I got to respond to. I signed them all “Alphonse D’Amato”.
I loved it.
The “taxing authority” is not synonymous with the definition of a tax versus a fee versus a fine. Also, the purpose of the mandate is not to raise revenue. Ideally, it raises no revenue.
But the ACA is the Senate bill, passed through reconciliation
The ACA is not the Senate bill, passed through reconciliation. The Senate passed the ACA on December 24, 2009. What passed through reconciliation several months later was a short list of tweaks to the already-passed bill.
And for the record, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 originated in the House and then passed the Senate.
The Senate has an old trick for dealing with this issue. Take a bill that the House passed and that the Senate hasn’t done anything with yet. “Amend” the bill by deleting everything in it and replacing it with the text of the entirely-different bill you wrote. Pass the amended bill and send it back to the house. Voila, a bill that raised revenue originated in the House even though the Senate wrote all the language in it.
Indeed, the ACA began its life as the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009. So while someone in the Senate definitely screwed up the severability language, they had this one covered.
In any event, and in addition to the other replies, this is the sort of internal congressional small ball that the courts would never wade in to enforce. It’s got “political question” written all over it.
I thought we were finally at the perfect tipping point when poor old judge Scalia was freaking out about “When did this happen? When did we become a nation that’s evolving toward decency?” Sorry – can’t find the exact quote.
This has been a very uplifting week. Maybe now we can all start rowing in the same direction.
I fail to understand exactly how this result could possibly hurt the D’s. If you were going to vote against Obama because of the HCR, this is now going to make you vote against Obama????? Does this make sense?
Obama can now blanket the tossup states with adds showing how ObamaCare has and is going to make your life better. He couldn’t do that before. It’d be too hard to back track if the the HCR were declared DOA.
I can see some people being against HCR and now not being against HCR because of the abiding respect for the Supreme Court. I calculate there maybe 5 of them. 3 of whom probably live in Germany, practice deep massage therapy and are named “Helga”.
Alternatively, for months the R’s have accused Obama and Co. of “overreach”. The Supremes have just given him cover for that. The R’s now have to accuse the Court of overreach. Not that that is any big deal, but the sane Republicans (AKA: Independants) aren’t going to listen to that.
Bottom Line: Moderate goodness for the Prez and his homies. Anyone voting against the Prez on Wed is voting against the Prez on Friday. Same with those voting FOR. That 5% that apparently haven’t made up their minds/aren’t sure they want to vote against the Prez/aren’t sure they want to vote FOR the Prez??? They are still on the fence. But possibly more willing to listen.
Actually, I suspect there are lots of low-info voters out there who just had a generalized “feeling” that there must be something seriously wrong with the ACA, corroborated by the Supreme Court sword of Damocles hanging over it. That is now G-O-N-E. In other words, whereas the Dems were up to now on the defensive, for the most part a very timid defensive, over the ACA, it is now the Republicans that will have to be on the defensive for their own position. And Obama’s campaign offensive will be devastating.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the supreme court deliberations. This is a classic case of RW overreach. The court (i.e. Roberts) found itself in an untenable position, having been propelled there by a massive storm of hot air. Remember, there were four justices who were immune to the BS, and presumably they made their positions known to the rest.
It’s not unlike the budget-ceiling debacle, which, contrsry to widespread belief on the left, was a victory for Obama not for the GOP. They had painted themselves into a corner and there was no way out. Actually they do this a lot.
You think low-information voters are really waiting for the SCOTUS to make up their minds?
Nah, they’re just waiting for their marching orders from Lord Limpballs.
No, but I do think the Republicans will now have a harder time convincing low-information voters that they should be scared of the ACA — since defenders of the ACA will cite the Supreme Court decision in support. You don’t have to be high-info to take in the fact that the SC affirmed something.
Sorry, perhaps I should have referred to these low-information voters as “independents”.
I think you’re right about the voters, but the big question as always these days is turnout. Rep fanatics may or may not be motivated to work and vote by these developments. Indies and that strange species of Reagan Dems may or may not decide to vote. Personally I think the enthusiasm for Obama will grow exponentially by the time November rolls around, as passion on the right wavers as it becomes clear that once upon a time, Romney did kind of a decent thing.
Yeah, but you’re assuming people are going to vote for their best interests. In many ways we’re developing a nihilistic portion of the population that just shoots down anything that might benefit “one brown person over there.”
A while back a reporter for the great local online zine Minnpost did an article in which he interviewed die-hard republicans in Minnesota who were receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit and who were getting other govt benefits too. Even people whose entire existence depended on these benefits told him they wanted smaller govt, cut taxes, etc. Even when he explained to them, clearly, what the impact would be for them. He concluded that government is just not obvious enough to these people, but I’m not sure that’s it. You have to ask for the EITC. You have to ask for medicaid or medicare and go through a process. How could they not know?
In that same county, my mother has a friend in her art group with a husband totally dependent on medicare and SSI due to brain injury. She votes for Bachmann and thinks government is too big and is opposed to universal health care.
Never underestimate the ability of Americans to screw themselves. We are very, very good at it. It’s our favorite hobby.
Agreed, Cruzy. Most of my family fall into the category you describe.
My point is, however, that was so on Wednesday and is so on Friday. Nothing has changed on that front.
What has changed is the chance of changing the minds of the “undecided” portion. The R’s have no new arguments. The D’s do. It’s as simple as that.
1. one, fuck that ACA.
IT’S OBAMACARE.
Now that it’s constitutional, fuck letting folks off the hook – CALL IT OBAMACARE.
Interestingly, I would think that kids under 26 now covered by their parents’ insurance would be more appealing to a small business employer to hire! In maybe a notsolimited sense this works as a job incentive that just needs to be promoted…Dems?
Blah. Just so no one gets the wrong idea from my comments in the thread, I think the idea that “dems lost” either because of the Medicaid rules or the commerce clause or whatever is bunk. It was a win. ACT LIKE IT and people will want to be with a winner.
Now we should immediately begin demanding expansions and modifications to the law such that we push it closer toward socialized medicine. That’s what the GOP would do, take their lap then immediately push for me. If we don’t get it right away? Fine. But let’s push.
Oh, but let’s push climate change to since it’s 10+ degrees hotter outside from average so I’m basically terrified of the future.
Gallup says Americans at large hold ACA constitutional or not in exactly the same measure as they hold it good policy or not, just like the grownups.
And even the judges, Roberts excepted.
There’s always someone who hears a different drummer.