This is partisan nonsense. The Republicans wanted tax and entitlement reform, instead they got the sequester. No one loves the clean CR, but the President is unwilling to negotiate on anything at all, so without the threat of denying the King his gold there is no way to get him to the negotiating table. He wouldn’t even deign to speak to Boehner for 17 days prior to the shutdown–in contrast to LBJ and Bill Clinton who remained in daily communications with recalcitrant Speakers during their Presidencies.
That’s a very rose colored view of history. Boehner had signed on for the grand bargain and had a very reasonable chance of getting his caucus to go for it, even if he didn’t–signs suggest he would have even accepted a split in the caucus to get it passed with Democratic support. At the very last minute, Obama demanded another $400bn in revenue even after Boehner and Obama had already agreed on a grand bargain.
There are only two possible reasons for this:
Congressional Democrats told Obama they would not approve the grand bargain as it stood. I do not believe this, I suspect there would have been Democratic opposition but not enough that it’d be unable to pass the Senate.
The President realized the Grand Bargain would make Boehner look very good, and the Republicans look very good as savvy negotiators saving the public finances. Since he was facing reelection in 2012 he decided he was not interested in what was best for the country, but was instead more interested in taking a position that allowed him (with the help of the mostly fawning liberal media) to continue to demagogue the GOP in his reelection bid.
Except he’s already delayed the corporate mandate. I also did not mention “defunding”, I mentioned a one year delay in the individual mandate. A mandate that means a less than $100 penalty in 2014–such a low amount that it has little to no revenue impact and little to no policy impact. It would preserve everything that actually matters in the ACA and cost the Democrats basically nothing.
It would also mean giving the GOP a meaningless concession that doesn’t actually give the GOP anything they want. After a full year of the exchanges running the GOP’s chances of ending any aspect of the ACA (which is basically 0% now anyway) will be unthinkable. Instead the GOP will be advocating various reforms and arguing they could “manage” the system better. (When conservatives are unable to roll back entitlements, historically they then try to make the argument that they are better at managing them than liberals.)
Delaying the individual mandate does not delay the ACA. It delays only one thing, a tax penalty for individuals who choose not to acquire insurance. Many such individuals, because of low income levels, will be exempt from the penalty (and would probably be eligible for free coverage or medicaid if they had known how to sign up, most people in this category will be “missed” enrollees who weren’t aware of what their options were), and the rest will not care. So a $95 tax penalty doesn’t really influence the implementation of Obamacare.
Long term you can’t have “free riders” in the form of healthy young people refusing to sign up for insurance and then signing up the moment they get sick, so the individual mandate is important. But the current plan is for a slow phase in, so in 2014 the individual mandate won’t actually impact the free rider problem.
The exchanges remain open, the Medicaid expansion remains, the tax subsidies for exchange plans remain, all of the reforms of the insurance market (preexisting conditions, preventive care, lifetime maximums) remain and even the medical device tax remains.
Delaying the individual mandate by one year has no impact on the actual providing of health coverage under the ACA.
I’m assuming you’re just unaware of Boehner’s public promise to cease negotiating directly with Obama. Otherwise I have no idea how you’d possibly spin that narrative sincerely.
You have accurately stated Boehner’s version of events, I agree. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to prove. You believe those to be the fact of what actually happened?
Your political analysis in the aforementioned second paragraph is naive, uninformed, and childish. In divided government the President has to compromise on all kinds of things. This idea that “previously passed legislation” is somehow sacrosanct and thus can never be changed in negotiations is very strange, and not reflective of how prior negotiations have actually happened.
In fact, all the other government shutdowns, and all the recent showdowns between this Congress and this President have actually resulted in legislative changes. So the idea that it sets a precedent is false and once that is established the rest of what you’re said is thus wholly incorrect.
I agree with you in general. In this specific case though, a majority of Congress would vote for a clean CR if Boehner would allow the vote to be held. There are more than enough moderate Republicans for passage. There is no need for negotiation, just let the vote happen.
Not likely. Next year’s open enrollment will most likely reflect higher premiums, but there is a chance they could be lower. The insurers do not have existing data to go on, and have had to make educated projections on how many people will actually sign up. Of course, every year insurance companies are making data-driven projections, but there is the danger that in plan year 2015 the data in 2014 will be drastically different than what has been projected. That could mean much higher premiums (but that may not happen.)
The $95 individual mandate could only result in higher premiums if delaying it means there would be a significant number of health young people (the individuals who keep overall costs low by paying premiums but consuming few healthcare services) who would otherwise sign up for an exchange plan but choose not to because the individual mandate has been delayed.
When you actually look at the dollars and cents economics, anyone who would actually be assessed the penalty in 2014 would actually pay far more in health insurance premiums ($100-200/mo * 12) versus the mandate penalty ($95 for the whole year.) So if they’re only making the decision utilizing a strict out of pocket cost benefit analysis they wouldn’t be getting health care anyway.
I speculate the individual mandate won’t significantly affect behavior until it is larger. I think right now some people will get health insurance from exchanges at a couple hundred bucks a month because they want the stability and ease of use of having an active insurance plan and are fine with that costing money. I speculate individuals that are not so inclined and are planning to be “free riders” who sign up if and only if they get sick and need coverage, are probably going to do that anyway when the only penalty is a $95 tax hit.
Boehner actually said he would not negotiate directly with Obama in general because he found it unproductive during the Grand Bargain negotiations and later negotiations. He has not said he wouldn’t take the President’s call or he wouldn’t be open to negotiations. But Boehner has taken the view that one on one negotiations between him and the President are not worthwhile. That means negotiations where he travels to the White House and him and the President try to hash out a deal, he’s publicly said he would not do.
That is not the same thing as saying he doesn’t want to talk to the President. Boehner has actually repeatedly said he wanted to talk to the President prior to the shutdown.
No one has an alternative narrative. It’s the uncontested narrative–that Boehner and Obama had a deal, and Obama then raised the revenue by $400bn (I may be off on that exact number), at which point Boehner walked due to Obama’s bad faith.
I should mention I favor a clean CR–but unless some Republicans jump ship I do not see that happening. Once the GOP let the 52 dictate to the 180, they became locked into a course that it isn’t easy to get out of without harming themselves even further.
The reason I suspect they may go for a delay on the individual mandate is because it’s a meaningless gesture. The President and Boehner can both say they did something but it has no real negative impact on the President’s healthcare reform. I do think there is a very low chance of the President agreeing to anything while the government has shut down. He’s drawn a line in the sand on that (although he drew a line on Syria, too)–so that’s why I’m predicting a short term CR followed by a negotiation in which Boehner gets something he can put in his hat as a feather while the President gets to put the feather in his hat that he ended the shutdown and didn’t cave on anything serious like defunding the ACA.
There are a few Democrats that have floated a CR with no medical device tax instead, which is another possibility. Although to me the $30bn in revenue from the device tax is a bigger deal than the $95 penalty, which I believe would probably bring in less than $3bn in revenue in 2014. So if we’re going to alter anything I think the $3bn hit is better than the $30bn hit.
The CR that the Senate passed–the one that’s ostensibly the Democratic position in this dispute now–spends $217 billion less on discretionary programs than Obama’s original budget. Let’s review the facts about the FY2014 budget–these figures are for the planned budget in FY2014:
[ul][li]2009: Obama’s budget has $1.203 trillion[/li][li]2010: Congress enacted $1.185 trillion[/li][li]2011: In April, Paul Ryan offered a budget plan totalling $1.095 trillion. The August debt-limit compromise then brought the total down to $1.066 trillion[/li][li]2012: The sequester cuts the budget again to $986 billion. This is the budget in the CR.[/ul][/li]Even Grover Norquist–in a Post interview with Ezra Klein–agrees the GOP has done very well in cutting the budget, and he’s worried grandstanders like Ted Cruz are going to upset that strategy:
This is incorrect. Read Matt Bai’s long reporting on the debt ceiling, and then read the criticism of Matt Bai’s article from the left and right. That should give you a better sense of the facts, and which are in dispute.
I turned up some right-wing blog posts about it but nothing substantial or meaty, so maybe Richard Parker can help with those. But that should get you started.
That’s about as far as I need to go. It confirms the President and Boehner had a deal, and the President wanted more revenue. No reason to read even one more sentence.
I see this as a major power play by the House Republicans … especially the 'mini bills" to fund those programs they like. If the House gets away with this, it means that only those programs the House approves of will be funded. The House is supposed to negotiate with the Senate to come up with a compromise bill that satisfied both. But the House has decided unilaterally that it won’t fund Obamacare and that’s that. Today, Obamacare, tomorrow, every last program in government. Believe it.
If the House Republicans win via this tactic, you can be sure they will shut down the government and default on debts until only the House will determine which laws get funded, and hence, it will be the only viable branch of government, the Senate and the Presidency being reduced to vestigial organs. That’s the REAL reason the Senate and the President won’t cave. If they cave, they become powerless.