AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Event Reminder:
COMMUNITY PRESENTATION: THE STATE BUDGET EXPLAINED
Now that a budget has been approved for the state, what does it mean for New Hampshire?
What is included in budget, and what was left out? What does the new spending plan mean for our state’s needs including human services, infrastructure, and Medicaid? How will it affect our taxes and what does this all mean for NH’s future?
Join us for a presentation from Jeff McLynch, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI), followed by a question and answer period.
Thursday, October 15
6:15-8:00 pm
Meredith Community Center, 1 Circle Drive
Mr. McLynch is an expert on the complexities of the NH budget and the budget process. The NHFPI is an independent organization that explores and promotes public policies that foster economic opportunity and prosperity for all N.H. residents. It also produces regular reports on the fiscal and economic challenges facing our state.
This event is free and everyone is invited to attend. Snacks and water will be provided.
The presentation will be preceded at 5:30 by a brief meeting of the Belknap County Democrats.
For information, contact Dave Pollak at davepollak@gmail.com.
2. Van Ostern Rolls Out First List of Endorsements
Over 500 Community Leader Announce Support For Colin Van Ostern For Governor
from NH Labor News, nhlabornews.com, October 14, 2015
MANCHESTER, NH — Less than a week after Colin Van Ostern announced he is running for Governor in 2016 to help build a brighter future and stronger economy for the people of New Hampshire, more than 500 grassroots supporters in nearly 100 towns across the state have already reached out to join his campaign as supporters.
“Across New Hampshire, hundreds of community leaders and volunteers are excited to work together to build an even brighter future and stronger economy for the people of our state, and I’m proud and grateful for this extraordinary support,” said Colin Van Ostern. “This will be a grassroots powered campaign from Day One, and as Governor I will always focus on doing what’s right for the people of New Hampshire and the future we will build together.”
SUPPORTERS INCLUDE:
- U.S. Congresswoman Ann McLane Kuster
- More than 30 New Hampshire state representatives
- Seven current and former state senators representing districts spanning from Maine to Vermont – and ranging in age from 36 to 95 years old.
- Two great former chairs of the New Hampshire Democratic Party – Kathy Sullivan & New Helms — and one former house Democratic leader, Peter Burling.
- Business and labor leaders from the southern tier to the North Country.
- Numerous educators; many longtime advocates for women’s health; environmental leaders; and respected nonprofit leaders like Lew Feldstein
- Community leaders and activists who have helped elect great New Hampshire Governors like John Lynch, Maggie Hassan, and Jeanne Shaheen.
3. About that "NH Can't Afford" Excuse...
from 10 Wealthiest States in the United States
by Dan Blystone, investopedia.com, October 10, 2014
7. New Hampshire
Median Household Income: $64,230
Millionaire Households: 6.65%
Population: 1.327 million (2014)
Unemployment Rate: 3.8% (April 2015)
Persons below poverty level: 8.7% (2009-2013)
Millionaire Households: 6.65%
Population: 1.327 million (2014)
Unemployment Rate: 3.8% (April 2015)
Persons below poverty level: 8.7% (2009-2013)
Of all the states on our list, New Hampshire has the lowest percentage of people living below the poverty level and a very low unemployment rate. Manufacturing, healthcare and tourism are a few of the Granite State's leading industries.
REALITY CHECK: Kelly Ayotte Can’t Change The Facts, No Matter How Many Web Videos She Puts Out
by Ttaraila, nhdp.org, October 13, 2015
In New Web Video, Ayotte Touts Her Legislation That’s Really “A Business-Friendly Trojan Horse” That Means “Ripping Off Workers”
National Partnership For Women And Families Called The Proposal An “Empty Promise” That “Would Give Workers Less Flexibility And Less Pay”
Concord, N.H. – In a new web video paying lip service to paid leave, Kelly Ayotte continued trying to rewrite the facts about her record of putting Washington special interests before New Hampshire families and small businesses.
In the video, Ayotte tried to hide the fact that she said she “certainly” thinks guaranteed paid leave is “an issue that should be addressed by employers rather than mandated by the government.” Also in the video, Ayotte touted her bill with Mitch McConnell that would would force workers to choose between overtime pay and leave time, a proposal which has been called “a business-friendly Trojan horse” that means “ripping off workers.”
“New Hampshire voters will see right through Kelly Ayotte’s sham bill that would allow big businesses to ‘make out like bandits’ while ‘ripping off workers,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley. “No matter how many web videos Kelly Ayotte puts out, she can’t change the facts about her record of putting Washington special interests before New Hampshire’s families and small businesses.”
Here’s what they’re saying about Ayotte’s sham bill:
Commenting on the House version of Ayotte’s proposal, Eileen Appelbaum, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted that under this proposal, employers “can make out like bandits.”
Judith Warner, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, added in TIME Magazine, “The problem with this lovely sounding legislation is that few employees these days can ‘afford’ to give up overtime pay, which for many — those in low-wage jobs in particular — is just the extra bit of money that keeps food on the table.” Warner cautioned voters not to be “taken in by its warm-and-fuzzy name. This is business-friendly legislation of the baldest kind.”
In a report on the House version of Ayotte’s bill, the National Partnership for Women and Families called the proposal an “empty promise” that “would give workers less flexibility and less pay.”
5. TinFoil Hatters: Who Cares What's True?
by William Tucker, miscellanyblue.com, October 13, 2015
Yesterday, state Rep. Al Baldasaro took to Facebook to heap scorn on First Lady Michelle Obama. The Londonderry Republican posted a memeshowing an African-American woman staring intently at her smartphone while everyone else in the photo is standing solemnly with hands over their hearts. “Michelle texting during the Pledge of Allegiance,” it read.
“Shameful and many Democrats don’t care!” Baldasaro wrote.
“What a class act,” replied Rep. Eric Eastman (R-Nashua).
“[C]lassy,” echoed Rep. Jeff Oligny (R-Plaistow).
The image, which has been bouncing around the internet since April, was captured during the 2015 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. It’s not Michelle Obama.
The woman on the phone is Helena Andrews, Washington Post columnist and author of “Bitch is the New Black.” After the image went viral, Andrews acknowledged she was the woman pictured on her phone. “Apparently someone saw me on TV ‘texting’ during the dinner,” she tweeted. “FTR I was taking notes. On my phone. Because it’s 2015.”
That didn’t stop Baldasaro’s Facebook friends from blaming Michelle Obama. A dozen left messages mocking the First Lady. And it didn’t take long for the insults to turn racist.
“i am a Republican & i could care less what this P.oS does during the pledge, it would insult me even more if she actually said the pledge knowing her disdain for the country,” one man wrote, “she could diddle herself during the pledge as far as i am concerned we all knew she was never proud to be an American why would we expect her to say a pledge knowing her views? i say give her a banana & let her do her thing !!!!”
AND NATIONALLY
6. Post-Debate
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How the GOP lost the Democratic presidential debate
by John Hudak, brookings.edu, October 13, 2015
People will call tonight’s Democratic presidential debate boring, too issues-oriented, and lacking catchy moments. And that wasn’t a bad thing for Democrats. In fact, it was a good thing. The debate was not about a group of people tearing each other down; instead it was a debate about ideas. And that’s perfectly acceptable in a democracy. Viewers—prospective voters—heard candidates’ ideas, policy proposals, and the manner in which they differed from each other. What did they not see? Name calling, personal attacks, and petty politics.
Most people vote for president based on who they think will be a strong, effective, steady leader who communicates effectively, compassionately, and on a level that most Americans can relate to. They do not elect the best entertainer. This is even true when the country elects an entertainer! (See Ronald Reagan, known as the Great Communicator, not the Talented Actor.)
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were surely not as entertaining as Donald Trump. Instead, the Democratic candidates for president looked…well…presidential. That is a huge win for the Democratic Party. Even the lower tier candidates—O’Malley, Webb and Chaffee—looked more presidential than the memorable performances from this year’s Republican debates.
Admittedly, this is a disservice to some Republicans. Many candidates have climbed the debate stage—varsity or J.V.—and wanted to talk issues and a vision of America’s future. Instead, they were overwhelmed by a tsunami of an abrasive personality that overshadowed real substantive policy discussions.
Instead, the Democratic debate told us more about Republicans than Democrats. The debate reinforced pre-existing stereotypes about Republicans—that of a party in disarray. The presidential campaign is dominated by a laughable candidate who overshadows all other candidates not by the virtue of his ideas, but by the force of his personality and his magnetism of media attention. In the meantime, serious candidates are the victims of a politics more interested in entertainment and less in electability.
At the same time, matters grow worse for the Republican Party. The House of Representatives is neutered from overcoming a leadership crisis born from the resignation of John Boehner. Rather than smoothly transitioning to a new House Speaker, Republicans are spinning their wheels and fighting as hard with each other as they typically do with Democrats. The result has been a party that has thrust before the American public an image of a party ill-equipped and unwilling to take on the task of governing. That is a challenge Republicans are struggling to overcome, and Democrats tonight made the challenge even harder for the GOP.
Rather than continuing the circus environment of their previous two debates, the GOP should step up and do something unheard of in the polarized circles of today’s politics: take a cue from across the aisle. If the GOP debates looked more like tonight’s Democratic debate, it would do much to tear down the wall of stereotypes about Republicans’ lack of readiness to lead—a label that couldn’t have been fathomed on the party of Reagan 30 years ago.
The starkest contrast between the parties tonight occurred when Sen. Bernie Sanders said, the American public is sick and tired of hearing about her (Clinton’s) damn emails. How would that line have been delivered in a Republican debate…from one Republican to another? It would not have been mature; it would not have been nurturing; it would not have been cooperative. It surely would not have ended in a sincere handshake. It would likely have been a nasty, personal attack launched in a vain effort at political gain.
What Americans saw tonight from Democrats was a party ready to lead. They saw candidates who were not best friends, but were not worst enemies. My former colleague, John Geer, wrote a book highlighting the difference between pure attack ads and ads that show differences between candidates. Geer argued that the latter helped inform the electorate about their choices in a manner that advances democratic values. Tonight, those “ads” came from the lips of the candidates themselves and offered candidates clear choices without hateful speech and petty personal sniping.
Those are the types of distinctions voters want to vote for, and so far in the campaign season, American voters have only found that distinction from one party. The GOP is not that party. Republicans have 13 months to turn that around. Tonight, Hillary Clinton, et al, offered a guidebook on how to do just that. It’s in Republicans’ hands—and the hands of the Donald—as to whether they will adopt that approach and save their party and their chances at occupying the Oval Office.
First Democratic Presidential Debate Provides Stark Contrast with GOP Field
by J.P. Green, thedemocraticstrategist.org, October 14, 2015
What was missing last night was any trace of the bullying, name-calling, internecine acrimony, snarling ridicule, bigotry, misogyny, rudeness and general chaos, which characterized the GOP presidential campaign. What alert viewers saw last night was a debate which was remarkable for its civility, sobriety and even cordiality.
Sure the candidates cast a few zingers toward their opponents during the evening, but all of it was in the ballpark of grown-ups respectfully airing their differences, while affirming their common ground. The false equivalency journalists will have a tough time of trying to link the Democratic and Republican debates as similar.
And all of that is just the tone part.
In terms of substance, credit the Democrats with the mettle to address critical issues all but ignored by the Republicans in their debates. In their Huffpo article "9 Issues Democrats Just Debated That Have Been Almost Completely Ignored By Republicans," Nick Wing and Ruby Mellen note that Democrats discussed in significant detail racial injustice, campaign finance reform, domestic surveillance, Wall St. reform, income inequality, college affordability and diplomacy. Try to find a salient quote about any of those topics from a Republican presidential candidate in their two debates. Tammy Luhby reports at CNN Money that "Democrats said 'middle class' 11 times; the Republicans just three." Luhby adds, "the Democrats mentioned "income inequality" six times, while the Republicans never uttered it."
As for the "who won" discussion, so far NYT and WaPo pundits give the nod to Clinton for her polished presentation and well-crafted answers. But Sanders held his own and projected an image of a candidate with genuine principles and real concern for struggling Americans. Gov. O'Malley's closing statement was startlingly good -- where has this guy been hiding?
As of this writing, it's unclear whether Vice President Biden will join the fray. The strong performances of Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley don't leave a lot of daylight for Biden to squeeze in, although he also would bring debating skills and gravitas to the Democratic campaign, which the current stable of Republican candidates lack.
There can't be much doubt, however, that the Democratic Party had a very good night and will buzz well at water coolers across the nation today. What swing voters who watched the Democratic debate last night saw was a party with three strong, credible and exceptionally well-informed leaders, any two of whom would provide an impressive presidential ticket --- especially compared to the "leaders" of today's GOP.
7. The Student Debt Problem is Getting Worse
Student Debt Is Worse Than You Think
by Kevin Carey, nytimes.com, October 7, 2015
After a series of blockbuster hearings held 25 years ago on abuses in the higher education industry, Congress created a system to protect undergraduates from risky student loans.
But two weeks ago, the Education Department released a trove of new data suggesting that the system is failing and that, at some colleges, the saddling of students with loans they cannot afford to pay down is far more dire than anyone knew.
The loan crisis hits hardest at colleges enrolling large numbers of students from low-income backgrounds. These undergraduates have to borrow for college, then often have difficulty finding well-paying jobs after graduation — if they graduate at all.
As a result, they struggle to repay their loans. The colleges with the lowest student-loan repayment rates include many for-profit colleges, but also some public and private nonprofit colleges, including a substantial number of historically black institutions. Even some wealthier, more selective colleges turn out to have a bigger student loan problem than previously realized.
Along with recent research finding that student loan defaults are heavily concentrated among the most economically marginalized students, the new data suggests that debt is a major financial obstacle for people who already face barriers to opportunity.
When Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia led the investigation in the early 1990s, Congress found widespread fraud by for-profit colleges. Some trade schools had gone so far as to grab people from welfare lines to sign them up for loans without their consent. The loans were never repaid, and the colleges kept the money.
In response, Congress created a rule called the cohort default rate. Every year, the Education Department calculates the percentage of borrowers who have recently left a given college and have defaulted on their federal-government-backed loans. If the default rate is too high, the college is kicked out of the federal financial aid system. The rule was an immediate success — more than 1,500 for-profit colleges were pushed out. A number of public and nonprofit colleges were also forced to bring their default rates down.
But the system has limitations. Only colleges with a default rate above 30 percent for three consecutive years, or above 40 percent in any single year, are expelled from the financial aid system. And students who default more than two to three years after leaving college don’t count as defaulters. Nor do students who manage to avoid default, but struggle to repay their loans.
In September, the department made a different calculation. Instead of default rates, the department calculated nonrepayment rates, which include both defaulters and borrowers who have never paid a single dollar of principal on their loans.
The nonrepayment category includes people who are only paying interest, have delayed making payments by enrolling in graduate school or are getting loan extensions. The nonrepayment rates were calculated over a longer time period: at one, three, five and seven years after students leave college.
Some of the numbers are startling. American National University — a for-profit chain offering degrees in business, health care and information technology, both online and at 30 campuses in six Midwestern states — has an official default rate of 8.5 percent, well below the national average of 11.8 percent. But its five-year nonrepayment rate is 71 percent. Even after seven years, most of the university’s students, the large majority of whom borrow, have failed to pay back a penny of their loans.
How is this possible? Because, as American National’s Department of Repayment Success web page helpfully explains, students are legally allowed to defer or otherwise delay making their loan payments based on economic hardship, continuing education and other factors.
Of course, interest accumulates in the meantime. This is “repayment success” only in the sense that it successfully helps students postpone paying their loans long enough to push the moment of debt crisis beyond the federal default-rate window and keep American National eligible for more federal aid. Proving economic hardship is likely to be easy, since the typical former student earns only $22,400 a year 10 years after entering college.
Some more mainstream colleges also have significant nonrepayment rates. Georgia State and the Universities of Cincinnati, Houston, Louisville, South Florida and Alabama all have single-digit default rates but have five-year nonrepayment rates of over 20 percent. At the University of Memphis, 35 percent of students have not paid down principal after five years. More than half of the students who borrowed to attend the for-profit University of Phoenix, which enrolls hundreds of thousands of students, have been unable to pay back a dollar of their loan principal after five years.
All told, over 700 colleges and branch campuses, many of them small proprietary schools, but also some public and private nonprofit institutions, have over half of their borrowers fail to pay down any debt after seven years. Nearly all of those colleges remain eligible for federal financial aid.
Among both public and private nonprofit institutions, the debt problem is most acute when students with very little money attend colleges with very little money. All 25 of the public universities with the highest five-year nonrepayment rates are historically black institutions. Of the 25 private colleges with the worst nonrepayment rates, 22 are historically black. One example, Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., has a 12.9 percent default rate but a 78.2 percent nonrepayment rate.
Historically black colleges are neither unusually expensive nor profligate institutions. Most have served their communities for decades or longer, enduring racism and inadequate funding while enrolling young people who are often low-income, first-generation college students. As a result, despite the fact that tuition at historically black colleges is often much lower than at well-heeled private colleges, a vast majority of their students borrow.
That so many graduates of black colleges struggle to repay their loans may exacerbate racial wealth disparities. These nonrepayment rates, moreover, do not include the private loans that many students take out once their federal aid is exhausted, or the debt that parents are increasingly carrying to pay for their children’s college educations.
The new data may prompt Congress to revisit its system for ensuring that students who take on debt have a fighting chance to pay it back.
8. Jeb's Un-Health Plan
Jeb Bush’s Low-Energy Health Care Plan
Progress Report, by CAP Action War Room, October 13, 2015
The Affordable Care Act Works, Jeb Bush’s Plan Doesn’t
Jeb Bush left repealing the Affordable Care Act off of his list of top policy priorities when he announced his candidacy earlier this summer. It seemed like a possible nod to the fact that after more than 50 repeal votes, two Supreme Court rulings, and one presidential election, at least one GOP candidate understood that the ACA is a historic law that is working for millions of Americans. No such luck. Today, Jeb unveiled a health policy proposal that is the exact opposite: another conservative effort to rip health insurance from millions who have gained coverage and take us back to the old, broken system of before. Here’s what you need to know about his plan:
High-energy on repeal. In order to make way for his “innovative” new plan, Jeb Bush would repeal the Affordable Care Act. While he vaguely suggested he would provide a transition for the more than 17 million Americans who have gained coverage under the law, he doesn’t seem to think details on what that would look like are important enough to include in his campaign’s health care plan. But the details are perfectly clear on what repealing the ACA would mean.
- More than 17 million people would lose their insurance. So far 17.6 million people have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, predicts that repealing the ACA would result in 19 million people losing their insurance coverage by 2016 alone. Many of those who would lose insurance are middle- and working-class or sick Americans who could not afford health insurance coverage before the Affordable Care Act.
- Women would be charged more than men. An important tenant of the ACA is removing “gender rating,” which allowed insurance companies to charge women more for coverage, deny coverage for gender-specific reasons, and offer plans that inadequately cover women’s health needs. Jeb’s plan would reinstate the old, broken system under which women paid $1 billion more than men each year in premiums for the same benefits.
- The federal budget deficit would increase by $137 billion. In his speech announcing the plan, Jeb said his plan would help achieve his signature campaign promise of 4 percent economic growth, ignoring the fact that according to the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, repealing the ACA would cost $137 billion over 10 years.
Innovation Isn’t Just a Hashtag. Although Jeb claims that his health care plan is all about promoting innovation, progress on this front requires real reforms, not just a hash tag. To achieve real innovation, we need to encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in drugs that truly improve care, while keeping costs affordable for patients. For example, the Center for American Progress’s plan would use independent research on a drug’s benefit to patients compared to other drugs to inform payment, so that prices reflect a drug’s value.
- Jeb blames the FDA, when he should be blaming “Pharma Bro.” Jeb accuses the FDA and government regulation of slowing down innovation, and wants to reduce regulation of the pharmaceutical market. But the recent example of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which jacked up the price of a 62-year old drug by more than 4000 percent overnight, shows that the current system is broken.
- Instead of allowing outrageous profiteering, we should be paying for drugs based on their value to patients. CAP has a plan to do just that, as explained in this new CNBC op-ed. CAP’s plan would link payment to a drug’s effectiveness, cap patient cost-sharing to improve affordability, and make sure that government subsidies for R&D are generating real returns for patients instead of just subsidizing corporate profits.
Rehash of tired, unworkable ideas. Jeb’s health care plan is nothing more than a rehash of old ideas. The so-called plan contains the same stale proposals that conservatives have been shopping around since there was an Affordable Care Act to talk about repealing. His plan is light on details, but where it is clear, the results would be disastrous for the American people.
- Block-grants Medicaid. In the announcement of his health care plan, Jeb touted his health care record in Florida, and proposed applying those principles to the whole country. Like many Republican plans before his, Jeb’s proposal advocates for block-granting Medicaid and giving states control of the program. This is just another example of how low-income Americans would be particularly hard-hit by Jeb’s plan. The Kaiser Family Foundation projects that block granting Medicaid could throw 14 to 20 million people off of the vital program. And if other states were to implement the ideas that Jeb did in Florida, working families could face disastrous consequences. In Florida, Jeb’s Medicaid proposal led to Floridians losing their doctors and their plans and a reduction in the overall quality of care received.
- Ties tax credits to age, not income. Jeb proposes providing tax credits to Americans to help pay for health care coverage. But like Marco Rubio and Scott Walker’s health care plans, Jeb’s proposes tying tax credits to age instead of income. This regressive tax system would harm low-income Americans who would not receive adequate tax credits to help cover the cost of their coverage.
- Removes protections for those with pre-exiting conditions. Thanks to the ACA, the 129 million Americans living with pre-existing conditions no longer have to worry about losing health coverage or facing significant premium increases simply because of their condition. Jeb’s plan would revert back to the old, broken system, by offering no coverage guarantee for people with pre-existing conditions. Under his plan, like under many other GOP proposals, those with pre-existing conditions would only be covered if they can afford to maintain continuous coverage. Otherwise they will be forced into the “high-risk pools” that have never proven feasible or affordable.
BOTTOM LINE: Jeb calls his plan the “Conservative Plan for 21st Century Health,” but in reality, his proposal is little more than a rehash of tired, failed, conservative policies. Instead of acknowledging and building on the ACA’s success, Jeb’s health care proposal would strip coverage away from millions of Americans, bringing back the unworkable system of the past. After more than 50 repeal votes, two Supreme Court cases, and years of partisan fighting, it is time that Jeb and his Republican peers acknowledge that the ACA is here to stay.
9. The Post-Truth Party
http://www.washingtonmonthly.
GOP Chaos: Post-Truth vs Post-Policy
by Nancy LeTourneau, washingtonmonthly.com, October 10, 2015
The word of the day in politics seems to be “chaos,” as in the chaos that is currently gripping the Republicans in their search for a new Speaker of the House. My tendency is to not get into the specifics of the process, but to take a look at the bigger picture of how the Republicans got to this point.
In order to examine something like this, you have to pick a particular starting point in history - which is always a problem. But because we have to begin somewhere, let’s go with the day President Obama was inaugurated. We know that was when Republican leaders made the fateful decision on a strategy to deal with the fact that they had not only lost the presidency, but the House and Senate had maintained (and grown) their Democratic majorities. Their plan was to simply obstruct anything and everything the Democrats tried to do - even if they were things Republicans had previously supported. In other words, instead of presenting policy options, they would simply oppose. That’s why some pundits began to suggest thatRepublicans were post-policy.
In order to be successful in this strategy, they fanned the flames of racism, anger and fear at the newly elected President. That led Sen. Mitch McConnell (then Minority Leader in the Senate) to say that his number one goal was to make sure that Obama was a one-term president - even at a time when the country was trying to climb out of the Great Recession and extricate ourselves from two wars in the Middle East. But Senator Lindsay Graham said it even more bluntly:
Anytime you challenge the president, Obama, it’s good politics.
That strategy worked well for Republicans in the 2010 midterms, but didn’t stop Barack Obama from being elected to a second term. And then, in the 2014 midterms, Republicans gained control of the Senate, giving them a majority in both houses of Congress. At the time, Boehner and McConnell promised that they were now ready to govern and made great promises about their ability to do so.
Americans have entrusted Republicans with control of both the House and Senate. We are humbled by this opportunity to help struggling middle-class Americans who are clearly frustrated by an increasing lack of opportunity, the stagnation of wages, and a government that seems incapable of performing even basic tasks.
Looking ahead to the next Congress, we will honor the voters’ trust by focusing, first, on jobs and the economy. Among other things, that means a renewed effort to debate and vote on the many bills that passed the Republican-led House in recent years with bipartisan support, but were never even brought to a vote by the Democratic Senate majority…
Enacting such measures early in the new session will signal that the logjam in Washington has been broken, and help to establish a foundation of certainty and stability that both parties can build upon…
Will these bills single-handedly turn around the economy? No. But taking up bipartisan bills aimed at helping the economy that have already passed the House is a sensible and obvious first step.
We all know how that turned out. By February, the Republicans in Congress were engaged in a fierce battle over shutting down the Department of Homeland Security because of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. And Speaker Boehner’s surprise resignation was an attempt to buy off the Freedom Caucus to avoid a total government shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood. So much for “bipartisan bills aimed at helping the economy,” huh?
What happened is that members of the Freedom Caucus got elected to be post-policy and to see their agenda of slash and burn implemented. But establishment Republicans wanted to go back to the good-old-days when you don’t alienate most of the country by talking so truthfully about your real intentions. In other words, they knew that governing meant pivoting away from being post-policy and going back to the Republican standard of being what David Roberts called post-truth.
Republicans thus talk about “taxes” and “spending” and “regulation” in the abstract, since Americans oppose them in the abstract even as they support their specific manifestations. They talk about cutting the deficit even as they slash taxes on the rich and launch unfunded wars. They talk about free markets even as they subsidize fossil fuels. They talk about American exceptionalism even as they protect fossil-fuel incumbents and fight research and infrastructure investments.
In short, Republicans have mastered post-truth politics. They’ve realized that their rhetoric doesn’t have to bear any connection to their policy agenda. They can go through different slogans, different rationales, different fights, depending on the political landscape of the moment. They need not feel bound by previous slogans, rationales, or fights. They’ve realized that policy is policy and politics is politics and they can push for the former while waging the latter battle on its own terms. The two have become entirely unmoored.
This is what some people are referring to when they say that the conflict between the Freedom Caucus and establishment Republicans is all about tactics rather than substance. The all agree on the latter, the establishment folks just don’t want the lunatics to be so damn truthful about it!
Putting the genie back in the bottle isn’t sitting very well right now with the Freedom Caucus. But everyone seems to think that Rep. Paul Ryan is just the one to bridge that divide. We’ll see. If Erick Erickson and the folks at Red State are any reflection of that, it doesn’t look promising. This tells us a lot about what the post-policy folks are looking for:
Others who are more in line with Ryan’s principles and goals have the same questions about him that linger over Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and, in a different context, over Chief Justice Roberts - whether this polite, intelligent, reasonable and eloquent spokesman for our ideas really has the spine to play the stubborn bad cop and sacrifice some of his own reputation for reasonableness when it’s necessary to get to the dirty, knife-fighting business of brinksmanshipwith ruthless progressives of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid variety…The fact that Ryan has never been willing to do the dirty work to seek out either the Speakership or the Presidency suggests a virtue of character but a deficit of political ruthlessness of this sort. Ryan is likely to seek much-needed common ground between House moderates, the Freedom Caucus, the Senate leadership of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Senate hardliners of the Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) variety; whether that exists, and whether he has the necessary bloody-mindedness to impose it on them, is another story.
The highlights are mine. Those words give you some idea of how the Freedom Caucus sees the game of post-policy politics.
FINALLY
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