Karl's Bog

The murky world of politics (and other things) as seen from the Bog

Time to read:

3–4 minutes

Tag: congressional dysfunction

  • Trump’s Needed Apologies – 4 in an unending series

    Donald Trump is redefining America as a third world country in which the press is a tool of the government, political opponents are threatened with jail, truth is an unnecessary luxury, elections are stolen by the elites and only the fervor of your supporters matters.

    It is these last two items that are of most concern.  The campaign has insinuated for some time that the election is “rigged”.  It seems that the only way Mr. Trump loses is if the fight is unfair.  Otherwise, he is so smart, talented and charismatic that such a result is inconceivable.  Regardless of the laughability of that statement, if enough of his followers are rabid enough to believe the election process is unfair or is somehow controlled by some outside agency like the “elites”, we could see the beginning of a long, slow, tortuous trip to third world status for the several countries that used to be the USA.

    There is no discussion of how this “rigging” happens.  Maybe through voter fraud from illegal immigrants recruited by the Clintons.  Maybe just outright cheating in the vote count by election officials.  Or the Russians could be hacking the voting systems to make sure the Trumpanistas don’t win.  Perhaps it is through the “crooked media”.  Interestingly, it is the media that made him in the first place by reporting on all the outrageous things he says.  That attracted many people.  As the election grows nearer, more people are paying attention.  The press still reports on everything he says but to a larger audience with more uncommitted voters. The expanded audience is more likely to be skeptical of Trump’s claims.  He doesn’t like that.  Therefore, rigged.

    However, it would be a mistake to blame everything on the Donald.  He has a 30 year or more platform of growing distrust in the government sparked primarily but not exclusively by the right.  There are multiple possible starting points from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich.  All of them and their successors in Republican politics have railed against government being the problem, being in the way, being too big, too slow, too impersonal and more recently just inept and incapable.   Bernie Sanders and his band made similar points about the failure of governmentto execute its responsibilities.  Oddly enough, those two threads are closely related.  And they are not wrong.  Broadly speaking, they are about Congress not doing its job for a very long time.  Congress has focused not on solving problems but on serving conflicting philosophies.  Their approaches to politics has created more polarized  constituencies and allowed them to hold up any legislation that either creates a political risk for them or fails to meet their philosophy completely.  ACA is a good case.  Democrats can’t admit it has any flaws and Republicans can’t admit it has any benefits.  So it can’t get any better and no progress can be made on afordable healthcare.  The same logic applies to immigration, jobs, economy, inequality and security.  No progress, no agreement.  It leads to a lot of bubbling in the political and social cauldrons.

    So what do I want him to apologize for this time?  For using the wretched situation our Congress has created to inflame passions instead of offering solutions.  I know that he has put forward some immigration, tax, education and other plans.  But he prefers, it seems, to incite the crowds to jeer the press corps and cast outrage at those who oppose him.  And he continually takes the spotlight off his plans anytime there is anything that dims the light on him! This leaves him behind in the polls (which irritates him to no end) and causes him to cast about for excuses.

    On November 9th, I hope to have heard a concession and a plea to Congress to stop fighting begin working on solutions regardless of who wins.  America can’t afford more division.

  • Obamacare – Another Congressional Success Story

    Congress takes a lot of abuse!  Their popularity is at all time lows.  Most Americans now claim they would vote even their own representatives out of office.  They never cooperate with the other party!  Well, maybe that claim isn’t quite accurate.  In fact, I think they cooperate all the time!  Let’s look at one example of a program where the parties in Washington have done a wonderful job of working with each other to divide and conquer the difficult issues facing the country!

    We’ll look at Obamacare or, as it is more formally known, ACA.  (Note – Because many people like ACA but hate Obamacare, I need to clarify that they are in fact the same thing.  Sorry).  I’ll call it ACA because that’s easier to type.  This is the president’s signature program and illustrates what Congress can accomplish when they really put their hearts into it.

    The original goal of ACA was to provide affordable health insurance to most of the 15% (47 million) of Americans who are uninsured.  The short-term goal is 7 million by March 2014 and an estimate of about 16 million by year-end 2014 in a combination of Medicaid and ACA with the rest coming over time.  Note that about 12 million of the 47 million are illegal immigrants and not eligible.  To date, the results are unknown.  They can’t be until initial sign-ups are completed in December.  So both parties agreed to make up their own facts and distort the few honest projections that exist.  Problem solved!

    ACA is intended to have the work and administration done by the private sector with the rules being set by the feds.  Thus, all uninsured Americans will need to purchase a health care insurance policy from a private carrier.  All private carriers will stop “rating up” individuals for pre-existing conditions and will give up the ability to decline coverage. That creates a larger group of insured people.  To the extent that people who are uninsured actually participate, there is a downward pressure on the price of insurance.  However, the feds also set rules on the minimum coverages for individual plans as well as ending rating for pre-existing condition and requiring guaranteed issuance.  They chose a minimum coverage that is a good deal higher than many people were voluntarily choosing.  (In the interest of full disclosure, the selection of a “floor” preceded Congress’ new program of cooperation.  It occurred during the passage of the law which was a fully partisan event and includes all the Democrat’s pet health issues like mental health, preventive medicine and erectile dysfunction).  Not that these are bad coverages but their mandatory inclusion in all policies can only be an upward force on price.  As part of their agreement, the Congressional Republicans agreed only to talk about the upward pressures while the Democrats agreed to deal only with the downward pressures.  That gives each of them own set of talking points.  It also avoids the ugly prospect of talking to each other about how both their positions might be true.  That, after all, might offend the base voters that the politicians so carefully selected through redistricting.

    Also, as was evident in the inquisition of Kathleen Sibelius this week, the parties agreed to split up the “bad guys”.  The Republicans agreed to put all the blame on Obama and the Democrats who passed the bill (more than three years ago) without a single Republican vote.  The Democrats agreed to blame the IT contractors and insurance companies.  Both agreed not to do a real investigation into the true causes of the website malfunctions.  To do that of course  would require waiting for the facts to become known and that would delay the theater.

    The final part of the cooperation pact was to avoid discussing why both parties have done nothing substantive in over three years to fix or to test the suspected problems in ACA.  That agreement gave the Republicans over forty opportunities to pass symbolic and pointless votes to repeal ACA without having to help their constituents by improving it.  The Democrats gained the chance to stay in the background and not have to appear as though they were criticizing the plan that they wrote.

    So, far from disagreeing about everything, the parties in Washington are actually working in close cooperation by agreeing not to tread on their rivals’ turf and to continue living in their own, separate virtual worlds.