CONGRESS TOO ACTIVE?

Congress is getting only a 12% approval rating and an 80% disapproval rating. The media assumes that this means that the electorate feels congress should do something.  But I don't know, maybe it means that the electorate feels that congress is doing too much!*

Consider:  The speaker of the House says that congress should not be judged by how many laws it makes but how many it repeals.  The electorate keeps electing and reelecting the do nothings that would indicate they don't want congress to do anything.  They say insanity is to do the same thing over and over expecting different results.  Is the electorate insane?

A lot of the news media and some conservatives say that the Republicans should propose an alternative to Obamacare.  But Obamacare is already a conservative medical law.  Every liberal knows that we should have a single payer health system to control medical costs, for example.  It was a conservative proposal to go to the individual mandate.  The alternative to Obamamcare really is to do nothing and to just let the previous system ride with more and more people shut out of health insurance because it has become prohibitively expensive.  This is not to say that Obamacare cannot be improved.  After all it is a huge and cumbersome law.  Some improvements have already been made, but I doubt that single payer is in the cards.

* Also see The Government You Voted For: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-government-you-voted-for.html

OBAMACARE LARGELY UPHELD

The Supreme Court largely upheld the Affordable Care Act, the most important legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The individual mandate is now ruled to be a tax and is constitutional.

Frankly, I would have preferred a single payer provision over the individual mandate, but compromises had to be made to pass the legislation.

It was a surprise to me that Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote for Obamacare rather than Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy; however, some pundits before the decision had suggested that Roberts might vote for the Act. I'm rather surprised that Kennedy didn't go along.

The part of Obamacare ruled unconstitutional by a 7 to 2 vote was a provision on the expansion of Medicaid where, if state voted to not participate in the expansion, they would lose all or part of the regular Federal contribution to Medicaid which was judged to be coercive. In the first few years, the Federal government will cover all the cost of the Medicaid expansion, but the Federal governments contribution will eventually drop to 90% leaving states to pick up the remaining 10%. This could cost a state like Texas to pick up $500 million/year by 2019. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/29/supreme-court-medicaid-expansion-states?newsfeed=true. If states opt out of the expanded Medicaid, this will add thousands to millions of poor people to the uninsured role and make them use the emergency room for their primary care, as is the situation now, adding costs to the insurance bills of those who have health insurance thus defeating an important part of Obamacare.

Roberts' ruling makes up a bit, perhaps, for the worst ruling the Supreme Court has ever made that corporations are people, the Citizens United decision, which they not only ruled constitutionally initially but reaffirmed recently. Maintaining this ruling perhaps led Roberts to his vote on Obamacare to preserve the reputation of the Court.

DOUBLE CROSS

Over the last couple of decades Democrats have adopted former Republican stands and have found them to subsequently be opposed by Republicans. A couple of examples are the Individual Mandate and the Line Item Veto.

Individual Mandate

Most recently it is the "individual mandate" in the Affordable Care Act of March 23, 2010 that Republicans first proposed and now oppose. "In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. 'It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time.' But Hatch's opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it."*

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"One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it."*

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"Nichols, of the New America Foundation, says he's depressed that so many issues that used to be part of the Republican health agenda are now being rejected by Republican leaders and most of the rank and file. "I think it's a sad testament to the state of relations among the parties that they've gotten to this point," he said."*

"The individual mandate was an outgrowth of a law signed by President Reagan: The 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. It requires nearly all hospitals to treat and stabilize anyone needing emergency care, regardless of ability to pay or legal U.S. residency. Critics call it an unfunded mandate. It was part of a budget law signed by President Ronald Reagan." ** "We called this (individual mandate) responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. 'There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens.'"*

Line Item Veto

Another item is the presidential Line Item Veto that was passed by congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on April 9, 1986. Republicans apparently thought they were sure to win the 1996 election and, with a line item veto, be able to eliminate Democratic provisions from bills. The bill was proposed by Senator Robert Dole and cosponsored by Senator John McCain and 29 others (***) including many Republicans such as Senator Mitch McConnell and candidate for Republican presidential for president Rick Santorum (candidacy now suspended). A year later the bill was challenged by a group of Senators including Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, but the case (Raines vs. Byrd) was dismissed. President Clinton (reelected after all) then used the line item veto on the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that the Line Item Veto was unconstitutional by a 6-3 vote on June 25, 1998.****

* http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123670612

** http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/01/obama-individual-mandate_n_1394705.html

*** http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d104:SN00004:@@@P

**** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_Item_Veto_Act_of_1996

HEALTH INSURANCE: THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE

Now Republicans oppose the individual mandate as being unconstitutional, but formerly a number of bills were introduced by Republicans that espoused the individual mandate: http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004182

These bills and articles include those by Senator Don Nickels (R, Okla.) and 24 cosponsors, John H. Chaffee (R, RI) and 20 cosponsors, the conservative Heritage Foundation (Oct. 2nd, 1989), Heritage Foundation (Mar. 5th, 1989 ). So Republicans were, to paraphrase a former presidential candidate Kerry, for the individual mandate before they were against it.*

There also were some Democratic proposals for individual mandate: Senator Ron Wyden (D, Or) and 17 cosponsors, Senator Ron Wyden (D, Or) and 124 cosponsors.

*This sort of thing has happened before. Expecting to elect a Republican president in 2006, Republicans passed the line item veto bill which was signed by President Clinton on April 9, 1996 (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/line_item_veto.html). Much to the surprise of Republicans, President Clinton was reelected. President Clinton and Senator Bob Dole had agreed that the act would not be implemented until 2007 after the presidential election of 2006. In 2007, Republicans claimed the act was unconstitutional. President Clinton tested the constitutionality of the act, and the Supreme Court ruled it as unconstitutional by a 6 to 3 vote.