Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
12 October 13
epresentative
Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama and a fierce critic of the Affordable
Care Act, has just changed his tune. He now says:
"My primary focus is on minimizing risk of insolvency and bankruptcy.
There are many paths you can take to get there. Socialized medicine is
just one of the component parts of our debt and deficits that put us at
financial risk."
Translated: House Republicans are under intense pressure. A new Gallup poll
shows the Republican Party now viewed favorably by only 28% of
Americans, down from 38% in September. That's the lowest favorable
rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question
in 1992. The Democratic Party is viewed favorably by 43%, down four
percentage points from last month.
So Republicans are desperately looking for a way of
getting out of the hole they've dug for themselves - and the President
has given them one. He told them that if they agree to temporarily fund
the government and raise the debt ceiling without holding as ransom the
Affordable Care Act or anything else, negotiations can begin on reducing
the overall budget deficit.
What's the lesson here? The radicals who tried to
hijack America didn't understand one very basic thing. While most
Americans don't like big government, Americans revere our system of
government. That's why even though a majority disapprove of the
Affordable Care Act, a majority also disapprove of Republican tactics
for repealing or delaying it.
Government itself has never been popular in America
except during palpable crises such as war or deep depression. The nation
was founded in a revolution against an abusive government - that was
what the original Tea Party was all about - and that distrust is in our
genes. The Constitution reflects it. Which is why it's hard for
government to do anything very easily. (I've never been as frustrated as
when I was secretary of labor - continuously running into the realities
of separation of power, checks and balances, and the endless
complications of federal, state, and local levels of authority. But
frustration goes with the job.)
No one likes big government. If you're on the left,
you worry about the military-industrial-congressional complex that's
spending zillions of dollars creating new weapons of mass destruction,
spying on Americans, and killing innocents abroad. And you don't like
government interfering in your sex life, telling you how and when you
can have an abortion, whom you can marry. If you're on the right, you
worry about taxes and regulations stifling innovation, out-of-control
bureaucrats infringing on your freedom, and government deficits as far
as the eye can see.
So when Tea Party Republicans, bankrolled by a handful
of billionaires, began calling the Affordable Care Act a "wholesale
takeover of American health care," many Americans were inclined to
believe them. Health care is such a huge and complicated system,
affecting us and our families so intimately, that our inherent distrust
of government makes us instinctively wary. It's no accident we're still
the only advanced nation not to have universal health care. FDR decided
against adding it to his plan for Social Security because he didn't want
to jeopardize the rest of the program; subsequent presidents never got
close, at least until Obama.
The best argument for the Affordable Care Act is that
our current healthcare system is so dysfunctional - the most expensive
in the world with the least healthy outcomes (highest infant mortality,
shortest life spans, worst rates of chronic disease) of any advanced
nation - that we had no choice but to try to fix it. Even so, it's a
typical American fix: It's still based on private health providers and
private insurers. All government does is subsidize the poor, require
insurers to take in people with pre-existing health problems, and pay
for it by requiring everyone to be insured.
The Tea Party Republicans' mistake was to assume that
Americans' distrust of big government, and, by extension, the Affordable
Care Act, would allow them to ride roughshod over the process we have
for making laws.
Their double-barreled threat to shut down the
government and cause the United States to default on its obligations if
the Affordable Care Act isn't repealed or at least delayed is a direct
assault on our system of government: If even unpopular laws can be
gutted by a majority in one house of Congress holding the rest of
government hostage, there's no end to it. No law on the books will be
safe. (Their retort that Congress holds the "purse strings" and can
therefore decide to de-fund what it dislikes is bunk; appropriation
bills have to be agreed to by both houses and signed into law by the
president, like any other legislation.)
While most of us distrust government, we're indelibly
proud of our system of government. We like to think it's just about the
best system in the world. We don't much like politicians but we canonize
the Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution. And we revere
the fading parchment on which the Constitution is written. When we
pledge allegiance to the United States we bind ourselves to that system
of government. Anyone who seeks to overthrow or undermine that system is
deemed a traitor.
And that's exactly what some Tea Partiers have begun
sounding like - traitors to the system, radicals for whom the end they
seek justifies whatever means they think necessary to achieve it. As
such, they began losing support even among Americans who had bought
their view of the Affordable Care Act.
So they've had to back down, and soon, hopefully, we
can move to the next stage - negotiating over the size of government.
That should be stronger ground for the Tea Partiers. But the President,
Democrats, and any moderate Republican who dares show his face can still
gain ground by framing the question properly: The size of government
isn't the real issue. It's who government is for. The best way to reduce
future budget deficits is to ensure it's for all of us and not just a
privileged few.
That means revenues should be raised from the wealthy,
who have never been wealthier - limiting their deductions and tax
credits, closing loopholes like "carried interest," and taxing financial
transactions. Spending should be cut by ending corporate welfare -
terminating tax subsidies to oil and gas, ballooning payments to
agribusiness, sweetheart deals for military contractors, and the "too
big to fail" subsidy for Wall Street's biggest banks. Future health-care
costs should be contained by using the government's bargaining leverage
over providers (through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care
Act) to force a shift from fee-for-service to
payments-for-healthy-outcomes. And we should spend more on high-quality
education and infrastructure for everyone.
Americans distrust big government, and always will.
There's ample reason - especially given the huge sums now bankrolling
politicians, coming from a relative handful of billionaires, big
corporations, and Wall Street. But we love our system of government.
That's what must be strengthened.
By using tactics perceived to violate that system, the
Tea Partiers have overplayed their hand. If they don't stop their
recklessness, they'll be out of the game.
Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public
Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of
Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the
ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has
written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The
Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
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