WASHINGTON, D.C. (YBH.ME) – Republicans are in a bind on health care. Both houses of Congress in the hands of the Democrats, a press highly sympathetic to the modern JFK (in their eyes at least), and the legacy of George W. Bush’s non-fiscal restraint. The odds of winning the health care debate were tough to begin with, the Democrats clever Congressional Budget Office (CBO) end run just made it a near impossibility.
The GOP landed a great 1-2 combination in August against Mr. Obama’s health care plan. First, angry townhallers refused to be ignored by politicians who quite frankly looked like elites dirtying their hands in constituent waters. The problem was the townhallers weren’t the fringe kooks the media first attempted to portray them as. Scratch a townhaller and you were likely to find an average American terrified over further government intrusion into their daily lives.
Barack Obama has been heavily pushing health care reform this year.
The Republicans’ right cross, so to speak, of August, came in the form of The CBO’s assessment of the Democrats’ plans. The CBO flatly stated that Democrat plans as written would add to the United States’ already ballooning deficit. Even Wolf Blitzer with his SNL fact-checking team couldn’t take on the non-partisan CBO’s analysis.
Mr. Obama’s plans looked headed for defeat. Americans flatly don’t want to be Europeans. The GOP successfully portrayed themselves as the wall against creeping socialism. A reverse Berlin Wall if you will. The problem is the Republicans followed this narrative only until the press caught on to the sobering CBO estimates.
By focusing on the deficit aspect of ObamaCare, instead of the social impact, Republicans found an easy way not to look like they were attempting to deny care to “children, minorities, and the elderly” as Democrats typically claim. A note to the GOP, any responsible decision in politics, especially a fiscal one, will be met with claims by the opposition that it will adversely affect “children, minorities, and the elderly.”
Republicans, newly fiscally focused as they are, relaxed too soon. I mean, once a proposal is found to be fiscally untenable, it’s over, right? Wrong.
The jury is out on Mr. Obama as political strategist. He is either responsible for every clever move by the left or none of them. It is literally tough to tell. Regardless, Mr. Obama’s team’s next move was pure political brilliance. Instead of focusing on the social change aspects of the bill, clearly a loser for the Democrats, team Obama apparently sent a directive to Senate Democrats and specifically Max Baucus to write a bill that would pass muster with the CBO. Mr. Baucus and his team did just that. The CBO states that Mr. Baucus’ bill will actually decrease the deficit by $81 billion over ten years. It is also cheaper than previous bills at $829 billion.
Leave aside the fact that CBO estimates are done in an all-things-being-equal world. Too many factors come into play for CBO estimates to play out correctly over time, political will being chief among them. Will Democrats really cut Medicare payments when the time comes in 2015? I doubt it, but I digress. Coming up with a bill that “reduces” the deficit in theory takes away almost all of the GOP’s ammunition. Any opposition from Republicans can now be framed in the narrative of being against, you guessed it, “children, minorities and the elderly.” The Republicans are back to square one. How can the right fight against the CBO estimates and claim they are faulty and inaccurate (as they often are) when they barked that the same estimates were gospel just weeks ago? They can’t.
How did the Republican leadership not see this one coming? The Republicans better come up with a plan quickly or the Democrats will be handed a huge policy win. A win would gain the left additional political power, but would it help the country in the long run? I’m not sure if it will, or if the left even cares.
The longer the health care debate continues the better the final product will be. While not perfect, the Baucus bill is way better than the original Democrat ideas floated last summer. Thankfully, universal single payer is now a non-starter.
Passage, symbolic or substantive, of a health care bill seems all but certain at this point, defanging it is the best the Republicans can hope for. Does the GOP have what it takes to keep the debate going until a better bill is written? We will find out over the next week or two.
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John Romano is the publisher and editor of Yes, But However!, a musician, a former political correspondent for BBC Radio London, and a serial web entrepreneur. Follow him on twitter: twitter.com/yesbuthowever or John Romano on Google+John Romano article archive.
