Weekly Opinion Editorial
PEOPLE
WHO LOVE TO SAY NO!
by Steve
Fair
On Friday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, (R-Wisconsin),
pulled the Affordable Health Care ‘repeal and replace’ bill before it came to a
vote on the floor. President Trump said
the outcome of the bill was uncertain, but that ‘it was a very very tight
margin.” One of the first actions the
President pledged to do was pull the plug on Obamacare, but it appears that
will take some more time.
While most of the media was reporting on
the Republican’s inability to hold their coalition together, little was
mentioned about no Democrat member of the House pledging support of Ryan’s bill,
even though there are 18 members of the conservative Democrat Blue Dog caucus. To their credit, Democrats in the House stick together better than Republicans. But is there not one of the 193 Democrat
House member who doesn’t believe the Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed
and replaced? Group-think is defined as the
practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages
creativity or individual responsibility.
The Democrats masterfully practice group-think.
The group of members that took the credit
for derailing the bill was the House Freedom Caucus. It’s not clear how many Republican members of
the House are part of the caucus because they are secretive. Led by two term North Carolina Congressman
Mark Meadows, it is estimated the group has 30-35 members, including Tulsa area
Congressman Jim Bridenstine (who said he supported Ryan’s bill). The Freedom caucus demanded Ryan’s bill
include repealing more of the ACA’s insurance mandates or they would oppose. Even after President Trump met with the
caucus and told them there would be political consequences if they didn’t
support the bill, they stuck to their guns and opposed the president. Reasonable and rational is rarely descriptive
of the Freedom caucus. Three observations:
First, why didn’t Republican leadership
have the ‘repeal and replace’ ready to go on day one? The short answer is they didn’t expect Donald
Trump to win. It caught them by surprise. They knew the repeal bills the House passed
and sent to the Senate when Obama was still in the White House were more about
political grandstanding than substance.
When Trump won, they scrambled to draft a bill that would truly fix the
ACA, but Ryan’s bill was not acceptable to the Freedom caucus. If Ryan had added their demands, he would
have lost the moderate members of the caucus, so he was between a rock and a
hard place.
Second, most of the Freedom caucus members
could care less about political consequences. In fact, most members relish
being defiant to authority. Their political
base would barbecue them if they compromised on anything. They could care less if nothing gets done in
government- in fact they prefer it. The
members who manage to serve long term in Congress proudly point out they don’t
work with anyone and have a reputation of being difficult. For someone like Trump, who has spent his
entire career finding common ground in business by negotiating, it has to be
frustrating when he finds he is dependent on people who will not move. It’s not surprising Trump moved on. That is what you do in business. If a deal can’t get done, then move on and
forget it. The problem is that is not
always possible in government- like a bad penny, the problem hangs around. At some point, a solution has to be hammered
out and it requires finding common ground.
Third, the Affordable Care Act is
self-destructing. Most of the co-ops are
gone. A large portion of the exchanges
have only one plan to ‘choose’ from. The
money the government was giving insurance companies is gone and now premiums
have increased at astronomical rates. The ACA caused health
care premiums to rise for middle-class Americans who do not quality for
subsidies. If Congress does nothing, the
ACA will eventually collapse. Instead of
staking out their political territory, members of both Parties should hammer
out a common sense solution before the collapse.
President Trump is finding being President isn’t
like being the CEO of a business. To be successful,
he has to find common ground with members of Congress, no matter what Party. He should reach across the aisle to
conservative Democrats in Congress(Blue Dog caucus). They are more likely to support his agenda
than the members of the Freedom caucus.
Being dependent on people who love to say no is no way to govern.
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