In all the furor over the last few weeks about the various nasty provisions in House and Senate budget reconciliation bills, most of the attention was paid to a major rise in interest rates for student loans, higher copayments and tighter eligibility rules for Medicaid, and all sorts of shenanigans associated with reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid.But with relatively little notice, our Republican buddies have also sought to pull off a back-door maneuver that could unravel the consensus supporting welfare reform. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has the details, but here’s the big picture: Since the original welfare reform law of 1996 entered its last year in 2003, there’s been a deadlock in the Senate over the administration’s demand that work requirements for welfare recipients be increased without additional money for child care assistance, and the Democratic position (most notably promoted by Sens. Evan Bayh and Tom Carper) that the tighter work requirements will fail without the child care resources that make it possible for single mothers to go to work (a smaller group of Democrats oppose increased work requirements altogether),So now the GOPers are using the budget bill, which can’t be filibustered, to simply impose their position on welfare on the Congress and the country, even though some of these provisions were not in either the House or Senate version of the bill.When you consider the intense and free-ranging debate that accompanied the enactment of welfare reform in 1996–the tense back-and-forth maneuvers between the Republican Congress and President Clinton, who vetoed two versions of the bill, and the acrimonious national debate on the subject–it’s shameful that Republicans now want to make large changes in one of the most successful initiatives in recent history in the dark, with little or no debate. The fact that the changes they are insisting on are bad public policy adds injury to insult.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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November 1: A Late Assist For Harris From Mike Johnson
In a crazy-close presidential race that may come down to Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris is getting some late help, and not just from the racist comedian at Trump’s New York City rally, as I explained at New York:
As you probably know, we’re in the final week of a dead-even presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, with Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes being the most desperately sought prize by both campaigns. Team Trump is already having a difficult week in the Keystone State thanks to a crude racist joke about Puerto Rico that one of Trump’s comedian buddies told at his wild Madison Square Garden rally, which is not going over well among the pivotal bloc of Puerto Rican voters in northeastern Pennsylvania. Now, Harris has gotten a helping hand in the same vicinity from none other than House Speaker Mike Johnson, as NBC News reports:
“House Speaker Mike Johnson took a dig at Obamacare during an event in Pennsylvania on Monday, telling a crowd there will be ‘massive’ health care changes in America if Donald Trump wins the election.
“’Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,’ Johnson, R-La., said in Bethlehem while campaigning for GOP House candidate Ryan Mackenzie, according to video footage obtained by NBC News.
“’No Obamacare?’ one attendee asked Johnson, referring to the law Democrats passed in 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act.
“’No Obamacare,’ Johnson responded, rolling his eyes. ‘The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.’”
The Harris campaign immediately jumped on his comments, noting that Johnson had promised “one of Trump’s top priorities will be to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip away health care from tens of millions of Americans.”
Health care is not at all an issue Trump wants Republicans talking about. The effort to repeal Obamacare was one of the less popular initiatives of his presidency and, not coincidentally, one of his biggest failures. It’s also one of the areas where Harris has outpolled him. He added to his problems during the September debate with his rival when he could cite only “the concepts of a plan” for replacing Obamacare despite having allegedly spent many years on his own yet-to-be-revealed proposal.
Worse yet, Johnson’s remarks very strongly suggest two things that are potentially dangerous to Trump in the eyes of swing voters: (1) He plans to make repealing Obamacare an immediate priority if Trump wins and Republicans control Congress, which likely means it would be rolled into a gigantic budget-reconciliation bill and steamrolled through to passage if possible, and (2) his party’s designs on health-care policy are radical, meant to replace the regulations central to Obamacare’s coverage guarantees with “free market” provisions almost certain to return the health-care system to the days when insurers aggressively discriminated against anyone old, sick, or poor. Johnson’s rhetoric will also give Democrats an opportunity to remind voters that the last “repeal Obamacare” package aimed to decimate Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for poor people and a key part of the country’s social safety net. Beyond that, Johnson seemed to to be telling Pennsylvanians a reelected Trump wouldn’t care if his health-care plans made Americans unhappy, per NBC:
“”We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state. These agencies have been weaponized against the people, it’s crushing the free market; it’s like a boot on the neck of job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers. And so health care is one of the sectors and we need this across the board,’ Johnson said. ‘And Trump’s going to go big. I mean, he’s only going to have one more term. Can’t run for re-election. And so he’s going to be thinking about legacy and we’re going to fix these things.’”Taking a “blowtorch” to health-care regulations that ensure coverage for preexisting conditions and limit price discrimination probably isn’t what swing voters hope for in a Trump administration billing itself as offering a return to American greatness. And the Harris campaign is surely grateful that Trump’s loyal congressional ally is making it known. Could that be the “little secret” Trump cryptically said he and Johnson would reveal after the election? If so, the Speaker spilled the beans at the wrong place and the wrong time.