OBAMACARE: THE OBSESSION CONTINUES
The House and the Senate just went off on their August break. There was a good deal talk among Republican members about their delaying the break because they hadn’t been able to get much done. The Senate did manage to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. And, they did a few small things, but that’s it. After all the talk of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, of creating a trillion dollar infrastructure program, of reforming the tax code, and of lowering taxes, nothing has been done. Going back home and dealing with upset voters for a whole month will not be fun for Democrats. But, they at least have an out. They did not have a majority. They can argue that there is nothing they could do. That has the virtue of being pretty much true.
When the Republicans get home, they will have no one else to blame really. It was them. They had the majority in both House and Senate and they were able to accomplish almost nothing. They will try to blame the Democrats of course, but that will hard for their upset listeners to take very seriously. It would be more accurate to lay blame on their inept, inexperienced and uninterested President but to do that really will be not very helpful. Many voters remain loyal to Donald Trump and blaming him is apt to turn those voters off. In the end the failure lies with the Republicans in Congress for not being able to create a successful replacement for Obamacare and then actually passing it.
So, one real puzzle is how so many supposedly intelligent people could become so obsessed with a clearly failing effort that they were willing to squander the first six months of their own new administration on something that any outsider could see was probably doomed to fail. It might be logical to blame the new President. President Trump in his famous rallies had promised to end Obamacare but the truth is that he never seemed to actually have understood it, or have cared enough to learn. And, his efforts to get it passed hardly amounted to a crusade. So, when it became clear that the House and Senate efforts were doomed to fail, that their Republican plan would not produce what had been promised, why didn’t all concerned simply cut their losses and move on? Had that happened, they might not now be headed home for their August break empty handed.
The question then is why this apparently overpowering obsession with an obviously failing cause? Part of the answer lies in the psychology of both the Trump voters and the people who are elected to represent them in Congress. The voters who came out to all those Trump rallies were certainly angry. That was partly because only angry people tended to go to the rallies. It is hard to know what they were angry about. Many appear to have been angry because they felt that the “smart people” in Washington really didn’t care about them (George Wallace, back in 1972, used to call them “pointy-headed liberals”). They were certainly dissatisfied with the way their lives had turned out. Trump was a master at holding up symbols for them to be angry with. So, along with Hillary Clinton, and those awful immigrants who would finally be stopped by Trump’s famous wall, they were told that Obamacare was horrible and should be repealed.
So, Obamacare became a symbol at which newly Republican working class voters could focus anger. And, whereas for some Republican candidates, attacking Obamacare was simply a campaign con (like the famous Wall), the crowds took it seriously. Anger symbols serve a real psychological need for people and once people adopt them, they do not give them up easily. Candidates found that they had to go on using Obamacare (along with Hillary and the Immigrants), because the crowds seemed to demand it. Republican candidates have become particularly responsive to the “working class” attracted to Trump. It is not surprising that they do that. Cultural Republicans who always vote for candidates labeled Republican have thus far been dependable. The new working class voters on whom the Republicans now depend are the most volatile. They must be catered to.
The Republican majority in the House and the Senate have desperately tried to keep their promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a less expensive medical care plan which was even more complete. They also promised a trillion dollar infrastructure program, they promised to round up and expel Hispanics, they promised to build that Wall. Those other promises are now mostly forgotten, or at least on long term hold. Why were Republicans in Congress so serious only about Obamacare? One reason is that just as Obamacare had become symbolic for the Trump voters, it had become internalized as a political obligation by the Republican leadership.
It was more than that: The Republican leadership knew that the National Debt was already at twenty trillion dollars (20,000 billion dollars). Their projected tax cuts were going to drive up the debt up further. If they could have succeeded in repealing Obamacare, that would have ended the 0.9 percent tax on incomes over $200,000, plus a 3.8% tax on investment income for Medicare. That would have freed up money to give those same people an additional tax cut. Republicans could also have used some of money saved cushion those pained by their projected tax reform. So, everything they really wanted depended on killing Obamacare. But, in the end, the program was not killed. For all their talk over seven years Republicans had never developed an alternative.
So for now usually bustling Capitol Hill seems unnaturally quiet. Hot and humid Washington can seem abandoned in August. Members of both the House and the Senate have gone home. The President is vacationing for seventeen days at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. When they all return at the beginning of September they face a need to complete twelve budget bills. Republicans have to get those budget bills done in order to begin their work on tax reform. They need to raise the national debt limit because the government will run out of money by the end of September. The House and the Senate Republicans knew all of that when the year began but their need to kill off Obamacare occupied them almost full time. Doing those things will now be almost impossible. There will be no tax reform. And, surprise! They are still trying to figure out a way to return to killing Obamacare. Obsessions can be truly powerful!
H.J. Rishel
8/8/2017
