To my friends in the Freedom Caucus who would not agree to a replacement for Obamacare: I share your values and most of your policy preferences, but your legislative tactics are irresponsible and stupid. This is not Israel, where a tiny and extreme party can obtain major policy concessions as a condition for joining a coalition. Your unwillingness to reach a compromise simply guarantees the outcome that you like least.
I cannot understand your motivation. Obamacare is not just a step toward socialized medicine to be opposed in principle; it is a growing catastrophe of rising premiums and reduced choice. I agree that my first preference would be to turn the clock back and prevent Obamacare from being created in the first place. But you can’t be foolish enough to think that you could achieve the same result by bludgeoning your Republican colleagues into total repeal after it has been in effect for 7 years.
Until now, the Democrats that designed and voted for Obamacare owned it, making Obamacare one of the issues that put you in office. But you have very nicely relieved Democrats of the onus of fixing Obamacare and saddled the Republican Party with blame for all its problems. Faced with a Democratic majority that will not agree to any Republican proposals, compromise among Republicans is indispensable. We cannot let Obamacare explode and expect out-of-power Democrats to take the blame. Getting moving toward replacing Obamacare is a political necessity. Otherwise, all you will accomplish in the remaining two years is proving that Republicans can only oppose, and that we are not fit to be put in charge of the country.
What set of moral absolutes could lead you to oppose changes in Obamacare that were clearly moving in the right direction? Even those of us who believe, for example, that the intentional killing of an unborn child is always gravely immoral will vote for legislation that restricts abortion even if it does not do away with Roe vs Wade completely. I share the principles that lead you to oppose Obamacare root and branch, but I cannot see how anyone with the responsibility of elected office could refuse a good compromise in favor of the status quo. This is the same self-serving ego gratification that progressives get from voting for useless gun control laws – it may make you feel good but it makes matters objectively worse. At this point, I would not vote for a single one of you, and would do my best to support primary challengers who understand that a Republican representative should aim to achieve the best outcome possible in a flawed system.
I am glad that Speaker Ryan is not the tyrant that Nancy Pelosi was. But it is frustrating that you take such advantage of Speaker Ryan’s wish to maintain democracy and respect for all members’ opinions within the Republican delegation. Until now, I have thought that Steve Bannon would provide a useful reminder of conservative principles to a President who is more a negotiator than committed conservative. But I would want his head on a platter if he had anything to do with a plot to replace Speaker Ryan with a leader of the Freedom Caucus.
How would you expect a more conservative (and less experienced and nowhere near as bright) leader to achieve more of your agenda? You drove Speaker Boehner out with complaints that he was not taking a hard enough line in opposing the Obama Administration on budgets and debt. Now there seems to be a wish to drive out Speaker Ryan. Is your idea that an uncompromising conservative could whip the Republican delegation into line behind your ideas, in the same way that the uncompromising leftist Nancy Pelosi did?
That is surely wishful thinking. Leaving aside the question of who would want to be elected as a Republican if they were going to be forced to vote for a bill they never read, you don’t have Nancy’s tools. She did not succeed in browbeating her colleagues by sheer nastiness. She controlled the pursestrings of campaign finance, and her purse was filled by George Soros and his friends. No matter what the liberal media claim, we Republicans have no such sugar daddies. You in the Freedom Caucus were elected by a popular groundswell and spent far less on your campaigns than your Democrat opponents. The Republican National Committee and the House and Senate Campaign Committees are run in a pretty democratic way, compared to the authoritarian thought police who dole out money to Democrat candidates. So you will fail to impose your ideas on a Republican delegation that is both more centrist and more realistic than you.
It is nearing midnight on the political clock, and you need to get the message now. You will double-down on disaster if you decide to follow your perverse victory on Obamacare with the same stance on tax reform. Speaker Ryan and Chairman Brady have crafted a tax reform package that will reduce the burden of taxation on American businesses and families, fix the perverse tax policies that drive companies and investment overseas, and stimulate much faster economic growth. Whose side will you be on? Is it really that important to remind the world that you stand for lower taxes and reduced spending and are not happy that tax reform is revenue neutral? Will you help the Democrats stop tax reform or will you vote for a great tax package even though it does not achieve the full Conservative agenda of reducing taxes and cutting spending?
We have a historic opportunity to put the United States back on the right track, with majorities in the House and Senate and a President able to sit down and negotiate. Are you enjoying the gloating of the progressives that the Trump Administration is a failure before even 100 days elapse?
Stop acting like snowflakes who need time off from exams to weep when they do not get what they want in politics. Man up, and take your responsibilities not just to the Republican Party but to the people of the United States seriously. If you remain intransigent, all you will do is return power to those who want to restrict our religious freedom, tax us into submission, and let other countries rule the world. Call President Trump and ask him to sit down with you, Speaker Ryan and Secretary Price to work out a new deal on replacing Obamacare. It is almost too late.
David Montgomery was formerly Senior Vice President of NERA Economic Consulting. He also served as assistant director of the US Congressional Budget Office and deputy assistant secretary for policy in the US Department of Energy. He taught economics at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University and was a senior fellow at Resources for the Future.
George Ball says
Thank you Mr. Montgomery. The Freedom Caucus better wake up and support the American voters and our President.
Richard Skinner says
Mr. Montgomery’s outrage echoes the protests of many conservatives angered by the “all or nothing” of the Freedom Caucus toward repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), though from the eyes of a lifelong Democratic liberal, the Caucus’ attitude seem to be more “nothing or nothing.” And Mr.Montgomery is probably right that the other major initiatives of the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans could also fail if zeal outweighs pragmatism. But one need only think back to the halcyon days of Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America to find another example of some zealous conservatives who managed to shut down the federal government to make their point.
The fault, perhaps, lies not in the stars but in the particular brand of conservatism represented by the Freedom Caucus. The legislative process for them is about winning and losing, not engagement with others working – however fitfully – to achieve some shared goal that improves the lives of citizens. Issues are cast in absolute terms that brook no moderation, no accommodation of the views of others who, while seen to be wrong-headed, are just as concerned as the conservative zealots for the well-being of their constituents.
Talleyrand had it right when he asserted, “above all, not too much zeal,” but zeal seems to be what fuels the hard-right conservatives. Issues are cast in absolute terms and the position one takes on those issues grants admission to or perpetual exile from the club: there is no middle ground.
And the ACA, for all its flaws – some of which were acknowledged at its passage, others having emerged more recently – survives as, Speaker Ryan noted, the law of the land. As such, it was and is a beginning to addressing the questions of why Americans spend more than any other country in the world on health care, yet achieve outcomes that rank the U.S. well below less wealthy countries. The ACA nudges the Leviathan health-care system to focus more on keeping people well and safe so that we may spend less on healing illnesses and mending injuries. The Act is by no means “the” solution, but persons of good intention and good will could take ACA and fashion something better. But good intentions and good will seem to be scarce these days.