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Midtown NYC starting to fade to white pic.twitter.com/IzwGekuOlP
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) January 26, 2015
Monday's Mini-Report, 1.26.15
Today's edition of quick hits:
* Greece: "Alexis Tsipras, the leftist political maverick who swept to power on Sunday in Greece in a popular rebellion, formed a new coalition government on Monday with a right-wing fringe party that will charge immediately into the task of reversing wrenching austerity policies and negotiating with European leaders to reduce Greece's debt burden."
* Yemen: "A C.I.A. drone strike on Monday on a car in eastern Yemen, the first since the resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, killed three suspected Qaeda fighters, American officials said, in a signal that the United States will continue its targeted killing operations in the country despite the apparent takeover by Houthi fighters."
* A new thing for the Secret Service to worry about: "The owner of a drone that landed on the White House grounds early Monday told authorities that he was testing how it would perform in bad weather but lost track of it, law enforcement sources told NBC News. The drone's owner, who is cooperating with a Secret Service investigation, said that he did not realize it had landed in a tree on the lawn of the White House until he saw news reports describing the incident, the sources said."
* Espionage: "A banker and two diplomats were charged Monday with spying for the Russian government in the New York area, using coded messages and secret handoffs to gather intelligence and send it back home."
* Leak case: "Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, was convicted of espionage charges Monday, for telling a journalist for The New York Times about a secret operation to disrupt Iran's nuclear program."
* Marriage news from late Friday: "A federal judge in Mobile, Alabama, today struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, bringing the number of gay marriage states to 37.... The judge did not put a hold on the effect of her ruling, but the state's attorney general, Luther Strange, said he would seek one."
Making room for morality in the health care debate
One of the things that makes the debate over health care policy so interesting is that it has such sweeping implications. We can look at the issue, for example, and ask economic questions, such as, "How much is the Affordable Care Act helping the economy?" We can look at the same issue and ask fiscal questions, such as, "How important is it that 'Obamacare' is reducing the national deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars?"
We can look at the issue from a political perspective. And an ideological perspective. And a sociological perspective. And given extreme circumstances, maybe even a national security perspective.
But at its root, for many involved in the debate, the angle that matters is a moral one. Policies like the ACA tend to do extremely well on substantive questions, and quite poorly on political ones, but when we strip away the layers, we're often left with the morality of either providing or denying families access to basic medical care. Confronted with the question, either the dial on your moral compass spins or it doesn't.
This came up in a big way over the weekend, when the American Enterprise Institute's Michael R. Strain made a curious argument about mortality rates in the Washington Post. The headline on the piece read, "End Obamacare, and people could die. That's okay."
In a world of scarce resources, a slightly higher mortality rate is an acceptable price to pay for certain goals -- including more cash for other programs, such as those that help the poor; less government coercion and more individual liberty; more health-care choice for consumers, allowing them to find plans that better fit their needs; more money for taxpayers to spend themselves; and less federal health-care spending. This opinion is not immoral. Such choices are inevitable. They are made all the time.
In fairness to Strain, he almost certainly did not write the jarringly callous headline, but he did write this quoted excerpt. In fact, his piece went on to say that if Republican policymakers successfully repealed the federal health care reform law, it "could" result in more American deaths, "but it clearly would not be immoral."
I can appreciate why Strain feels the need to make this case. For proponents of reform, there's considerable focus on consequences: if Republicans -- either on the Supreme Court or in Congress -- destroy the law, the potential for catastrophic shockwaves are quite real. As a practical reality, if millions of families are stripped of the benefits, an untold number of Americans will die unnecessarily. Their crime? They got sick.
'Even if it worked, I would oppose it'
As hard as it may be to perceive right-wing neurosurgeon Ben Carson as a credible presidential candidate, he received a very warm welcome at Steve King's "Iowa Freedom Summit" over the weekend, and Carson arguably delivered one of the more polished presentations of the gathering.
But on the substance of Carson's remarks, one thing jumped out at me.
On the Affordable Care Act -- which Carson has on several occasions compared to slavery -- the famous former surgeon said he opposed any government intrusion in health care. "Even if it worked, I would oppose it," Carson said of Obamacare. "It doesn't.""I don't believe in taking the most important thing a person has, which is their health and their health care, and putting it in the hands of the government," he later added....
For a brief argument in a speech, there's quite a bit to this. We know, for example, that Carson's mistaken when he says the Affordable Care Act isn't working; the evidence to the contrary is simply overwhelming. We also know that when it comes to his preferred model, Carson used to believe largely the opposite of what he's arguing now.
What's more, when Carson argues that government shouldn't have a hand in matters related to health care, it would seem to suggest the Republican candidate is against the VA health care system for active-duty and retired military personnel, Medicare, and Medicaid. That's not too surprising -- a guy who draws a parallel between modern American life and Nazis isn't going to be a moderate -- but it's a pretty extreme position for even today's GOP.
But the true gem is, in reference to the ACA, "Even if it worked, I would oppose it."
Boehner's misplaced polling prediction
In early December, quite a few conservative pundits, and even a couple of congressional Republicans, floated a radical idea: President Obama should not be invited to deliver the State of the Union address.
The chatter grew loud enough that the issue came up during House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) weekly press conference on Dec. 5. Asked if he planned to extend an invitation to Obama, Boehner replied, "Listen, the more the president talks about his ideas, the more unpopular he becomes. Why would I want to deprive him of that opportunity?"
Republicans laughed; the proponents of the idea largely gave up, and the political world moved on. But a week after the president's big speech, it's worth pausing to ask whether Boehner was correct. The more the president talks about his ideas, does he become more unpopular?
What we're learning about the GOP's 2016 field
A debate for the Republican presidential candidates in August 2011 featured one of the more memorable moments of the race. Eight GOP hopefuls shared the stage and were asked an interesting question: would they accept a debt-reduction deal in which Democrats would give up $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases? Every Republican on the stage said they'd reject the deal.
Jon Huntsman later conceded he regretted how he handled that moment and wished he'd answered differently, but what about his party? As the 2016 cycle slowly starts to get underway, the question still seems relevant, and at a Koch brothers' donor forum last night, ABC's Jonathan Karl put the same challenge to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
All three senators indicated that they would reject a deal that would cut $10 in spending for every $1 in new taxes, though none of them directly answered the question.... "When and if any of the people up here run for president, there should be an absolute rule: No yes or no answers," Paul said. He then indicated that he wouldn't like such a deal. "I think we have plenty of taxes in this country."Cruz said that while it's a question "the media likes to ask," it represents a false choice. "That trade-off has proven historically to be a fool's errand," Cruz said. "It's a little bit like Lucy and the football. One element of the promise never happens."Rubio chimed in: "The only way you can get out of this problem is spending discipline, holding the line on spending, and rapid and dynamic economic growth."
A lot of people forget this, but in March 2011, following the big Tea Party wave of 2010, Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee released a report on deficit reduction. In it, House GOP officials outlined their ideal cuts-to-revenue ratio, and concluded that "successful" attempts to cut the deficit meet a specific goal: "85% spending cuts and 15% revenue increases." Roughly speaking, that's about a 5-to-1 ratio in Republicans' favor.
Four years later, however, leading Republican presidential candidates are apparently well to the right of where House GOP officials were in 2011. The fact remains that a Democratic 10-to-1 offer would never happen -- there's nothing fair or just about a "compromise" tilted so heavily in the GOP's favor -- but the point is most leading Republicans wouldn't accept the gift anyway.