High cost of an ego trip; Very few Americans know how close the country came to catastrophe this week. 14FEB14

MUCH has been made about how sanity and bipartisanship prevailed in the US Senate this week when they voted to pass the same legislation the US House passed earlier to raise the federal debt ceiling. That is the story mainstream media is promoting to calm the markets and the American people. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post exposes the truth about the vote, and how repiglican tea-baggers, led by sen ted cruz r TX, with his filibuster and supported by sen rand paul r KY and sen marco rubio r FL, almost caused a federal government default. All three feel they are qualified to be president, and the really frightening thing is, with a koch brothers financed propaganda campaign one of them could actually be elected....

By Dana Milbank, Published: February 14

Very few Americans know how close the country came to catastrophe this week.
The final tally shows that the Senate voted by a wide margin Wednesday, 67 to 31, to break Sen. Ted Cruz’s filibuster of an increase in the debt limit, thus avoiding a default on the United States’ full faith and credit.

But 15 minutes after the voting should have ended, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had apparently secured only two of the five Republican votes he needed to join all 55 members of the Democratic caucus to pass the measure. He raised three fingers in the air and worked his way among his members but was met with folded arms and shakes of the head. Looking queasy, he patted his thigh nervously and drummed his fingers. In the hubbub, Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) knocked a full glass of water and coaster from McConnell’s desk to the floor.
Democrats, watching the spectacle, took the extraordinary step of ordering the Senate clerk not to read aloud the ongoing vote tally to avoid setting off a market panic; because the House had already left on a two-week recess, a failure of this vote would have left little chance of avoiding default on Feb. 27, when the Treasury was to run out of funds.
Watching the chaos from the side of the chamber was the man who caused it: Cruz, his hands in his pants pockets and a satisfied grin on his face. The Texas Republican strolled to the clerk’s table to check on the vote count and was met with a look of disgust from Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). And the feeling was widespread: Moments after Cruz walked into the Republican cloakroom, four senators emerged from it and changed their votes to “aye.”
Cruz reemerged from the cloakroom, chewing gum, his hands again in his pockets. He smirked as his colleagues finally overcame his filibuster after a ­59-minute struggle.
Cruz’s ego trip had come at a high cost. He had forced McConnell, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and other Republicans to cast votes that could cause them to lose primaries to weaker general-election candidates, and he had risked getting his party blamed for a default.
The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page dubbed Cruz “the Minority Maker” for making his GOP colleagues “walk the plank” on a “meaningless debt ceiling vote.”
But Cruz doesn’t care about all that. Leaving the chamber, he told reporters McConnell’s fate would be “ultimately a decision . . . for the voters in Kentucky.”
His actions suggest Cruz has put himself before his party and even the nation’s solvency. And in this sense his actions are typical of the 2016 GOP presidential field. Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul are mucking up the gears of government in ways that will earn them favorable attention in the primaries.
Rubio, of Florida, is pushing legislation that would undo Obamacare in such a way that would cause chaos in the insurance market and likely leave tens of millions of people without health coverage and cost the government billions.
Vying with Cruz to be the most reckless of the 2016 aspirants is Paul, of Kentucky, who in recent days has injected the 1990s Monica Lewinsky scandal into the national debate as a means of discrediting Hillary Clinton. He also claimed her failure to send “reinforcements” to diplomats in Benghazi before they were attacked “should limit Hillary Clinton from ever holding high office.” Multiple investigations have confirmed that secretaries of state do not make decisions about security at each diplomatic post.
Now, Paul has politicized his court challenge to the NSA surveillance program. It would have been an important legal case, but Paul pushed aside the constitutional lawyer who had drafted the legislation and abandoned efforts to get a Democratic senator to be a co-plaintiff; instead, he added President Obama’s name to the list of defendants, brought in the tea party group FreedomWorks as a plaintiff and hired failed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, another tea party politician, to be his lead lawyer.
To nobody’s surprise, Paul and Rubio sided with Cruz in Wednesday’s debt-ceiling filibuster. Had they prevailed, and had 12 of their GOP colleagues not been more responsible, the likely default would have added far more to the national debt than the legislation did. It also would have caused markets to crash, the economy to swoon and American standing to decline.
But for Messrs. Paul, Rubio and Cruz, those aren’t the top considerations.

THE LAST EZRA KLEIN WONKBOOKS 24JAN14

THE last Ezra Kline Wonkbooks, he is leaving the Washington Post and his insight and style will be missed...

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Friday, January 24, 2014

Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas's morning policy news primer. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Washpost dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog.
Today's my last day at The Washington Post. That means this will be the last Wonkbook I write. I won't miss the early hours. But I'll miss everything else. In particular, I'll miss everyone else.
You guys have gotten to know my amazing Wonkblog colleagues -- like Sarah Kliff, Suzy Khimm, Brad Plumer, Dylan Matthews, Neil Irwin, and Lydia DePillis -- over the years. But I want to name some of the folks you may not know as well: Michelle Williams, Evan Soltas, Kelly Johnson, Sarah Halzack, Greg Franczyk, Terri Rupar, Gene Fynes, Kendra Nichols, Melissa Bell, Yuri Viktor, Michelle Gaps, Karl Singer, Amrita Jayakumar, Denny McAuliffe, and many others have put a tremendous amount of time and care and energy into Wonkblog and Wonkbook, much of it early in the morning, or on weekends. I can't thank them enough.
It's been a tremendous pleasure to write for -- and often with -- an audience as engaged, knowledgeable, curious, vocal, and brilliant as Wonkblog's. We've been able to do this kind of policy journalism because you have shown there's a market for it. And it's been an honor to do it at The Post. They have supported it because it's in their blood, or at least in their ink. I don't think there's anywhere else that Wonkblog could've taken root.
And it will continue! Wonkbook and Wonkblog will keep doing the full-spectrum policy coverage you've come to expect. You can follow Wonkblog on Twitter. And you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Happy graphing. And now, onto your regularly scheduled policy news.
Wonkbook's Number of the Day: 50,000. That's how many new immigrants would settle in Detroit under a special visa program if Gov. Rick Snyder gets his way.
Wonkbook's Graphs of the Day: Check out all the graphs in Raj Chetty's new paper on inequality and economic mobility.

Wonkbook's Top 5 Stories: (1) inequality and mobility, front and center; (2) Obamacare leads to insurer downgrades; (3) you can be pro-business and pro-climate; (4) your fiscal forecast for 2014; and (5) why Detroit wants immigrants.
1. Top story: Income mobility has changed less than you think
Economic mobility hasn't changed in a half-century in America, economists declare. "Children growing up in America today are just as likely -- no more, no less -- to climb the economic ladder as children born more than a half-century ago, a team of economists reported Thursday. Even though social movements have delivered better career opportunities for women and minorities and government grants have made college more accessible, one thing has stayed constant: If you are growing up poor today, you appear to have the same odds of staying poor in adulthood that your grandparents did. The landmark new study, from a group led by Harvard's Raj Chetty, suggests that any advances in opportunity provided by expanded social programs have been offset by other changes in economic conditions. Increased trade and advanced technology, for instance, have closed off traditional sources of middle-income jobs. The findings also suggest that who your parents are and how much they earn is more consequential for American youths today than ever before. That's because the difference between the bottom and the top of the economic ladder has grown much more stark, but climbing the ladder hasn't gotten any easier." Jim Tankersley in The Washington Post.
Primary source: Read the study (PDF).
Map: Where do kids born to parents in the 25-th income percentile end up on average? The Washington Post.
A surprising map of mobility: "Which parts of the country do you think have done the best job ensuring that children born to working-class families do better than their parents? California, with its booming tech industry? New York, with its financial wizards? Utah, with its deep social ties and communitarian values? Try Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Mississippi do the worst job helping kids advance." Ezra Klein in The Washington Post.
State of the Union to focus on inequality. "President Obama will try to pump some vitality into a lackluster second term on Tuesday when he delivers his State of the Union address. The address will include a "healthy dose" of the income inequality message the White House has focused on in recent weeks, according to one senior administration official familiar with the text. The president, who has yet to add to the big legislative accomplishments of his first term, will call for raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour and extending federal unemployment benefits that expired last month. He will also discuss energy and college affordability, two other issues that relate to the economic mobility message that is a major White House theme ahead of this year's midterm elections." Amie Parnes and Justin Sink in The Hill.
@Goldfarb: one question raised by mobility study is: What about children born today, after more inequality and a major economic downturn
Rep. McMorris Rodgers to give Republican response to Obama's State of the Union address. "Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers will deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address next week, GOP leadership announced Thursday. McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) is the chair of the House Republican Conference and is the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress." Ginger Gibson in Politico.
...But Rand Paul and Mike Lee are flying solo. "The Kentucky Republican's office will blast out his rebuttal to Obama's speech via social media and his email list...Paul joins two other Republicans who will deliver reactions to Obama's address Tuesday: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington will deliver the official GOP response, while Sen. Mike Lee of Utah will deliver the tea party address." Burgess Everett in Politico.
KRUGMAN: The populist imperative. "[J]obs and inequality are closely linked if not identical issues. There's a pretty good although not ironclad case that soaring inequality helped set the stage for our economic crisis, and that the highly unequal distribution of income since the crisis has perpetuated the slump, especially by making it hard for families in debt to work their way out. Moreover, there's an even stronger case to be made that high unemployment -- by destroying workers' bargaining power -- has become a major source of rising inequality and stagnating incomes even for those lucky enough to have jobs." Paul Krugman in The New York Times.
@vgmac: so another way of summarizing Chetty et al is the American Dream has long been a myth?
BROOKS: It takes a generation. "[W]hen President Obama talks about expanding opportunity in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, I'm hoping he'll widen the debate. I'm hoping he'll sketch out a stage-by-stage developmental agenda to help poor children move from birth to the middle class...[H]uman capital development takes a generation. If you really want to make an impact, you've got to have a developmental strategy for all the learning stages, ages 0 to 25." David Brooks in The New York Times.
THOMPSON: Why parents matter too much. "First, the income of your parents matters--not just as a strong predictor for your own income (given how weak social mobility is), but also as a nudge for your life path...Second, your parents' marriage (or living arrangement) matters. The single strongest predictor of a child's economic fortunes is the fraction of single parents in the area where she grew up." Derek Thompson in The Atlantic.
Music recommendations interlude: The Clash, "Career Opportunities," 1977.

Top opinion
DUNCAN: Better education 101. "In contrast to a national picture of gradual progress, Tennessee and the District of Columbia reported striking jumps -- in both math and reading achievement and in both grades examined, fourth and eighth. We don't know all the reasons why students did better in Tennessee and the District in 2013 than in 2011. But it is clear that they shared a similar approach to bettering education...[T]hese leaders invested in strengthening the quality of classroom instruction and revamping systems for teacher support and evaluation. They ensured that teachers could use good data from multiple sources to identify learning gaps and improve instruction. They also sought ongoing feedback from educators and others." Arne Duncan in The Washington Post.
KONCZAL: Washington has not quite yet defeated Wall Street. "All these rules do nothing if they aren't consistently enforced. There are reasons to worry. The Volcker Rule was immediately adjusted in order to prevent a small bank from taking a loss on a complicated investment. Experts disagree on the consequences of weakening that part of the rule, but the precedent is terrible. The concern over the strength of enforcement is a key part of the current record-setting bank settlements over bad conduct." Mike Konczal in The New Republic.
KENNY: Factories aren't job factories. "Not really--at least not for the U.S. in 2014. Any attempt to draw lessons from the 1950s, when many a high school-educated (white, male) person got a job in a factory and joined the middle class, doesn't account for the changes in the U.S. and global economy since the middle of the last century. While it's smart to focus on creating more stable, remunerative jobs, few of them are likely to come from manufacturing." Charles Kenny in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Opinion list: Ten things that aren't panaceas. Brad Plumer in The Washington Post.
BEINART: Rand Paul 2016? "To understand the Kentucky senator's hidden strength, it's worth remembering this basic fact about the modern GOP: It almost never nominates first-time candidates. Since 1980, George W. Bush is the only first-timer to win a Republican nomination. And since Bush used the political network his father built, he enjoyed many of the benefits of someone who had run before. It's the same with Paul. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he begins with an unparalleled infrastructure left over from his father Ron Paul's 2008 and 2012 campaigns." Peter Beinart in The Atlantic.
This is cool interlude: A soundmap of Mother Nature.
2. Obamacare leads to insurer downgrades
Moody's downgrades health insurers, citing Obamacare. "Moody's Investors Service analysts said Thursday that the administration's repeated changes to the rules and problems with getting younger Americans to sign up for the new insurance "exchanges" make it difficult to know if health insurers will end up with the customer base they need to make the economics of Obamacare work out..."While all of these issues had been on our radar screen as we approached 2014, a new development and a key factor for the change in outlook is the unstable and evolving regulatory environment under which the sector is operating," Moody's said. "Notably, new regulations and presidential announcements over the last several months with respect to the [Affordable Care Act] have imposed operational changes well after product and pricing decisions had been finalized."" Tom Howell Jr. in The Washington Times.
Court says Missouri can't block Obamacare navigators. "A federal court has temporarily blocked Missouri officials from restricting organizations in the state from helping people sign up for health insurance as part of the federal health-overhaul law. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri granted an injunction Thursday blocking the Missouri insurance department from enforcing a state law passed last year that limited the activities of people seeking to enroll the uninsured through new insurance exchanges." Louise Radnofsky in The Wall Street Journal.
The uninsured rate is dropping. Don't thank Obamacare yet. "Gallup's new poll on the uninsured rate shows a modest decline in January. The monthly poll shows that 16.1 percent of Americans report not having health coverage. This is the lowest rate that Gallup has found since December 2012...At the same time, the small decrease in the uninsured rate is difficult to attribute directly to Obamacare right now. You'll notice in the chart above that the uninsured rate has been trending downward this entire year, likely a product of a declining unemployment rate and greater access to employer-sponsored insurance." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.
Trying to count Obamacare's Medicaid enrollment? Good luck. "We don't know how many of those people gaining Medicaid because of the Affordable Care Act. There are lots of people who were eligible for Medicaid prior to the Affordable Care Act but didn't take action to enroll in the program. Maybe they never got around to signing up or found the paperwork too difficult. Maybe they hadn't heard about the Medicaid program--but did start hearing about it this past fall, when there was lots of focus on the health law's insurance expansion. When states send the federal government information about the number of people signing up for coverage, they don't specify whether it's "Obamacare Medicaid" or "normal Medicaid." They just tell the federal government that somebody signed up for Medicaid." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.
3. You can be pro-business and pro-climate
Industry awakens to threat of climate change. "Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change."Coral Davenport in The New York Times.
U.S. to probe solar panel dumping claims. "The US is reigniting a trade battle over solar panels by launching a probe into allegations that Chinese manufacturers have tried to evade anti-dumping duties by making products in Taiwan. The US government said on Thursday that it would investigate a complaint that Chinese producers were exploiting a loophole in measures to stop the sale of panels at illegally low prices in the US." Barney Jopson and Shawn Donnan in The Financial Times.
Maybe oil really shouldn't travel by rail. "Federal safety investigators called on railroads to route oil-filled trains around heavily populated areas as part of a series of recommendations to reduce risks from the growing business of shipping crude by rail. The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that transportation regulators should work with railroads to reroute oil trains and should ensure that railroads have plans in place to handle "worst-case" accidents or spills. It also called for new testing practices for oil being shipped by rail, in the wake of several serious accidents recently in which crude oil exploded after trains derailed." Betsy Morris, Paul Veira and Laura Stevens in The Wall Street Journal.
No one tries harder than Europe to fight climate change. The recession is testing that. "The E.U.'s new proposal is already coming under criticism from environmentalists for being too weak (many greens were hoping for a 50 percent cut or more by 2030). On the flip side, policymakers have to worry about moves that hike energy prices at a time when Europe's economy is still struggling massively. And there's the nagging question of whether Europe's often-unstable cap-and-trade system is up to the job of cutting emissions." Brad Plumer in The Washington Post.
Wonkbook reads dozens interlude: A quarter of Americans didn't read a single book last year.
4. Your fiscal forecast for 2014: Partly cloudy with a chance of default
The Obama administration is finalizing its annual budget. "President Obama will send his annual budget to Congress on March 4, about a month late because of lawmakers' tardy agreement on the current fiscal year's federal spending...Last year, Mr. Obama's budget arrived even later, in early April, because a fiscal fight between him and Congress delayed final action into January. Presidents are supposed to submit budgets in early February, but are often late." Jackie Calmes in The New York Times.
Meanwhile, Republicans say they're about to use the debt ceiling as leverage again. "[A]ides and lawmakers say party leaders believe a "clean" debt-ceiling bill, devoid of policy demands, can't pass the Republican controlled House...Prominent among the ideas being discussed are changes to an element of the Affordable Care Act known as "risk corridors," which some Republicans have derided as a bailout for insurers because the provision calls for the government to help insurers offset risks related to the law's requirement that they sell policies to all comers. Republicans might also demand repeal of the law's medical-device tax or its surcharge on insurance plans." Michael R. Crittenden in The Wall Street Journal.
Attention Tim Carney interlude: The crony-capitalist action figures.
5. Detroit wants its own visa program
Detroit: Send immigrants our way. "Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan on Thursday announced plans to seek federal help in bringing 50,000 immigrants to the bankrupt city over five years as part of a visa program aimed at those with advanced degrees or exceptional abilities in science, business or the arts. Under the plan, which is expected to be formally submitted to federal authorities soon, immigrants would be required to live and work in Detroit, a city that has fallen to 700,000 residents from 1.8 million in the 1950s." Monica Davey in The New York Times.
Immigration is back on the Republican agenda. "The same House Republicans who punted on immigration last year are now privately crafting an intricate plan to try to pass it in 2014. Most people close to the planning expect votes on four bills by the end of the summer, including one that would give undocumented workers legal status...shadows and reintegrate into society." That would include requiring immigrants learn English, civics, pay taxes and pay a fine -- a process that is sure to be decried by opponents as amnesty. The other three Republican bills would cover legalizing children brought to the country illegally, the tracking of foreign nationals and visas for low-skilled workers. The House has already passed high-skilled worker and border security bills." Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer in Politico.
Good things happening in this world interlude: Building a better HIV vaccine through crowdfunding and machine learning.
Wonkblog Roundup
Ten things that aren't panaceas. Brad Plumer.
The uninsured rate is dropping. Don't thank Obamacare yet. Sarah Kliff.
A surprising map of where it's hardest to escape poverty in America. Ezra Klein.
No one tries harder than Europe to fight climate change. The recession is testing that. Brad Plumer.
Trying to count Obamacare's Medicaid enrollment? Good luck. Sarah Kliff.
Et Cetera
Virginia attorney general asks the Supreme Court to strike down its same-sex marriage ban, please. Ashby Jones in The Wall Street Journal.
Watchdog panel urges NSA to end phone program. Siobhan Gorman and Jared A. Favole in The Wall Street Journal.
Home sales are expected to cool after a big year. Eric Morath in The Wall Street Journal.
Walmart creates fund to support U.S. manufacturing. Emmarie Huetteman and Elizabeth A. Harris in The New York Times.
Got tips, additions, or comments? E-mail us.
Wonkbook is produced with help from Michelle Williams.

Friday, January 24, 2014

WonkPM is your afternoon update of the latest posts on Wonkblog. WonkPM is a supplement to your morning Wonkbook newsletter. If you'd like to opt-out from receiving WonkPM, please click here.

There’s a war over R&D tax credits. And companies keep winning

One of the most generous offerings for corporate America in the U.S. tax code is about to become even more bountiful under an Obama administration proposal to expand the definition of business research. The new rules, which are being finalized by the U.S. Treasury Department, would expand the definition of business research. It would lift […]

Moody’s just downgraded the health insurance industry. Obamacare was part of the reason.

Stephen Zaharuk is a Moody's senior vice president who covers the health insurance industry. That makes him the guy who authored the report downgrading the credit outlook for health insurance companies from "stable" to "negative" on Thursday. We spoke Thursday afternoon about his outlook for the health-care industry, the big unknowns looming in 2014, and why […]

Just how much money will Warren Buffett make on the $1 billion bracket?

Here are the phases of thinking about Quicken Loans' offer of a $1 billion prize for a perfect NCAA bracket, insured by Berkshire Hathaway: Phase 1: Whoa, that's nuts, why would they do that! Phase 2: Wait, the odds against that are crazy. Clearly this is just a big marketing ploy. Phase 2 is certainly […]

Don’t look now, but Obamacare might just hit a sign-up projection

Welcome to Health Reform Watch, Sarah Kliff’s regular look at how the Affordable Care Act is changing the American health-care system — and being changed by it. You can reach Sarah with questions, comments and suggestions here. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for the latest edition or sign up here to receive it straight from […]

What happens when jobless benefits get cut? Let’s ask North Carolina.

In January, some 1.3 million Americans lost their unemployment insurance when an emergency federal program to help the jobless expired. So what will happen to those workers? Will they find jobs? Or will they just drop out of the labor force altogether? Some potential clues come from North Carolina, which effectively withdrew from the federal […]

‘You work until you die:’ Inside America’s fragmented safety net for the disabled

Joe Entwisle first came to my attention over Twitter, where he is a high-volume contributor under the moniker @wheelieboy. Joe has worked extensively in several areas of disability policy and practice. He is now a Senior Health Policy Analyst at Health & Disability Advocates (HDA) here in Chicago. His Huffington Post essay “Debunking the Disability […]

Wonkbook: Is there an "insurer bailout" in Obamacare? & a lot more 23JAN14

	Thursday, January 23, 2014 Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas's morning policy news primer. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Washpost dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog. Wonkbook's Number of the Day: 16. That's how many days Congress has to raise the debt ceiling. A new report from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says the U.S. will hit it on February 7. Wonkbook's Graph of the Day: The U.S. government keeps predicting we'll drive more than we actually do. Wonkbook's Top 5 Stories: (1) Obamacare's weak mandate; (2) look, ma, no safety net; (3) production grows, but not employment; (4) Supreme Court might regret leaving gay marriage to the states; and (5) the path to better elections. 1. Top story: The individual mandate might not be strong enough Why Republicans are focusing on 'risk corridors.' "Conservative wonks and Republican lawmakers are coalescing around a new strategy to sabotage Obamacare by repealing a temporary piece of the law designed to hold down premiums in the event of major market disruptions. The provision -- called "risk corridors," but dubbed the "Obamacare bailout" by the law's opponents -- seeks to stabilize costs by creating a pot of money that takes in funds from insurers who enroll healthier customers and uses it to pay out insurers who enroll sicker customers. It's a safety valve that sunsets after 2016. The repeal push is clever messaging in a sense because it lets conservatives snatch the mantle of populism from liberals against wealthy insurance companies. But it comes with its share of dangers, too." Sahil Kapur in Talking Points Memo. Explainer: What are "risk corridors"? Louise Radnofsky and Jennifer Corbett Dooren in The Wall Street Journal. Study: Young adults lack incentive to buy Obamacare coverage. "The conservative American Action Forum (AAF) released a study on Tuesday saying that the individual mandate penalty may never be substantial enough an incentive to get young adults to buy into the ObamaCare exchanges. The study finds that after accounting for cost-sharing and subsidies in 2014, it would still be cheaper for 86 percent of young adults to forgo coverage and to pay the individual mandate instead. That percentage decreases to 71 in 2015, and 62 in 2016, as the individual mandate penalty goes up." Jonathan Easley in The Hill. A program bigger than Covered California. "[I]t's puzzling that nearly no one fussed over another huge figure: the 680,000-plus residents who signed up for the state's Low Income Health Plan -- perhaps the biggest element of Obamacare that got the smallest share of attention...A recent report suggested that ED utilization was flat-- or even fell -- among LIHP enrollees, although more comprehensive data suggests that there was a short-lived spike. But that should be within expectations, suggested Gerald Kominski, director of UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research." Dan Diamond in California Healthline. @ddiamond: If you report on what experts call the "most underreported story" in Obamacare, is it still underreported? Asking for a friend. Obamacare's gap, as seen in western North Carolina. "[F]or nine out of ten of the people she talks with, she says, it seems as if there's nothing she can do. They're too poor to qualify for affordable health insurance in North Carolina, because they're in what's called "the coverage gap:" They don't earn enough to qualify for a subsidy under the health law, and they can't get Medicaid because North Carolina is one of the 23 states that decided not to expand the program under the health law. The expansion covers childless, low-income adults who previously didn't get qualify for Medicaid. "I take someone who's working poor, I ask them to come see me, and then I find out that not only are they poor, but they're too poor for me to help. It's almost as if I wished I hadn't seen them," says Buckner, who grew up in the area." Jenny Gold in Kaiser Health News. Explainer: Thirteen charts that explain how Roe v. Wade changed abortion rights. Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post. Target is dropping insurance for some because of Obamacare. That could be good news for workers. "A hypothetical 25-year-old Target sales floor leader, for example, who earns $15 an hour and works 29 hours per week would qualify f0r a monthly health-care subsidy of $96 if Target does not offer insurance. The worker could not access that subsidy if Target did offer coverage -- but the worker would then, of course, have access to that employer plan. Generally speaking, those who will get the best deal here are the workers with the lowest salaries because, for the first time, their premium will be directly tethered to the amount of money they earn." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post. FEYMAN: Why risk corridors don't give bailouts. "[P]erhaps the most important point here is this: any conservative reform plan for universal coverage will have to use similar methods of risk adjustment. The point here is simple - if you want insurers to participate more broadly in the individual market, you'll need to offer a carrot to offset the unavoidable uncertainties. And railing against risk corridors now will make them a hard sell further down the road. Risk adjustment mechanisms get you the buy-in of insurers, but they also helps keep premiums at manageable levels while insurers develop enough experience to properly price plans on their own. This helps encourage people to enroll in these plans, which in turn helps insurers develop the necessary pricing experience - resulting in a virtuous cycle." Yevgeniy Feyman in Forbes. @daveweigel: This is Rubio's chance to demand the end of the Obamacare risk corridors in any debt limit deal. #giggity PONNURU: Do conservatives want to bail out Obamacare? "If conservatives wanted to make the premiums on the exchanges as low as possible, they would be for toughening the individual mandate to get more healthy people to join the pool. They're against that idea, because they don't think shoring up Obamacare is worth the conscription of more social resources. They should follow that logic in this case, too. " Ramesh Ponnuru in Bloomberg. Music recommendations interlude: Ornette, "Crazy," remix, 2011. Top opinion KLEIN: Pining for LBJ, we got Christie. "Christie has been a beneficiary of LBJ nostalgia. He's a tough Republican governor in a blue state facing a Democratic legislature. He yells at people who oppose him. He swaggers across the national stage...We like our elected leaders to be stronger than the formal powers we give them. So they are tempted to exert power through informal means that we don't always approve of when they're exposed. The alternative is a disappointed electorate -- and more LBJ nostalgia." Ezra Klein in Bloomberg. YGLESIAS: Can America afford innovation? "To many conservatives, recent attention paid to income inequality is at best a distraction from the real challenge of growth and innovation. But in reality these issues are inextricably linked. The development of new and better kinds of products is key to producing long-term economic growth. But determining what kind of products to develop and bring to market hinges crucially on whether or not people will be able to buy them...Innovative product ideas languish in semi-obscurity or simply can't get financing because in general we don't have the kind of broadly rising incomes that would support new products." Matthew Yglesias in Slate. BEUTLER: The right is a bunch of aging white radicals. "When it became clear about a year ago that Republican leaders would have a much harder time advancing immigration reform than they realized -- that GOP activists and conservatives were livid about the idea that Republicans were going to help illegal immigrants gain citizenship -- it started to look like the party had an insoluble problem on its hands. Watching Republicans attempt to broaden their appeal to growing, traditionally Democratic constituencies has been like watching someone try to cover a bedroom floor with a poorly cut carpet, fastening it into one corner but pulling it out of the others in the process." Brian Beutler in Salon. CHAIT: I have seen the future of the Republican Party, and it is George W. Bush. "If and when Republicans regain the White House, profligacy holds the key to their ideological salvation. Liberating themselves from austerity will allow them to back away from their brutal campaign of confiscating food stamps, Pell grants, and low-income tax credits, and still hand out tax cuts for the 1 percent. Tax cuts for one and all! That, after all, was the Bush formula: small elements of programmatic reform for low-income workers, stapled onto the agenda of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, all costs deferred." Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine. KRISTOF: Modern family matters. "First is to expand family planning so that teenagers and young adults don't have babies they don't want and are ill-prepared to care for. Four out of five teenage pregnancies are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Institute. It's promising that a randomized trial found that the Carrera pregnancy prevention curriculum in low-income schools reduced teen births by half. Family-planning initiatives save taxpayer money now spent on health care and the safety net, yet, after inflation, America's investment in Title X family planning has fallen some 70 percent since 1980. That's crazy." Nicholas "D." Kristof in The New York Times. MULLIGAN: Why we should pay jurors more. "Many people summoned for jury duty search desperately for excuses. Their efforts increase the burden on the court system, which has to summon and process a large number of people in order to empanel its juries. The court system might alleviate these problems by following the example of the modern military: recruit people for service by paying them far more than minimum wage...Taking property and drafting citizens into government service without market compensation have many of the same economic problems: they fail to spread the burden of supporting government activity, they encourage socially wasteful avoidance behaviors, and enforcement runs the risk of special treatment for the politically connected." Casey B. Mulligan in The New York Times. Mother Earth interlude: A meteor crater in India. 2. Look, ma, no safety net! States cutting weeks of aid to the jobless. "The rest of the country is now following North Carolina's lead. A federal program supplying extra weeks of benefits to the long-term unemployed expired at the end of 2013, and congressional Democrats failed in an effort to revive it. About 1.3 million jobless workers received their last payment on Dec. 28. Starting on Jan. 1, the maximum period of unemployment payments dropped to 26 weeks in most states, down from as much as 73 weeks. With that move, the country's safety net for jobless workers has undergone a sudden transformation, from one aimed at providing modest but sustained protection to workers weathering a tough labor market to one intended to give relatively short-term aid before spurring workers to accept a job, any job." Annie Lowrey in The New York Times. Food banks anticipate cuts to food stamps. "Food banks across the country are making similar preparations, increasing efforts to prepare for the increased demand even as donations decline. Moreover, they say, they do not have enough staff to meet all the requests..."We are going to increase our efforts to get more donations and try to serve as many people as possible, given our resources," said Nancy E. Roman, executive director at the food bank. "But make no mistake, if the food stamp program is cut, we're going to see much longer lines of people seeking help with their food budgets, and we can't help them all."" Ron Nixon in The New York Times. Explainer: 10 startling facts about global wealth inequality. Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. Must-read debate: The American Prospect is opening a conversation on the "future of the social safety net." Kit Rachlis in The American Prospect. Visit with pope in Rome will give Obama a chance to spotlight economic inequality. "A decision to visit Pope Francis at the Vatican in late March provides President Obama with an opportunity to highlight the problem of economic inequality, an issue he has placed at the forefront of his second-term agenda. Administration officials announced the trip Tuesday, saying Obama will travel to Rome after a pair of summits in Belgium and the Netherlands...A trip to the Vatican gives the president a chance to frame one of his signature domestic issues in largely moral terms. But the journey also highlights the continuing disagreements between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church over issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage." Juliet Eilperin in The Washington Post. Tumblrs interlude: Awesome people hanging out together. 3. Production without employment Why hiring lags even as factories hum. "Companies large and small have balked at hiring and expanding since the financial crisis, fearing the halting recovery would falter. The U.S. added just 74,000 jobs in December, according to the Labor Department, far fewer than economists had expected. Other indicators suggest executives have become more optimistic in recent months. A Business Roundtable survey of CEOs in December showed 39% expected to boost capital spending over the next six months, up from 27% in the third quarter, though hiring expectations were little changed. Much depends on whether that optimism translates into action, and whether companies choose approaches that keep a lid on hiring." Theo Francis in The Wall Street Journal. Guess who's driving consumer spending? "Morgan Stanley drilled down into more than 100 categories of consumer spending and found the strongest growth in durable goods (products designed to last at least three years), particularly luxury goods...The findings reflect a two-track recovery for the U.S. economy. The wealthy, buoyed by stock market gains and rising real estate prices, were willing and able consumers last year. Households relying on income from wages and salaries were hit harder by higher taxes at the start of the year, tamping down demand." Jeffrey Sparshott in The Wall Street Journal. Lew sends Congress yet another warning about the debt limit. "Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew warned Congress on Wednesday that the government would most likely exhaust its ability to borrow in late February, setting up yet another fiscal showdown with Republicans, and this time earlier than congressional leaders had anticipated. In a letter to Speaker John A. Boehner and the other top three congressional leaders, Mr. Lew said a surge of February spending, mainly tax refunds for 2013, would leave the Treasury with little room to maneuver after the official debt limit is reached on Feb. 7." Jonathan Weisman in The New York Times. American oil demand rebounds. "In November the US government's Energy Information Administration began publishing weekly data that suggested US oil consumption was running 4-5 per cent higher than a year ago. For some products such as propane and propylene, which are used in petrochemical plants and agriculture, growth was in the double digits...For a country where oil demand was thought to be in structural decline, as car engines have become more efficient and heavy industries move offshore, the numbers were startling - so startling they were widely dismissed. But as more reliable monthly data has followed, some observers believe something big is stirring in the oil market." Ajay Makan and Gregory Meyer in The Financial Times. Crude exports face obstacles. "That there is even a debate on easing or ending the 40-year-old near-total ban on U.S. crude-oil exports is a remarkable turnabout for the U.S.'s energy situation, where dependence on foreign oil has been a key driver of policies in several presidential administrations. The resolution of the debate carries important implications on the profit potential of exporters and the ability to avoid a production glut that could slow the shale boom...The IEA said Tuesday that surging U.S. production could hit a wall if the export ban stays in place, making additional production less economically attractive. The growing volumes "that cannot leave North America are increasingly posing a challenge to industry," the report said." Alicia Mundy and Ben Lefebvre in The Wall Street Journal. More Tumblrs interlude: Distractions in space. 4. The Supreme Court is going to have to straighten this mess out Same-sex newlyweds sue Utah. "The legal saga in Utah over same-sex marriage grew even more complicated on Tuesday as four couples who had married during the brief window they could do so sued the state over its recent decision not to recognize their marriages or provide any new state benefits to same-sex newlyweds. The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, which filed the lawsuit on their behalf, said that Utah's decision had thrown hundreds of new marriages into uncertainty, depriving gay couples of the ability to obtain health care coverage as spouses, to adopt children together legally or to make medical decisions if a spouse or family member were to fall ill." Jack Healy in The New York Times. ...And Florida. "Six same-sex couples in Florida have filed a lawsuit challenging the state's ban on gay marriage on grounds that it violates fundamental guarantees of the US Constitution, including a right to marry regardless of sexual orientation...The 21-page complaint seeks to overturn two Florida laws, passed in 1977 and 1997, limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. It also seeks to invalidate a 2008 amendment to the Florida constitution defining marriage as "the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife."" Warren Richey in the Christian Science Monitor. Meanwhile, Indiana moves one step in the other direction. "A hotly debated proposal to add a gay marriage ban to Indiana's constitution passed its first hurdle of the 2014 legislative session Wednesday when a House committee voted in favor of the measure. A panel of 13 lawmakers on the House Elections and Apportionment Committee voted 9-3 along party lines to send the amendment, known as House Joint Resolution 3, to the full House. The vote came after about four hours of passionate testimony." Barb Berggoetz and Tony Cook in The Indianapolis Star. Transgender students in California get new options. "School districts in California are grappling with a newly enacted, first-of-its-kind law that spells out rights for those students who don't identify as being the gender of their birth. California law AB 1266, the first such statewide legislation in the country, grants students who identify themselves as transgender the right to choose the sports teams and extracurricular activities--as well as the bathrooms and locker rooms--that correspond to their gender identities." Alejandro Lazo in The Wall Street Journal. Fantasy economics interlude: This is the Wonkblog equivalent of your football roster. 5. The path to better elections Bipartisan election commission releases list of suggested fixes. "Concluding a six-month review, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration said in its report that jurisdictions should expand online voter registration and early balloting, update electronic voting equipment as first-generation voting machines grow obsolete, and share voter registration records across state lines to protect against fraud. The 112-page report also suggests improvements in the more traditional ways Americans have cast ballots. Those include increasing the number of schools used as polling places, simplifying voting for members of the military and other Americans living overseas through better access to state Web sites and insuring that polling places are close to voters' homes." Scott Wilson in The Washington Post. Literary interlude: Zelda Fitzgerald wrote. Who knew? Wonkblog Roundup Miami Beach mayor: Take your tech start-up gospel, and shove it. Lydia DePillis. 10 startling facts about global wealth inequality. Ezra Klein. Target is dropping insurance for some because of Obamacare. That could be good news for workers. Sarah Kliff. The U.S. government keeps predicting we'll drive more than we actually do. Brad Plumer. Thirteen charts that explain how Roe v. Wade changed abortion rights. Sarah Kliff. Et Cetera Snowden denies that he was a spy for Russia. Charlie Savage in The New York Times. Got tips, additions, or comments? E-mail us. Wonkbook is produced with help from Michelle Williams.

Stop Republican hostage-taking by abolishing the debt limit The Republican Coup of 2013 22&20OKT13

OUR economy can't take another battle over the debt ceiling, especially when there is nothing in the US Constitution about limiting the national debt. We, the people, don't have to tolerate being held hostage by a minority of right wing extremist in congress who are angry they can't get their way because they don't have enough votes, even among congressional republicans. Sign this petition telling congress to abolish the federal debt limit, and share it with others. This should be passed before the next fiscal battle in JAN 2014. From Daily Kos and Credo..

Craig, join Daily Kos and CREDO in urging Congress to abolish the debt limit. Click here to sign our petition.

Republican hostage-takers came dangerously close to willfully and recklessly driving our economy over a cliff. But it doesn't have to be this way.

America is virtually alone in the developed world in having a debt ceiling, and there’s nothing in the Constitution about it.

We can make sure that Republicans never take our entire economy hostage again by abolishing the debt ceiling. If Republicans want to cut spending, then they can just use the budget process.

Please join Daily Kos and CREDO in signing our petition to Congress: abolish the debt limit.

Keep fighting,
Paul Hogarth, Daily Kos

Sun Oct 20, 2013 at 03:15 PM PDT

The Republican Coup of 2013

by Jon PerrFollow for Daily Kos

On April 7, 2009—less than three months after Barack Obama first took the oath of office—the Daily Show's Jon Stewart perfectly summed up the red-hot, right-wing rage that hasn't cooled since. "I think," Stewart explained to frothing-at-the-mouth tea party supporters, "you might be confusing tyranny with losing."
Nevertheless, just days later thousands of the GOP's furious faithful turned out for Tax Day Tea Party rallies, events funded by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks and promoted by Fox News, displaying signs proclaiming "Taxed Enough Already" and "No Taxation without Representation." That was more than a little ironic. After all, President Obama and the newly elected Democratic majorities in the House and Senate had just delivered tax relief for 95 percent of working households with the largest two-year tax cut in American history. And by 2010, federal tax revenue as a percentage of the U.S. economy had plummeted to the lowest level since 1950. So much for the need to water the Tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
But four-plus years later, the Republicans' scorched-earth strategy is no laughing matter. After spending most of his first term demonizing Barack Obama, conservatives are hell-bent on erasing his agenda reaffirmed by the American people less than a year ago. And as the events of the last few weeks show, many Republicans are more than willing to shutter the U.S. government and destroy the American economy to do it.
Not that Republican leaders hesitated to bring the government to a screeching halt the moment George W. Bush left the Oval Office to "replenish the ol' coffers." The unprecedented campaign of GOP obstructionism which literally began the night of Obama's inauguration quickly shattered the previous mark for filibusters, blocked President Obama's judicial nominations at record rates and even stood in the way of any appointee to head agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
During most of Obama's first four years in office, another Republican weapon of choice was, as Arizona Republican Jon Kyl's office acknowledged, the talking point "not intended to be a factual statement." Barack Obama isn't a Muslim and wasn't born in Kenya (or any place other than Hawaii). The Bush recession which began in December 2007 did not become the "Obama Bear Market" months before the Democrat even won the election, let alone take the oath of office. Tax cuts don't "pay for themselves" and the 2009 stimulus did not fail to "create a single job" and "make the economy worse." There were (and are) no "death panels. That 2009 Politifact Lie of the Year was succeeded in 2010 by another Affordable Care Act myth, "a government takeover of health care."
But it was on health care reform where the GOP waged—and is still waging—a war to stop President Obama and the Democratic Party at all costs. While Obama pondered this summer why the GOP's "number one priority, the one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care," the answer was never a mystery. The health care reform initiative had to be what South Carolina Senator turned Heritage Foundation President Jim Demint in 2009 called "his Waterloo" because the alternative was Waterloo for the Republican Party. As I summed it up in "The Real Reason for the GOP's All-Out War on Obamacare" below:

At its core, the Republicans' scorched-earth opposition to Obamacare has never been so much about "freedom" or "limited government" or any other right-wing ideological buzzword as it has been about political power, pure and simple. Now as for the past 20 years, Republicans have feared not that health care reform would fail the American people, but that it would succeed. Along with Social Security and Medicare, successful health care reform would provide the third and final pillar of Americans' social safety net, all brought you by the Democratic Party. To put it another way, the GOP was never really concerned about a "government takeover of health care", "rationing", "the doctor-patient relationship" or mythical "death panels," but that an American public grateful for access to health care could provide Democrats with an enduring majority for years to come.

For two decades, Weekly Standard Bill Kristol has been quite clear on that point. Kristol, who in 1993 and 1994 led the Republican effort to undermine Democrat Bill Clinton's health reform plan lest it "revive the reputation of the party... as the generous protector of middle-class interests," told Fox News' Neil Cavuto two weeks after Obama's inauguration the GOP should emulate the roadblock Republicans of the 1990's to halt his economic recovery package first and everything else—most of all health care reform—later:

"But the loss of credibility, even if they jam it through, really hurts them on the next, on the next piece of legislation. Clinton got through his tax increases in '93, it was such a labor and he had to twist so many arms to do it and he became so unpopular... ...That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues. It's very important for them, I think, not just to stay united at this time, though that's important, but to make the arguments."

In November 2009, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) laid out the stakes for Republicans in an interview with CNS. Hatch, who ironically had co-sponsored an individual mandate bill in 1993, explained in this way:

HATCH: That's their goal. Move people into government that way. Do it in increments. They've actually said it. They've said it out loud. Q: This is a step-by-step approach --
HATCH: A step-by-step approach to socialized medicine. And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, "All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party."
Q: They'll have reduced the American people to dependency on the federal government.
HATCH: Yeah, you got that right. That's their goal. That's what keeps Democrats in power.

The usual suspects among the right-wing think tanks amplified that message. Just days after the 2008 election, Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute insisted, "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to GOP's survival." James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute similarly warned that the passage of a Democratic health care bill could "kill conservatism." He quoted a Republican strategist who fretted:

"Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it."

But Democrats did take the White House in 2008. And despite conservative fear-mongering and demagoguery, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became the law of the land in March 2010. The right-wing euphoria about the GOP's overwhelming triumph in the November 2010 midterm elections soon dissipated into bitter disappointment. In 2012, President Obama was comfortably re-elected and Democrats retained their Senate majority in a campaign in which health care reform was, after only the economy, the most prominent issue. (While the Democrats' gains were limited in the House, they nevertheless won its popular tally by over a million votes.) Over 40 repeal votes by the House died on arrival in the Senate. With the Supreme Court having upheld the constitutionality of the ACA in June 2012, Republicans were left with only two approaches. First, despite the fact that health care is worst where the GOP does best, Republicans set out to undermine the implementation of Obamacare in almost every state they controlled. And to prevent the Obama administration from implementing the Affordable Care Act nationwide, they targeted the federal government itself with the same weapon they first threatened to detonate in the summer of 2011. That weapon was also nuclear.
The debt ceiling of the United States.
Raising the debt ceiling—that is, increasing Uncle Sam's borrowing authority in order to pay bills already incurred—used to be a routine part of governing for both parties. Since 1980, it has been boost 42 times, including on 17 occasions by Ronald Reagan (who tripled the national debt) and seven more by George W. Bush (who nearly doubled the debt again). Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor voted for all of those debt ceiling hikes. Of course, they had to and not just because the cost of two wars, the Bush tax cuts, the Medicare Part D prescription drug program and TARP added trillions of dollars of red ink during Bush's tenure. There was another reason debt ceiling increases had to be approved, one which Speaker Boehner (along with Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Lindsey Graham and other GOP luminaries) acknowledged in 2011:

"That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, 'we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."

But in the summer of 2011, House Republicans became the first party with both the votes and the intent to block a debt ceiling increase. They threatened to trigger a global economic cataclysm unless President Obama and his Democratic allies agreed to draconian spending cuts. (That's why former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill warned that his GOP allies "who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists [and are] really putting our whole society at risk.") The extortion worked, resulting in the $1.2 trillion, 10-year budget sequester. Speaker Boehner, who crowed "I got 98 percent of what I wanted," wasn't the only Republican leader exulting in the wake of the August 2011 deal they extracted. A gloating Mitch McConnell promised he and his party would be back to blackmail the president again:

"I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn't think that. What we did learn is this -- it's a hostage that's worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done."

Despite triggering a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard and Poor's and reversing U.S. consumer confidence and job creation, McConnell told CNBC's Lawrence Kudlow just days later that for Republicans, hostage-taking would be the new normal.

"What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order."

In 2013, the hostage would be Obamacare. But in the weeks and months after Obama's second inauguration, that wasn't the only item on the Republican ransom note. By March 2013, Politico reported, "House GOP leadership is also eyeing several bills to hike the debt cap with different budgetary reforms [which] include increasing the Medicare eligibility age, means testing Medicare and changing the formula for calculating government benefits." By May, another approach "gained significant traction -- and has been ricocheting around K Street and Capitol Hill -- would directly wed increases in the debt ceiling to progress in tax reform." By July, the price went up again as some Republicans began demanding President Obama essentially approve the Paul Ryan budget that had garnered the votes of 95 percent of Congressional Republicans three years running.
In other words, the Republicans were seeking a de facto coup d'état by other means. The government the American people twice elected would be defenestrated, not through violence, but by blackmail.
While those and other conditions for raising the debt ceiling would appear, disappear and reappear in the months to come, by the end of the summer, the core demand was set. Led by Heritage Action and its front man Ted Cruz, Republicans would demand the defunding of Obamacare and the delay of its individual mandate as the price for shutting down the government and triggering a sovereign default by the United States. In August, 80 GOP members of Congress signed a letter calling on Speaker Boehner to do just that. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Stephen Moore detailed how the plan laid out by Michael Needham of Heritage Action became the House GOP's battle plan:

"I really believe we are in a great position right now," says Michael Needham, the 31-year-old president of Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the nation's largest conservative think tank. By "we" he means the Republican Party and the conservative movement; their "great position" refers to the potential to win the political battle over the government shutdown.

As events this week showed, Needham was wrong. The twin threats to render the United States ungovernable and sabotage the U.S. economy boomeranged against the GOP. The American people rightly blamed Republicans for their shuttered government. Sen. Graham acknowledged the role the polls played in the collapse of the GOP's attempt at extortion, lamenting "Of course they had an impact." In defeat, Speaker John Boehner admitted Wednesday he didn't have the nerve to execute the American economy he and his party were holding hostage. (As Newsweek reported, both Fitch and S&P were just hours away from downgrading U.S. credit.) Despite the failure of their coup attempt, Republicans remain unbowed. While Boehner warned that "Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president's health care law will continue," Louisiana Rep. John Fleming promised "we're going to start this all over again." As for Paul Ryan, the GOP wunderkind turned vice presidential nominee who voted against the deal as well as the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission plan, "compromise" means the adoption of his budget plan ("To break the deadlock, both sides should agree to common-sense reforms of the country's entitlement programs and tax code") the Senate, the president and the American people already rejected.
And no doubt, Ted Cruz will be back, as will many of the other 17 GOP senators and 144 representatives who voted Wednesday to let the United States default. Some are already threatening to pursue impeachment. But Cruz's opposition to this week's "terrible deal" wasn't because "it does absolutely nothing to provide relief for the millions of Americans who are hurting because of Obamacare." As he recently admitted to Sean Hannity of Fox News, Ted Cruz like so many other Republicans is afraid Americans will like the Affordable Care Act:

"If we don't do it (defund Obamacare) now, in all likelihood, Obamacare will never, ever be repealed. Why is that? Because on January 1, the exchanges kick in, the subsidies kick in," and added that "their plan is to get the American people addicted to the sugar, addicted to the subsidies, and once that happens, in all likelihood, it never gets..." "It's over," Hannity cut in, "it never gets repealed."

To those Republicans who organized their failed putsch over white wine and single-malt scotch on K Street, President Obama on Thursday had a simple message:

"You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it," Obama said. "But don't break it. Don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country's about."

Or as Jon Stewart put it to the tea partiers four years ago, don't confuse tyranny with losing.

 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/20/1248470/-The-Republican-Coup-of-2013?detail=action