All Wisdom's Children

The Myth of the Conservative Democrat

2011-01-10T17:03:00.000-06:00

In order to win reelection Ben Nelson and other Democrat legislators from conservative states like Nebraska must constantly distance themselves from their liberal party and cast themselves as “Conservative Democrats”. The fact is that the “Conservative Democrat” posture is largely a sham. Much of their reputed conservatism is nullified by party affiliation. It makes a great deal of difference which party is in the majority in the House and Senate. The influence of a Democratic legislator who sometimes takes positions at odds with his party is largely canceled out when he gives his party the majority in one of the legislative chambers.

The majority party in both House and the Senate wields a great deal of power. The speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader get to set the agenda for the chamber and determine the rules under which it will be considered. For the most part only those bills favored by the leader or speaker will even be allowed for consideration. The leader or speaker can also determine the rules under which legislation is advanced so as to expedite his or her favored bills and hinder the efforts of the minority party to oppose them or to introduce bills related to their own priorities.

Members of the majority party become chairmen of the legislative and oversight committees and hold a majority of seats on the committee. Committee chairmen are quite powerful and can singlehandedly determine whether or not the full chamber can even consider a bill. When hearings are held, the committee chair can decide the purpose of a hearing and who is allowed to testify. For example, Senator Kerry, the current Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee recently held hearings on the START treaty and made sure that only those who supported the treaty were allowed to testify so that a false impression of enthusiastic support for the treaty was given.

The leadership of the current Democratic Party is firmly in the hands of its most liberal faction. There are no conservative party members in leadership positions. The liberals drive the Democratic Party bus with the conservatives confined to the back. Once Democrats had majorities in the Senate and House, the most liberal members were put in charge. The only influence conservative members can exert is to extract a minor concession or obtain an earmark in exchange for their vote on the advancing of a liberal policy objective. This was clearly on display during the Obamacare debate. Conservative Democrats put up a good show of opposing this lurch toward what will eventually become national health care but in the end they all caved in and went along with their party leadership.

The liberal party leaders tolerate the more conservative members only because they are realistic enough to know there is little chance of electing a true liberal in these conservative leaning districts. The conservative members are essential in allowing the liberal Democrats to gain majority status in the House and Senate and so liberal party leaders know that they must help these members maintain the fiction of conservatism.

One of the most popular tricks employed in the Senate is to require Conservative Democrats to vote for cloture motions, which require 60 votes, but allow them to vote against the bill if their vote is not needed during the final vote when only a simple majority is necessary. This way the “Conservative” senator can boast during the reelection campaign that he voted against the liberal bill when it was actually a carefully orchestrated game to pass the bill while giving the “Conservative” Senator cover. Most high priority bills are not even brought up for a vote unless the majority leader knows how his party members will vote. “Conservative Democrats” do not vote entirely as they wish on high stakes issues but vote at the direction of the party leadership. It is dishonest for one of these Senators to sincerely claim that he opposed the bill when he had a chance to kill it by voting “no” on the cloture vote. He knew exactly what he was doing when he cast his votes and exactly what the final outcome would be. He is banking on the fact that most voters do not know what sort of games are going on behind the scenes.

During the past 2 years Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has with the aid of many “Conservative Democrats”, put on a clinic in dictatorial control of the chamber. Customarily, bills are written by both majority and minority members in the various committee with hearings that solicit public input. After a bill is brought out of a committee the entire House debates and amends the bill before voting on it. During Pelosi’s tenure all important bills were written entirely by Democratic Party leaders in secret meetings. House committees were bypassed entirely and these bills were brought by Pelosi directly to the full House where the minority party had no chance to amend the bill. Harry Reid in the Senate employed similar methods. Republicans were shut out completely from the drafting of bills and were forced to accept or reject in whole whatever the Democratic Party leaders came up with.

This breathtaking display of partisanship came from the party whose president promised to end the acrimonious atmosphere in Washington and usher in a new era of peace and harmony. Then in an astonishing and cynical display of bad faith Obama, Reid, and Pelosi regularly flogged Republicans for being uncooperative. President Obama and his party have brought us what must surely by the most extreme display of partisan politics in recent memory. All this came about with the aid of “Conservative Democrats”. Just as it is axiomatic that one beware of Greeks bearing gifts so let the voters beware of candidates claiming to be “Conservative Democrats”. Party affiliation makes a difference-a huge difference.

A Tale of Health Care

2010-01-06T14:45:00.000-06:00

Somewhere in the US a large city emergency room is crowded with patients who are forced to wait for hours to receive medical care. These patients have come to the emergency room because they do not have health insurance and cannot afford to pay for the medical services they need. This tragic situation is caused by our corrupt and inefficient private health care system. The greedy, unscrupulous corporate fat cats who run the big medical providers and health insurance companies care only about maximizing their own profits and padding their bank accounts while poor people suffer and die. The only sensible solution is for the federal government to control the delivery of all health care. Only the federal government is able to fairly and efficiently deliver high quality health care to everyone at a reasonable cost.

This is a simplified version of the liberal fairy tale currently being told by President Obama, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and their allies. This story is exemplified by the President’s famous “amputation” illustration given last summer while promoting his health care plan. The president claimed that doctors have little incentive to encourage a patient with diabetes to control his diet and weight and get proper exercise because they don’t make much money from this kind of treatment. He said that the doctor would rather allow the patient’s diabetes to progress until a leg amputation was required when the doctor would make anywhere from $30,000-$50,000 for the surgery. This, of course, produced a firestorm of criticism from many quarters especially from doctors whom the president so blithely slandered. The fact is that the president and his supporters want us to accept a fantasy regarding the current state of health care to whip us into a frenzy of zeal to accept the idea of government health care.

Regarding the president’s claims, his numbers are a gross exaggeration. If a surgeon did perform an amputation on a Medicare patient he would be reimbursed less than $1,000. However, the biggest fantasy in the narrative the president is telling is that we currently have a private health care system. We actually have a hybrid public-private system. At the present time more than half of all health care in the US is paid for by the federal government. The federal government pays for health care through Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration, military services and federal employees.

Government intervention in the health care system is actually one of the main causes of runaway health care inflation. Even though most of the health care services delivered to people enrolled in these programs is provided by private sources they are forced to accept the payments dictated by the federal government. If we go to the doctor, we are expected to pay whatever the doctor says the service costs. The federal government is so big and powerful that it can pay what it decides is fair regardless of the actual cost of the service. It is difficult to determine the exact impact of federal intervention in the health care system but it is reasonable to estimate that Medicaid pays only about 60% and Medicare only 80% of the actual cost of medical services. Of course, medical providers can refuse to see Medicare and Medicaid patients and some of them do so or limit how many they will take but most medical providers are responsible and conscientious enough that they do so only if necessary contrary to the picture of callous greed painted by the president.

If Medicare and Medicaid are stiffing medical providers to the tune of 20-40% how can they stay in business? The answer is that private health care plans have to make up the difference. Part of the reason why your health insurance premiums are so high is that all non-government health care consumers must pay extra to subsidize government provided health care. This is a classic case of the federal government causing a problem (health care inflation) and then dashing in and offering to rescue us from the problem they themselves caused.

Sen. Nelson's "Smart" Politics

2010-01-02T20:59:00.000-06:00

I was amused by the comments of Andy Siegel quoted in the AP article that appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star. He dismisses the allegations of several state attorneys general that the private deals written into the Senate health care bill to buy the votes of Democratic Senators, including Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, are merely “smart politics to try to tarnish it and make it look less like an achievement and more like some sort of corrupted bargain”. Siegel’s view clearly betrays his opinion that this health care bill ought to be regarded as a positive achievement and any opposition to it must necessarily be seen as petty, political gamesmanship. The only concession he gives to the opponents of the bill is that their “political maneuverings” are at least “smart”. He derisively characterizes these attorneys general as sore losers complaining about the officiating after the game. If we follow the logic of his analogy, there is no reason to complain even if you discovered that your opponent paid off the refs or some of your teammates to secure the victory. It’s clear that most Nebraskans and many others in the country do indeed see this as a corrupt bargain. Most Nebraskans do not think that Senator Nelson has done us any favors by securing special funding for Nebraska that will not be enjoyed by other states. We don’t want to see it become accepted practice to win games or enact legislation by under-the-table payoffs. If this health care bill is so good, then let it be passed on its own merits. Let its proponents convince us of its worth without special deals and inducements for individual senators. If this is the way business is normally done in Washington, perhaps it’s a good thing it has finally come into the bright light of public scrutiny. I am hopeful that there is enough integrity and honesty left in the country to turn out of office those think this is an acceptable way to do business in Washington. I think the only people practicing politics in this case are Andy Siegel, Ben Nelson, and Harry Reid, and I would not even call it “smart politics”.