The U.S. S.J. Is Back

So it turns out that Father Patrick Conroy of the Society of Jesus was forced to resign his position as U.S. House chaplain because some Republicans wanted an evangelical Protestant his place, and some of them found Father Conroy to be too liberal (because Jesuits care too much about the poor!).

Well, Father Conroy is back.

Father Conroy rescinded his resignation. Borrowing a page from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who refuses to be intimidated while overseeing the Mueller investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Father Conroy chose to stand his ground and not let himself be pushed around because of politics.  House Speaker Paul Ryan did something normally associated with Democrats - he caved - and let Father Conroy have his job back.

Catholics will remember this slight from the Republicans.  And Catholics will make damn sure the Republicans pay dearly in the November elections.

I can think of one Catholic who's ready to do just that.   

Did I happen to mention that Martin O'Malley was educated by Jesuits? :-O :-D

I'm Backin' the U.S. S.J.

Father Patrick Conroy, Society of Jesus (S.J.) - not to be confused with Pat Conroy, the recently deceased novelist - lost his job as chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives (he was either fired or forced to resign) because House Speaker Paul Ryan said the Jesuit Catholic priest wasn't meeting the spiritual needs of many House members.

Like the need to have supply-side economics sanctified as a force of good.

At the time of the House vote on the GOP tax reform bill that is now unfortunately law, Father Conroy apparently said a prayer for the poor who would inevitably be hurt by the law.  Speaker Ryan, himself a Catholic, said that the prayer had nothing to do with Father Conroy's departure, though Father Conroy has insinuated otherwise, and that many Protestant House Republicans felt he wasn't good at meeting the pastoral needs of their respective denominations.   While House Democrats - Catholic and otherwise - aren't buying this, many Catholic House Republicans aren't buying it either.  One such Republican, Peter King of New York, told The Hill that he regularly consulted with Father Conroy and had never heard complaints about him from anyone.

As if Catholics didn't get enough flak in Washington - remember those DNC e-mails? - Protestant House Republicans expressed a desire for a chaplain who had family of his or her own, eliminating Catholic clergy from consideration from the job for obvious reasons.  (Conroy is only the second Catholic priest to hold the position of House chaplain.)  And if that weren't enough, some House members criticized Conroy for not doing enough to console the after the 2017 shooting at a GOP baseball team practice session.  This is a charge even Texas Republican House member Joe Barton finds preposterous, saying his own interactions with Father Conroy after the shooting were positive.. 

I'm standing with Father Conroy.  Part of the role of a chplain is to be an honest broker, and he or she shouldn't be afraid to stand on principle. Also, military and government chaplains are expected to handle all faiths and not be partial to one or the other.  Jesuits happen to be skilled in ecumenicalism.

If non-Catholic Republicans are uncomfortable with a Jesuit priest pastoring to them, maybe they ought to think twice before they go back to tearing down that wall between church and state.

Paul Is Dead (Politically)

It hasn't been confirmed as I type this, but shout it out loud - noted classic-heavy-metal fan Paul Ryan will not seek another term in the House of Representatives, thus ending his tenure as Speaker.    

First Reince Priebus, now Ryan . . . I hope the last remaining member of the Wisconsin Axis of Evil, Scott Walker, falls next.

Ryan's exit suggests that he knows that the Democrats will likely take back the House in November - unless the Democratic National Committee's Tom Perez blows it, in which case that dimwitted dullard Kevin McCarthy of California will likely be the next Speaker.

Now we fight.  If there was ever a time to get involved in the midterms to stop the GOP, this is it.  Just don't bother to make yourself available to the Democratic National Committee - go to Martin O'Malley's PAC instead.

Win Back Your State.  Because the DNC won't. 

Nancy With the Running Mouth

So, Nancy Pelosi went on the floor of the House of Representatives last week to press for the House to do something about the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the budget deal and used her status as House Democratic Leader to talk for a little while.  Well, maybe eight hours . . .  eight hours and seven minutes, to be exact. 

Yes, Nancy Pelosi talked for as long as people work in one day, earning her pay.  And I'm not going to ask for equal time by writing commentary on it that takes as long to read.  I am going to say this, though:  What Pelosi did was a stunt to show how vital and relevant she is.  It did nothing to ensure that DACA would be included in the budget deal (and did nothing to help the Democrats in the 2018 House elections).  House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Pelosi's 487-minute speech, the longest House speech ever, was impressive, but not impressive enough to include in the budget bill a provision on DACA that Trump won't support.  Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer belatedly realized this, which is why he agreed to a budget deal in the Senate that didn't include DACA after engineering a shutdown over DACA that only helped the Republicans in the polls.  People want DACA to be settled - but they also want the government to keep functioning while it gets settled.

Look.  The current DACA program expires on March 5.  Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has uncharacteristically made good on a promise and plans to open debate on DACA on the Senate floor this week.  Speaker Ryan has to start debate on DACA in the House soon.  Otherwise, deportations of young people to countries they're too young to remember living in start on March 6.  No one, not even Trump, wants that to happen.  Something has to give, and that would be the case even if Pelosi had not gone on and on and on and on in the well of the House.     

No, Nancy Pelosi did this to discourage Democrats form getting rid of here, not to encourage Democrats or Republicans to get DACA taken care of.  And she did this to discourage Ryan from getting too comfortable with the idea of being in a position of House leadership.

Not Paul.  Tim. 

Right, I gotta get back to the Winter Olympics . . .

Paul and Paul

Hey, Paul!

Am I referring to Mr. Paul of the Senate or Mr. Ryan, Speaker of the House?  Both, actually.  The Senate worked out a bipartisan deal to keep the government running, spending more money on the military and on vital domestic programs, but the Kentucky senator doesn't want to commit the government to more spending (and so is blocking a Senate vote on the deal), and the Speaker can't muster the votes for it in the House.  And even if he could, Democrats don't want to vote on anything that doesn't fix the DACA immigration issue.

"Yes, I want a strong national defense," Rand Paul wrote on his Twitter account.  "I believe it's actually the most important thing the federal government does. But you have to ask yourself whether a $20 trillion debt makes us a stronger country or a weaker country."

I have to ask myself whether another shutdown - which will happen less than fifteen minutes after I post this - will make us weaker.   

Oh well, at least the Democrats won't be blamed for a shutdown this time.  Not that they had any power to stop it.

Nancy Pelosi's floor stunt?  I'll get to that . . ..

I'm glad the Winter Olympics are starting.  I'll get to talk about that instead.

The Parties Are Over

Donald Trump gave the Democrats what they wanted?  Yes.  And the Republicans are really upset.

Trump agreed with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer to extend the debt ceiling by three months and to pass a stopgap spending bill to fund the government, which made the heads of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell explode.  Ryan, McConnell, and other Republicans wanted an eighteen-month extension of the debt ceiling, hence it would have pushed a decision on the issue to March 2019 - after the 2018 midterms.  This deal between the White House and the Democratic congressional leadership ensures that the GOP will have to answer for its ineffectiveness in this Congress, and it allows Trump and the Democrats to govern in a bipartisan fashion.

But to what end?  It's no secret that Trump wanted the debt ceiling issue pushed back - and hurricane relief settled - to promote his tax plan, which would benefit the wealthiest Americans.  Also, even if his base doesn't necessarily vote for Republicans in the midterms, he's made himself look reasonable and eager to "get things done" - and keep his base in his corner for his re-election bid in 2020.  Thus, he could get re-elected.   And Pelosi and Schumer - both of whom have served in Washington since Ronald Reagan was President and are old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan was an actor - have just fallen into Trump's trap.  They are such clueless insiders that they demonstrate why seniority is just another variation of senility.  The Democrats need new, bold leaders who can stand up to Donald J. Trump, not a couple of old pros who are seasoned enough to screw up everything by dealing with him.  

As Martin O'Malley said, now we fight.  As Pelosi and Schumer say, "Who is Martin O'Malley?" 

The congressional Democratic leadership is not doing anyone any favors by working with Trump.  You don't lie down with dogs . . . lest you wind up with fleas. :-p       

However, with the Republican Party having been burned by their own President and with the Democratic Party about to be burned as well, the resulting collapse of the current two-party system can only be a good thing.  Note to progressives: Call a convention and form a new party now.    

No Deal

Well, the Trump health care bill is kaput.  Trump tried to ram through Congress a health care bill that would have destroyed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), done serious damage to Medicaid, kicked 24 million people off their health insurance plans, and given tax breaks to the rich.  He set out to negotiate a deal, and he was left with nothing.  And without those tax breaks,  Trump's infrastructure-spending plans and Paul Ryan's tax reform plan are all but dead in the water.  The costs in this bill were too great even for many House Republicans, and even my own congressman, Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) - chairman of the House Appropriations Committee - wouldn't support it.  The party's conservative wing didn't like the health care bill because it didn't go go far enough in repealing and replacing the ACA (imagine!).  So, after nine weeks, the S.S. Trump Presidency is already aground.

Democrats had best not get too cocky, though, because last time I checked, the Republicans still control the White House and both houses of Congress, Neil Gorsuch is headed for the Supreme Court, and not only has the Dakota Access Pipeline been resumed, the Keystone XL pipeline has been approved as well.  Among other Obama-policy reversals.  Let me make this clear: The people brought down the Trump health care bill.  Congressional Democrats didn't sabotage the Republicans; the Republicans sabotaged themselves.  The Democrats did nothing.  Nothing.  The Democrats still have a lot of work and catching up to do if they want to get back in power (great laughter at that, I'm sure) and avoid going full Whig.  If the Democrats, who are more unpopular than Trump these days, want to be taken seriously, they have to show leadership.

Just standing there and gloating is not a show of leadership.    

From ACA to CACA

The Republican bill that would replace Affordable Care Act (ACA) wouldn't just repeal it, it would unravel it to the point where there would be even less of a health care system than there was in 2008, before the the ACA.

Among the things the legislation would do is replace income-based subsidies with age-based tax credits at its centerpiece. The GOP says that this would make health insurance more affordable for older people, but the smaller subsides for younger people would discourage the young to buy insurance and thus drive up premiums for whoever's left in the insurance pool - thus, the older people in the system would pay more than the tax credits could help them.

Meanwhile, although the Medicaid expansion program would continue until 2020, no one could enroll after the beginning of that year, and Medicaid itself would be funded with block grants - fixed amounts for each state in the name of the "flexibility" for the states to pay as they see fit.  So, New York would be generous, Mississippi would be stingy, and many states would be caught with less money to spend in the event of a recession.

Oh yeah, the Republican bill would eliminate taxes on upper-income earners, capital gains, insurance plans and medical device manufacturers, and it would delay implementing a tax on high-end insurance policies until 2025.  Tax breaks for people who don't need them would be doled out to the tune of $275 billion.

Watching the Republicans craft a health care reform bill is like watching Michael Scott on "The Office" hold his own diversity seminar after his bosses at Dunder Mifflin held one to hide the fact that he was the only one who needed it.  Paul Ryan wants to fix a problem that someone else took care of and that had been created by his own party, so he looks like the good guy.

He doesn't look like the good guy.  He isn't.  Democrats are up in arms over it, constituents have been flooding congressional town halls to protest changes to the current law (which is why GOP House members stopped having town halls until after this bill is passed at the end of the current session on April 7, just before the Easter recess), and it's even gotten opposition from Republican governors who expanded Medicaid and even Senate Republicans opposed to changes in Medicaid or to the tax credit.  Republican senators said the House bill couldn't make it through the Senate.

If this bill becomes law, it will be for the same reasons other Republican legislative initiatives have become law; because the GOP will have rammed it down or throats despite public opposition and because the Democrats in Congress will be too mealy-mouthed in their own opposition.  None of that, of course, is anything new in Washington.  

RIP ACA

The Affordable Care Act is dead.

On Wednesday, incoming Vice President Mike Pence met with his onetime Republican U.S. House colleagues to prepare for repealing the law known as Obamacare, and they're trying to get a head start on defunding and scrapping it in an expeditious matter.  They're hoping to put it on a repeal-and-delay timetable, in which they officially repeal the Affordable Care Act and set up a period for the Republicans to come up with an alternative.

Which will likely be a return to the way things were in 2009.

And don't think the Democrats will be able to stop them, either; the Republicans plan to push the repeal through in a Senate-filibuster-proof budget resolution, which is, ironically, how the Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in the first place.

At least one Republican in Washington, as well as with some Republican governors, is fearful that this move could lead millions of  people in limbo and without health insurance.  U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has demanded that his party come up with a health care plan of its own before scrapping the current law.  "We need to think through how we do this, and it's a huge mistake for Republicans if they do not vote for replacement on the same day as we vote for repeal," he said.

He's unlikely to get any support from any fellow Republicans, except maybe Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).

Meanwhile, President Obama, with only a few days left to go in office, held a pity party to buck up Democrats in Congress to urge them fight the Republican onslaught on his signature legislation, even though they're outvoted.  The biggest Obamacare proponent in the Senate is Democratic leader Charles Schumer (NY), who famously attributed the Democratic loss of the Senate in 2014 to the party paying too much attention on - you guessed it - health care.

Ironically, Obamacare was based on Republican market reform ideas from the nineties.  The Democratic proposal of the time - Medicare for all - never got anywhere, and it certainly won't get anywhere in this Congress, as Paul Ryan is working on a new program - Medicare for no one.  

Yeah, Obamacare is as good as gone.  And don't start threatening to move to Great Britain, boys and girls, because the British National Health Service is slowly being done away with too.   

Funny how what took the Tories in the U.K. seventy years to do, the Republicans are going to be able to do in a few short months.

Supply-Side Over Substance

President Obama spoke to a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors yesterday, calling the budget plan advocated by Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin a regressive budget plan that would punish the poor and middle class with deep spending cuts in programs like Medicare while rewarding the wealthy with tax breaks. He called this revised version of supply -side economics "thinly veiled social Darwinism" and a "Trojan horse" ("It was really a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate" - Reagan budget director David Stockman on supply-side economics, 1981) that made the Contract With America look like the New Deal, and he even added that some of the domestic policies of George Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon would seem too liberal to the current crop of Republicans in Washington.

In response, Ryan attacked Obama for failing to lead on the debt and deficit issue, insisted that eliminating loopholes would ensure tax fairness, and accused the President of trying to make him and other Republicans look like Saturday morning cartoon villains.

Sorry, progressives, Ryan won that debate.

How, you may ask? Because Obama dealt with specifics and with references to history, while Ryan resorted to name calling, empty mantras, and pop-culture references. Style over substance.

I couldn't help but notice how reporters from National Public Radio and the Associated Press had to explain in their respective dispatches from the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention just exactly what the New Deal and the Contract With America were. They obviously didn't think their audiences were smart enough to already know. Okay, the New Deal was nearly eighty years ago, but come on, certainly there are plenty of Americans who still ought to remember the conservative 1994 Contract With America brought forward by then-House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich in the midterm elections that year. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, Newt's still alive, even if he's politically toast. Also, terms like "Trojan horse" and "social Darwinism" are well beyond the comprehension of the average American.

And invoking Nixon won't work for Obama. Older voters who may have voted for Nixon pretend not to have supported him, and young people, especially young Republicans like Ryan - who was two years old at the time of the Watergate break-in - don't remember the 37th U.S. President so well (if at all). Which is why Ryan's pithy Saturday morning cartoon villain reference - Saturday morning cartoons were a big deal to Ryan, myself, and most Americans who had a childhood in the seventies - is more effective. Younger people who generally don't give a twit about Medicare are less likely to recall Dick Nixon and more likely to recall Dick Dastardly.

Of course, there's always the chance that, once young people start looking at the Ryan plan, they'll realize that the Republicans are a lot like those same Saturday morning cartoon villains - clownish, dangerous, and eager to take over the world.

The Self-Righteous Paul Ryan

U.S. Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, started the Republican effort to "reform" (i.e., end) Medicare anew.  The proposed Republican budget for 2013, which Ryan introduced yesterday, would effectively replace Medicare and replace it vouchers for senior citizens, leaving them to pick up any additional health care costs the voucher does not cover.  Meanwhile, it would sharply lower taxes for the wealthy effectively staving the government of badly needed revenue and necessitating such cuts.  The plan would also repeal the heath care law to make health care even more expensive.

Ryan calls his budget morally responsible because it would restore fiscal discipline to the government and avoid a European-style financial crisis (Republicans are good at avoiding anything European, like respect for intelligence), but I don't see how moral it is to make the elderly pay more for health care - which they obviously need more than younger people - while enriching the already enriched.  Ryan's plan is going nowhere, though, because the Democratic Senate is not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole.

It's hard to imagine the GOP getting away with this, especially with the presidential and congressional elections coming up, but inconceivably (unless you've heard of the word gerrymandering), the Republicans could keep the House after November and just as inconceivably (until you've seen the staggered numbers favoring the Republicans) win back the Senate.  And while the Democrats are pretty good at being against domestic budget cuts, they don't offer much to be in favor of . . . and we have a Democratic President, at according to one source, is still open to cuts in both Medicare and Social Security.

Speaking of being for something, I'm increasingly in favor of staying home on November 6.

Train Wreck

President Obama and congressional Democrats have acquiesced to all sorts of demands from House Republicans to cut spending, but Speaker John Boehner has kept moving the line in an attempt to placate the Tea Party. And the Tea Party's demands have gone beyond just cutting short-term spending on a few programs. Some zealots, like the horrible Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) has vowed to allow the government if there is no rider on the budget bill zeroing out Planned Parenthood funding to stop government funding of abortion - even though Planned Parenthood funding does not go to abortion procedures because Planned Parenthood deliberately keeps those services separate from birth control and gynecological exams.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan continues to promote his Medicare "reform" plan and his budget proposals in general, insisting that the debt will be paid off by 2050, with government spending as 14 percent of the gross domestic spending by then and corporate tax rates reduced to 25 percent - all with 2.8 percent unemployment as early as 2017! No one believes any of this, least of all Ryan's employment projections, and what Ryan wants to accomplish is based on cuts affecting programs that benefit the middle and lower classes.

Oh yeah, that $4.4 trillion figure refers not to cuts over ten years - that number is $5.8 trillion - but to the tax cuts Ryan would preserve for the wealthy.

You know, I'm dizzy from following all of these numbers . . ..

Also: Senate Republicans successfully blocked efforts by the previous, Democratic-controlled Congress to pass a budget by refusing to go along with a budget that didn't have the spending cuts they wanted. When Harry Reid tried to compromise with them, they moved the line and forced the budget to be brought up by a new Republican House and a Senate with a larger Republican minority. That doesn't sound fair, but Republicans were never about fairness. :-0

Paul Ryan's Disastrous Prescription For Medicare

First the good news: U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has made a serious proposal meant at reforming Medicare to keep it from going insolvent.

Now, the bad news: His idea would gut it to the point of irrelevance.

Ryan revealed a budget reform package totalling $4 trillion in spending cuts and turning Medicare into a voucher system. Seniors currently on Medicare would continue to have the coverage they have today, but future generations - say, mine - would have Medicare reduced to an annual stipend to buy insurance in the private marketplace. There, they would have a multitude of choices among insurance policies . . . but only two choices of coverage - cut-rate insurance that doesn't cover much or expensive insurance that a voucher could only pay for a fraction of. Beneficiaries would have to pay more of their own money for health insurance in a private system in which covering old people - who tend to get sick a lot - isn't very profitable. So do you think they could be guaranteed even half the coverage today's old folks get?

But wait - there's more! Ryan would also turn federal funding for Medicaid, the health insurance plan for the poor, into block grants for the states, which would choose how best to allocate the funds. Good idea, until you realize that while, say, New York or California might be amenable to continue the current level of Medicaid coverage, a state like, say, Mississippi - notorious for its miserly attitude toward the poor - might want to spread coverage rather thinly and spend as little money as possible.

Ryan, like most Republicans hell-bent on screwing the average American, doesn't believe there's not enough revenue - rather, there's too much spending - and he doesn't see the need for more taxation. Not even for corporations like General Electric, which paid no taxes last year despite $26 billion in profits. Ryan says his plan "saves" Medicare, reminding me of the U.S. army major (never accurately identified) in the Vietnam War who said, after the shelling of the village of Bến Tre to ferret out Viet Cong fighters, "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

Who is Ryan kidding with his proposed attack on Medicare? Apparently, only 23 percent of us - that's how many Americans would support a Medicare overhaul, according to a recent poll, while 76 percent strongly oppose it. (I wonder how much more information the remaining one percent need to make up their minds!) Nevertheless, I have a nasty feeling that Ryan's plan will pass in much of its original form. Why? Because Republicans always get what they want.

And they pay (and get paid) good money to get it.

Union Rules

President Obama gave his 2011 State of the Union address tonight, and while I thought the speech was well-delivered and also measured in terms of what the United States needs to do to regain its edge, it wasn't exactly the rousing call to action I thought it might be. He was very specific in stressing the need for support for economic opportunity, education, and rebuilding infrastructure, and he declared the fact that Americans are falling behind as a wake-up call comparable to Sputnik. It didn't energize me to action, though. It only made me satisfied that he knows what needs to be done. Still, the spirit of cooperation seemed pretty genuine, if only because the attack on Gabrielle Giffords continues to reverberate among members of Congress.

Obama made it clear that he wants to push ahead to create jobs and get spending under control, and he threw in a few zingers - suggesting an end to tax breaks for oil companies, for example. The only problem, of course, is that he faces a Republican House that doesn't want to meet him halfway on anything. Representative Paul Ryan's official response for the Republicans - specifically on health care reform - was more incendiary than conciliatory. He hinted that vital social programs ought to be destroyed. He didn't suggest anything he might support Obama on. And, of course, he wrapped himself in the Constitution and the aura of the Founding Fathers.

At least Ryan, a congressman from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, seems to know a thing or two about history - unlike Michele Bachmann, the undistinguished not-so-gentle woman from Minnesota, who is giving a Tea Party response. Bachmann recently praised the Founding Fathers, particularly John Quincy Adams, for ending the scourge of slavery.

The Founding Fathers, of course, not only did not end slavery, they counted slaves in the Constitution as three-fifths of a person - though they did end the foreign slave trade with the ratification of that document (it was abolished in 1808). And while she was right to praise Adams for working tirelessly to end slavery - I assume she saw Amistad - she kind of confused John Quincy Adams with his Founder father, John Adams.

Bachmann's easy victory over Tarryl Clark in her House district in the November election suggests that not only is she stupid, but so are her constituents.