← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
How Mean Are the Senate Republicans?
00:17:16
Ryan Lizza joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss what happened when it became clear that the Senate’s health-care plan would rob millions of poor, elderly, young, and catastrophically sick Americans of medical insurance, and what the debacle portends for tax reform and the rest of the Republican domestic agenda.
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- [00:00]
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- [01:16]
Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, June 29th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally went public with the Senate's plan to replace the Affordable Care act and vowed to get it passed before the July 4th holiday. On Tuesday, he was forced to postpone the vote because of open resistance by some Republican senators. One of them, Susan Collins of Maine, explained her position on CNN this president.
- [01:49]
Susan Collins
Is the first president in our history who has had neither political nor military experience, and thus it has been a challenge to him to learn how to interact with Congress and how to push his agenda forward.
- [02:08]
Dorothy Wickenden
When asked whether she'll meet with Trump to discuss the bill, she responded, I.
- [02:12]
Susan Collins
Will say that I have so many fundamental problems with the bill that have been confirmed by the CBO report that it's difficult for me to see how any tinkering is going to satisfy my fundamental and deep concerns about the impact of the bill.
- [02:36]
Dorothy Wickenden
Ryan Lizza joins me to discuss what the debacle means for the fate of America's health care. And for the rest of the Republicans, domestic agenda. Hi, Ryan.
- [02:46]
Ryan Lizza
Hi, Dorothy. Another crazy week in Washington.
- [02:48]
Dorothy Wickenden
Yes, they all are that way these days. All right. I've been hearing it from lots of others in the last couple of days, but why do you think McConnell, who is known for his strategic genius, miscalculated so disastrously on this?
- [03:04]
Ryan Lizza
Well, I think people are being very cautious about saying that this whole thing is falling apart because McConnell does have this reputation. But if you think about his reputation for strategic genius, it is a little bit more as a tactician, as, you know, Senate procedure. We haven't seen the Republican Senate pass a big, complicated, difficult piece of legislation in quite a long time. Don't want to count them out, obviously. But a lot of Republicans, including the President, are realizing what Democrats have realized. Changing the health care system in any way is extremely difficult because it always creates winners and losers. And the legislation they're pushing would create a lot of losers. And so I think the biggest misstep he made was a process mistake. Their theory was that an open process is worse than a closed process because an open process allows everyone to pick it apart in real time. So that they put this group together of 13 senators, all Republicans, all men, and then spring the bill on everyone and have a quick vote. And the theory was, especially with health care, the longer the bill sort of sticks around, the worse the chances of passage.
- [04:17]
Dorothy Wickenden
Collins, you know, referred to the Congressional Budget Office report estimating that 22 million people would lose their health insurance, which didn't help, although we knew that already.
- [04:26]
Ryan Lizza
Essentially we did, because it's very similar to the House bill. But in a sense, that CBO report really crippled it because it was the only piece of information that was out there about the bill once it was released. Right. There's no competing analysis by either conservative think tanks or the Senate policymakers or the White House. So the devastating CBO score combined with the secretive process, I think for Republican senators who are on the fence, they just thought, why am I going to risk a vote on this thing where I've had no input? There's not much of an incentive except that the leadership is saying, you have to do this.
- [05:02]
Dorothy Wickenden
A lot of the opposition was pretty clearly defined for some time. You had Susan Collins, you know, on the one hand, and then Rand Paul and Ted Cruz on the other calling it Obamacare Lite.
- [05:12]
Ryan Lizza
And this is what happened in the House. The dynamics really aren't that different. It is this libertarian, right wing Republican view view of health care that wants to get rid of all of the regulations on the insurance companies, wants to dramatically scale back government spending on Medicaid. That's the Rand Paul view of the world. And then someone like Susan Collins, sort of the last true moderate Republican in the Senate, who has deep reservations from the other direction that she thinks a lot of the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare she's okay with and doesn't want this dramatic ratcheting back of Medicaid spending and thinks that the regulations on the insurance companies are critically important to having a well functioning insurance market. There have been various policy wonks this week who have thrown out ways that perhaps you could bridge that divide. One idea is, well, McConnell will beef up some funding that will sell it to some of the moderates, but over the long term, the regulations that the conservatives really care about will be ratcheted back. So the as a sort of short term fix for moderates. But in the long term, the most conservative parts of the bill are what survive.
- [06:23]
Dorothy Wickenden
McConnell's now reduced to warning the other members of his party that if they can't agree among themselves, they'll have to sit down with Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, God forbid.
- [06:34]
Ryan Lizza
I know, which is sort of hilarious, that that's how our government works, that the whole bill is being negotiated among 52 Republicans and there's been no effort to bring in the Democrats. I actually wrote a piece a month or so ago about what a bipartisan bill could look like, and it's a bit of a Pollyanna ish piece, but it's not totally outside of the realm of possibility that you could ignore the sort of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz wing and, you know, basically ignore the Sanders wing or anyone that wants to go further and do single payer and put together a group in the center and maybe do some fixes to Obamacare. I think the chances are low because I don't think the Democrats really have too many incentives to give Trump any victory. But maybe if this all crashes and burns, talks like that could get started.
- [07:18]
Dorothy Wickenden
The early polls are terrible for the bill. I mean, worse than one would have thought, aren't they?
- [07:24]
Ryan Lizza
The poll that I saw this week was in the sort of mid to high teens in support for this bill. And in our current politics where everything is, you know, it's a sort of 5050 country and everything is pretty polarized, right. To get something that low, that means that most Republicans hate this bill. And I'm sure it's a mix of reasons. I'm sure, you know, very conservative Republicans are thinking it doesn't do away with enough Obamacare. And other Republicans just think it's bad for different reasons. But to get to 17% support, that's really hard politically these days. If something's branded as a Republican bill or a Democrat bill, usually, you know, partisans on either side support it. So to get that low is quite an achievement.
- [08:03]
Dorothy Wickenden
And then you have the incredibly unpopular president. And I wanted to see what you make of Trump's role in all of this. He was much more involved in the House negotiations over the Paul Ryan bill. You know, he celebrated it in that festive Rose Garden press conference, then declared it mean. And the whole mean theme was then picked up by Obama. How did that then play out?
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Ryan Lizza
This was just bizarre. You know, he celebrated this House bill, but obviously he had reservations about leaked out that he privately called it mean. And then Obama, perhaps being mischiev, latched onto that report and also used the word. And then bizarre.
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Dorothy Wickenden
He accuses Obama of plagiarism.
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Ryan Lizza
So he didn't deny it. He actually admitted that he did indeed say that and then turned it around as an attack on Obama and said that he stole the word, which, you know, just the chain of logic there is really.
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Dorothy Wickenden
Well, and talking about the chain of logic this week, when he called in that group of Republican senators to the White House, he said that it would be okay if the bill fails, but also reiterated that Obamacare is a total to death.
- [09:08]
Ryan Lizza
It just shows he doesn't really care that much about the issue, but he does have some sense that he's promised to do this and he's got to get it done. His backup plan appears to be to continue to thwart the Obama insurance exchanges by, you know, by doing what they can administratively and not supporting them the way that they might.
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Katie Drummond
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global Editorial Director. I'm Michael Coloury, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
- [09:36]
Dorothy Wickenden
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show, Uncanny Valley, is about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [09:45]
Katie Drummond
And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics. Right. So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin, Doge, or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are affecting Washington and how they affect you. Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [10:14]
Dorothy Wickenden
So I want to ask you about the Next big legislative initiative, which is already underway, tax reform, and what the prospects might be for a somewhat smoother ride.
- [10:26]
Ryan Lizza
I think that the whole Trump agenda here is at a tipping point, because so much of their delicate parliamentary procedure for the rest of the year depended on passing health care. They can't move on to tax reform until they clear the health care bill because they're using a process called reconciliation, and they want to use that process for both health care and tax reform. The most important thing about reconciliation is that it can't be a reconciliation bill, can't be filibustered. Right. So that's why he only needs 50 votes in the Senate rather than the what is now standard, 60 votes. They want to do both health care and tax reform using this procedure. But one of the weird things about the process is if you start a new reconciliation bill, the old one gets canceled out. So they can't jump into tax reform until they've finished with health care.
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Dorothy Wickenden
But Gary Cohn this morning, the director of the National Economic Council, says they intend to go forward this fall regardless.
- [11:21]
Ryan Lizza
And they can do that. So if health care sort of crashes, maybe it'll pass and he'll sign it into law, and then they can move on to the next reconciliation bill. But if it crashes and burns and they want to start a new reconciliation bill with tax reform, they have this sort of interesting choice to make. Do they throw tax reform and health care into one reconciliation bill, or do they just abandon health care on a reconciliation track, move on to tax reform, and try to do what we were talking about before, a sort of bipartisan bill that would need the full 60 votes? I tend to think, you know, as we were saying before, that once this bill dies and they move on to tax reform, health care is done for the year. But their original goal was do health care quickly with reconciliation and then move on to tax reform. The budget and the debt ceiling, those are all enormously complex, difficult issues similar to health care. So I think it says a lot that the Republicans, you know, have not been able to get together and figure out a consensus on health care. And it doesn't get easier when they get to the debt ceiling, the budget, and tax reform.
- [12:28]
Dorothy Wickenden
There was another interesting moment this week that the New York Times reported after the Republican senators came out of that meeting, one senator who supports the bill actually left with this sense that Trump was just confused about what was in the bill. And when a Republican complained at the meeting that opponents would cast too massive a tax break for the wealthy, apparently Trump said, well, I plan to tackle tax reform later.
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Ryan Lizza
He didn't understand the question.
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Dorothy Wickenden
Right.
- [12:56]
Ryan Lizza
I mean, nothing he has promised about health care is present in either of the House or the Senate bill. The three big promises he made is that he would not cut Medicaid. He promised to bring down premiums. If you look at the people who get hit with higher premiums under the House and the Senate bill, it is exactly the people who voted in largest number for Trump. It is older, sicker, more rural people. And he promised that he would have a universal plan. I mean, people forget that, but Trump actually promised that he would have a health care plan that would get everyone to insured, which is ludicrous. Neither the House or the Senate bill even pretends to do that. No Republican in Congress pretends that those bills would accomplish that. So he obviously had almost no input in writing this bill. Right. And it does sort of speak to the lack of policy heft or intellectual infrastructure about what we call Trumpism. There's no meat on the bone of it. Right. There's no one up on the Hill who's saying, you know, Trump is this economic populist who wants to do more for lower income people. There's no policy infrastructure for any of that. And I feel like this health care debate has really made that clear.
- [14:06]
Dorothy Wickenden
Well, and I guess we're beginning to see it in the polls. But there was another piece this week, I think it was in Politico out in the Rockies. There was a big Republican seminar, and a lot of the people there were really encouraged, ecstatic, I think was the word about the conservative gains that have been made this year in state houses.
- [14:24]
Ryan Lizza
Yeah. And this is a great question. Is Trumpism just the same old thing where, you know, Republicans attach to certain cultural issues, certain issues of identity, but there's no real policy backbone to it. And the policy is still run by, you know, the sort of more libertarian wing of the party, the donor class of the party. And so far, I think that's exactly what we're seeing, is that Republicans are fine to hold their noses about the worst aspects of Trump as long as he helps them keep their majority and they get to write the policies. I think there are a lot of people who predicted this is exactly what would happen. But, you know, the evidence is in that that's the sort of deal we see in the Republican Party right now.
- [15:05]
Dorothy Wickenden
So the populism that got Trump elected, I guess we don't hear anymore about draining the swamp. They're not draining the swamp. And the Wall street faction and the white House is ascendant, but how long can that be sustained? The 2018 races are coming up.
- [15:21]
Ryan Lizza
I feel like we've had this back and forth within the White House. The first moment with the executive orders really was defined by the nationalist wing of the White House, which, you know, usually the person that is behind that is Steve Bannon. Right. The travel ban and some of the stuff that went into the budget on immigration, in terms of, like, trying to build the wall. As soon as things started to get moved to the Hill and legislation, everything's been taken over by the traditional wing of the Republican Party, especially probably the person who identified with it the most is Paul Ryan. And we see that with health care, as you were saying before, the next thing will be tax reform. What we know of tax reform right now, it's being run from the White House by Gary Cohn, former Goldman Sachs guy. Right now, the contours are a very traditional Republican view of taxes, not any of the stuff that some people thought that Trump might represent, you know, as a sort of break from the Republican Party. You know, there was a lot of talk during the campaign that maybe Trump represented something different on economic policy. We haven't seen that with health care. And what we know of tax reform so far, we're not seeing.
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Dorothy Wickenden
Well, in that cabal, I guess, the big six. Paul Ryan is a member. Mitch McConnell.
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Ryan Lizza
Yeah. And look, they're doing the same process here. This is the trying to do it with 50 votes rather than 60. And it's being written in secret by Gary Cohn, Steve Nuchin, who's the treasury secretary, and then Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, Paul Ryan, and then the two Republicans who run the tax writing committees, one in the Senate and one in the House. So those are the six people. They're called the big six. They meet every other week, apparently, and are, you know, writing what they claim is going to be a tax reform bill akin to the 1986 tax reform, which was really a complete rewrite of the IRS code. This is a big, big thing, you know, on par with the health care bill, maybe even more complex and reorienting bigger parts of the economy. And it's being done in secret without Democratic cooperation and frankly, without many Republicans on board.
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Dorothy Wickenden
The timing of that is sort of.
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Ryan Lizza
Post Labor Day fall post Labor Day. You know, the idea was to get health care done, get the debt. Remember, they have to do this vote on increasing the debt limit. And that always as a vexing issue because conservatives want to extract concessions for their vote on that. And then they've got to do the budget. They've got to do their appropriations bills. And this would be the first time where the Trump budget would actually get passed. Remember, the budget deal they did earlier this year was really more of a kind of continuation of the Obama budget. The White House didn't really get anything it wanted, but they promised that in the fall they would get what they wanted. But if health care goes down, you know, these things, this happened with Clinton his first year. You know, you have a big loss like that and it has a kind of feedback effect. You know, it's sort of losing begets more losing as the party sort of fractures and people point fingers about who's.
- [18:11]
Dorothy Wickenden
To blame and the voter, they're all going to be going home to their districts and the voters are not going to be happy at all.
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Ryan Lizza
And we didn't talk about that. But that's the other thing to watch now is one of the reasons McConnell wanted to do this fast was because he wanted the vote to happen before his senators had to face their constituents.
- [18:27]
Dorothy Wickenden
They hate those town halls, right?
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Ryan Lizza
I mean, this is like it doesn't pass the smell test, right? You'd write a bill in secret and then you try and pass it before you have to face your constituents in terms of transparency. It doesn't get worse than that.
- [18:40]
Dorothy Wickenden
Thanks so much, Ryan.
- [18:41]
Ryan Lizza
Thanks, Dorothy.
- [18:42]
Dorothy Wickenden
Ryan. Liza reports from Washington for the New Yorker and is a commentator for cnn. This has been the political scene. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. And find more political analysis and commentary on newyorker.com feel free to rate and review the political scene on itunes. This podcast is produced by Alex Barron for newyorker.com with help from Hannah Wilentz. I'm Dorothy Wickenden. America is changing and so is the world.
- [19:21]
Ryan Lizza
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
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I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [19:31]
Ryan Lizza
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global story.
- [19:35]
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Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [19:41]
Ryan Lizza
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Dorothy Wickenden
From.
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Ryan Lizza
PRX.