Why the Supreme Court Wants to Kill Universal Health Care

Name the most popular federal program of all time, and you’ll understand why the Republican Supreme Court wants to kill health care reform before it gets going in 2014.

It’s Social Security, of course. Part of FDR’s New Deal, Congress enacted it in 1935 to provide insurance against the vicissitudes of old age, poverty and unemployment, all of which were made more horrific by the Great Depression.

Social Security retirement benefits are based on an individual mandate, just like the new health care law is. Workers and employers are required to pay taxes into the system now, to cover them later. You can’t have a solvent health or retirement insurance program if participation is voluntary, because no one will contribute until they need the benefits – and then they can’t pay for them, as I’ve noted. Social Security, like the health care law, is a universal system - everyone has to be part of it – both getting the benefits and paying for its cost.

Due to a limited grasp of their own history, most Americans don’t realize how similar today's campaign against universal health care is to the one waged against Social Security.

Republican lawmakers bitterly opposed (PDF) FDR’s measure – and still do, though these days they cloak their hostility behind the hysterical and unfounded argument that Social Security is about to go bankrupt. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan claimed in 2004 that retirement benefits had to be cut and the system “privatized” or the nation would face an economic disaster (it did four years later, thanks not to Social Security but to Greenspan’s policies).  The Bush Administration concocted a plan to turn over Social Security proceeds to Wall Street, which it claimed would do a better job of investing people’s retirement savings.  Had it succeeded, most of that money would have been lost in the financial crash of 2008.

But the conservatives’ attempts to demolish Social Security have consistently failed. Why? Because Social Security works. Americans support it by huge margins – even Republicans.

Hence the vehemence of the attack on the health care law now. The anti-government forces realize that once Americans begin to receive the benefits of universal health care – no denials for pre-existing conditions, no medical underwriting, no caps on benefits – they won’t want to give them up.

That’s not all.  Under the law passed by Congress, the insurance industry stands to gain the most from the mandate that all Americans buy health insurance. But the experts understand that the program will end up being too expensive – in most states, private insurance companies are going to be able to raise their rates at will.  If this doesn’t kill universal care, it will eventually lead to a single public system just like Social Security.

Last week’s spectacle at the Supreme Court – three days of “hearings,” with some lawyers appointed by the Court itself to argue positions no party had taken – looked more like a political ambush by a legislative body than the supposedly chaste pursuit of constitutional principles.  It’s important to remember that an unelected majority of the U.S. Supreme Court almost nipped Social Security in the bud 75 years ago. Pro-industry conservatives on the Court consistently rejected FDR’s proposals to provide Americans relief from the New Deal, as I explained recently.  The Social Security law was considered in danger by FDR’s advisors. Criticism of the Supreme Court became widespread, and FDR began to prepare a plan to add more justices to the nine serving on the high court. Unwilling to provoke a constitutional confrontation that would sully the independence of the judicial branch, the Supreme Court backed down, and upheld the law.

It’s difficult to discern any similar hesitation by the current majority of the Supreme Court, with five of its nine members increasingly unabashed ideologues willing to rewrite the Constitution. Think about the Court’s decision to interfere with the Florida vote count and award the 2000 election to George Bush. Consider its 2011 decision in Concepcion v. AT&T, where five Republican appointees determined that “arbitration clauses” inserted in the fine print of virtually every contract between a giant corporation and consumers can rob people of their right to their day in court.  And then there’s the infamous 2010 Citizens United case, in which the five ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of free speech, protected by the First Amendment. In one fell swoop, the Court disenfranchised the vast majority of Americans who cannot hire their own lobbyist or fund the election of a friendly politician.

On the other hand, yesterday President Obama sent the politicians on the high court a powerfully worded message. Briefly channeling FDR, he said: “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step.”

Much is at stake here – more than health care reform itself. Public confidence in government is at record lows. As the financial crash of 2008 confirmed, money has corrupted the electoral process; the wealthy and powerful dictate public policy. The judiciary used to be the only branch of government in which a citizen could take on any person or corporation and be accorded equal stature. When Americans loses their confidence in the integrity of the courts, what is left?

Citizens United / Harvey Column / Supreme Court - 04/03/2012

What About The Rest of Us?

In one of the most appalling aspects of our current politics, our elites – elected officials, media lords and corporate chieftains, have swept the opinions and concerns of most Americans off the table to pursue their own agenda.

So we’re stuck with sterile political games focused on the national debt, even while a majority of Americans favor higher taxes on the rich and more aggressive action to reduce unemployment.

We get the highly touted insider trading conviction of a hedge fund billionaire while the Justice Department doesn’t pursue its own FBI’s massive evidence of the too big to fail bank’s fraud at the heart of the financial collapse.

It’s clear that whoever is setting priorities is not us. Take for example President Obama’s deficit commission, which has worked hard to legitimize the austerity agenda embraced by most of both parties. Not only was it stacked with well-known deficit hawks, It was made up of a collection of lifetime politicians, bureaucrats, with a CEO thrown in – because we wouldn’t want the CEOs to feel left out of any big idea brainstorming.

But what about the rest of us? Over at Campaign For America’s Future, Dave Johnson has been asking some intriguing, relevant questions.

For one, what would the deficit commission have looked like if it truly reflected the population of the country, rather than the backroom.

If a 100-person deficit panel truly reflected the country, it would present a stark contrast to the gang the president relied on:

•                19 people on the commission would receive some form of Social Security benefits, 12 of those as retirees. And on this deficit commission they get to talk when the ones making over $250K propose cutting Social Security.

•                43 of the commission members would have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement. 27 of those less than $1,000.

•                98 of the 100 members would make less than $250,000 a year.

•                50 of the members would come from households in which the total income of all wage-earners is less than $52,029.

•                13 would have income below the poverty level.

•                14 members would be receiving food stamps.

•                16.6% of the commission members would be un- or underemployed, and would be wondering why they are on a deficit commission at all instead of a jobs commission.

•                The commission would include the right proportion of factory and construction workers, and people who work in a kitchen, and work waiting tables, and teaching, and nursing, and installing tires, and all the other things that people do except, apparently, those on DC elite commissions. (People who do hard, manual labor get an extra vote each on what the retirement age should be.)

•                74 members would not have college degrees.

•                20 would not have graduated high school.

•                18 would speak a language other than English at home.

Under present circumstances it’s highly unlikely that the president would appoint a commission to consider the deficit or anything else for that matter that wasn’t stacked with wealthy insiders intent on slashing government services for anybody who is not like them. But highlighting the disconnect does point out in a particularly graphic way why those at the top have managed to get left out when its time to divide up the sacrifices.

 

 

 

 

 

Financial Crisis / Martin Column - 05/17/2011

Good Riddance to a Bipartisan

Let's take a closer look at one of the most overhyped buzzwords in politicspeak: bipartisanship.

Especially as it relates to the battle for financial reform, the call for bipartisanship threatens to drown the entire debate in meaningless twaddle.

Take for example the retirement announcement by Evan Bayh, who said he was calling it quits because he just couldn’t take how politically divided the Senate had become. Nearly the entirely Washington establishment, including the press corps went into a mad swoon over Bayh, lamenting the sad lack of bipartisanship.

I shed no tears for Bayh, a member of the Senate Banking Committee who was MIA in the debate over financial reform, and was among those moderate Democrats who was expected to oppose one of the most important proposals: creation of a stand-alone financial consumer protection agency.

Bayh did lead a group of Democrats whose idea of leadership was compromising with Republicans during the Bush Administration. What really got Bayh’s juices going was fiscal discipline and budget-cutting. Now that the Republicans have shown that they have no interest in reciprocating Bayh’s spirit of compromise, he’s got no one to play with in the Senate.

It was left to the astute cable TV comedian, Bill Maher, and a lone blogger on the Huffington Post to identify Bayh, for what he really is: A Democrat who represents corporate interests in the U.S. Senate.

During his 20-year political career, Bayh was a fundraising juggernaut. As far as I can tell, no one in the mainstream media dwelled on the $26.6 million in campaign contributions Bayh garnered, as reported by the Center for Responsive Politics. His top contributor was not from Indiana. That would be the financial giant Goldman-Sachs, which ponied up more than $165,000, edging out the drug company Eli Lily for the top spot. The third top contributor was Indiana-based Conseco Inc. an insurance company. Another bailout beneficiary, Morgan Stanley, was right up there too, with more than $81,000 in contributions.

Finance and securities was the second largest industry in contributions to Bayh, outdone only by corporate law firms.

Freed from the constraints of politics, Bayh’s first act after announcing he wouldn’t run again was to stick up for one of his beleaguered constituents – the student loan industry. The administration is proposing to stop subsidizing that industry and loan directly to students. Bayh’s against that, concerned that Indiana-based student loan servicer Sallie Mae will lose jobs.

If this is bipartisanship, it’s exactly what’s wrong with the Senate, where health care and financial reform are now gasping for life, in the stranglehold of supposed centrists like Bayh and another retiring Democratic senator, Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Dodd is also a top recipient of contributions from the financial sector. You have to wonder whether Bayh and Dodd’s next stop will be top lobbying firms, where they can continue to earn top dollar from Wall Street.

We don’t need more compromise with Goldman-Sachs and Sallie Mae under the guise of bipartisanship. Let’s retire all the blather about it along with Bayh. We don’t need more senators like him who do Goldman Sach’s bidding and then piously whine about the poisonous atmosphere in Washington. We need real reform and we shouldn’t settle for politicians who don’t have the guts to fight for it.

Consumer Financial Protection Agency / Goldman-Sachs / Martin Column - 02/19/2010