Self-Righteous Sanctimony from an Obamacare Hypocrite
Why would someone who never truly believed in repealing Obamacare attack others for wanting to keep it? Maybe because Mitch McConnell asked him to.
Avik Roy’s piece blasting Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for “preserving every word of Obamacare” contains flawed logic on several fronts. Let’s examine that first, before considering the source.
Roy essentially argues that the 2015 reconciliation bill that Sen. Lee and others supported did not repeal or reform any of the regulations raising premiums, but this year’s Senate Republican bill did. The first point is accurate but misleading, and the second point inaccurate, at least from a conservative perspective.
When it comes to the 2015 reconciliation bill, Republican leaders made a strategic choice—as current White House adviser Paul Winfree noted just after the election—not to litigate with the Senate Parliamentarian whether and what insurance regulations could be repealed under the special budget reconciliation procedures. Conservatives such as myself have argued that, while that 2015 bill represented a good first step—demonstrating that reconciliation could be used to dismantle Obamacare—lawmakers needed to go further and repeal the regulations outright.
It’s unclear from his piece whether Roy knew of this strategical gambit back in 2015, or knows, but doesn’t want to admit it—and to be candid, both could be true. The article contains the following statement of “fact:”
Senate rules require that the reconciliation process can only be used for fiscal policy—taxing and spending—not regulatory policy. To boot, reconciliation can’t be used to change Medicare or Social Security. [Emphasis mine.]
The first part of this argument does not follow: He’s claiming that reconciliation cannot be used for regulatory policy, while also arguing that the bill currently before the Senate—which is a budget reconciliation bill—would make massive changes to Obamacare’s regulatory apparatus, such that it warranted Lee’s support.
The second part of this argument is flat-out false. While the Senate’s “Byrd rule” prohibits changes to Title II of the Social Security Act (as per 2 U.S.C. 644(b)(1)(F) and 2 U.S.C. 641(g)), Congress can—and does—make major changes to Medicare under budget reconciliation. For instance, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997—a bill considered under budget reconciliation—included over 200 pages of legislative changes to Medicare, including major changes to Medicare managed care (then called Medicare+Choice) and the creation of the infamous Sustainable Growth Rate Mechanism for physician payments. Roy has previously argued that lawmakers could not make changes to Medicare under budget reconciliation—he was wrong then, and he’s wrong now.
So why should anyone believe the procedural and tactical arguments of someone who 1) never worked in the Senate and 2) has repeatedly made false claims about the nature of the budget reconciliation process? Answer: You shouldn’t.
Back to the arguments about the Senate bill’s regulatory structure. Roy claims that the bill currently being considered would make significant modifications to those regulations. But from a conservative perspective, the bill doesn’t attack some of the costliest drivers of higher premiums—specifically Obamacare’s guaranteed issue regulations. Moreover, it doesn’t actually repeal any of the regulations themselves, choosing instead to modify or waive only some of them.
If a bill can modify regulations under the budget reconciliation procedures, it can repeal them too—moderate Senators just lack the political will to do so. If you’re like me—a supporter of federalism who doesn’t believe Washington should impose a regulatory apparatus on all 50 states’ health insurance markets—then you might find the Senate bill did not sufficiently dismantle the Obamacare framework to make it worth your support. It appears Sen. Lee also came to that conclusion.
Now it’s worth examining why the article specifically attacks Mike Lee. The piece fails to note until the 16th paragraph of a 19-paragraph story that other Senators came out and opposed the bill as well. Continued concern from moderates—who didn’t want to repeal Obamacare—made it obvious that the bill was going to die—but no one wanted to deliver the coup de grace. Sen. Lee finally came out and did so, along with Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS). It’s disingenuous for Roy to claim, as he does for most of the piece, that Senator Lee was solely, or primarily, responsible for killing the bill.
Why might he make such a claim? Jonathan Chait may have sniffed out an answer several weeks ago, when Roy made a winking non-admission admission that he had worked with Senator McConnell’s office on drafting the Senate bill. Given that fact, and the way in which Senate staff promised to “make it rain” on moderates by giving out “candy” in the form of backroom deals, it’s reasonable to ask whether Roy coordinated his attack on Senator Lee with Senator McConnell’s office—and was promised anything for doing so.
Nearly three years ago, Avik Roy published a piece claiming that “conservatives don’t have to repeal Obamacare” and that “there are political benefits to implementing the plan without repeal.” Last night, Roy didn’t even attempt to explain on Twitter how he could reconcile those prior statements with his purported support for Obamacare repeal. Yet now he wants to attack Mike Lee for not sufficiently supporting repeal? It’s a disingenuous argument.
When it comes to Roy’s flip-flopping on repeal, his factual inaccuracies, or his not-so-secret ties to Senate leadership on the legislation, when evaluating his attack on Mike Lee, conservatives would be wise to consider the source.