The voting power of seniors, the biggest beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare, combined with ballooning healthcare costs, for years have frozen all rational political debate about how to make cuts to save the programs. The media is equally culpable, as they celebrate the latest sound bite from Michele Bachmann on the Right or Alan Grayson and the like on the Left, even though they are minor players in Congress with little influence on the legislative process. The same sclerotic flow of debate has long limited the ability to deal with the out-of-control costs of existing entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. Eliminating the programs has been so politically out of bounds it has never been discussed. Similarly, budget discussions, until Republican Paul Ryan’s plan was announced in April 2011, were limited to mere slices of the federal budget, discretionary spending on small programs, while massive spending on entitlement programs and the defense budget went forward with no scrutiny. Right-wing Republican senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican Tea Party favorite, has openly declared that all efforts to cut government spending will be done “without cutting any benefits to seniors or veterans,” claiming Social Security is off-limits to the budget knife. John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, proposed raising the age at which Americans qualify for Social Security as one way to protect its solvency. But he was quickly chastised and repented. “I made a mistake when I said that,” he later explained.
This is the tyranny of political correctness. Comprehensive, genuinely bipartisan reform to better serve the American people—the most important work of the federal government—has been all but stymied. The stilted debate about health-care reform perfectly encapsulates the current dysfunctional political dynamic over tax policy, deficit spending, and entitlement reform.
One earlier politician to look over the cliff of eliminating some of the costly entitlement health spending on seniors was former Colorado governor Richard Lamm, a Democrat. In 1984 he said the terminally ill of all ages should not be burdening society with costly high-tech medical treatments that help them slow the approach of death even if they have no quality of life. “We’ve got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life,” he said. Lamm is still castigated as unfeeling and mean.
Oddly enough, for all the controversy over the Democrats’ health-care reform plan and the political fallout that the Democrats suffered in the midterm elections, the bill has slowly begun to gain support from the public. Even as Republicans took advantage of their new majority in the House, won largely as a result of Tea Party–inspired backlash against Democrats, and voted to repeal the law, favorability ratings for the plan increased in the polls. Rather than offering proposals to fix the flaws in the health-care reform that have become evident as the bill begins to take effect, House Republicans instead voted to repeal, calling the reform “Obamacare” and the “Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” In fact, they banned any amendments to the bill. (As a result, they got little support from potential allies among conservative Democrats.)
The Republican repeal effort was pure posturing, since the Democrats’ Senate majority would never pass the repeal and President Obama would never sign it if they did.
But as a result, both sides have shut down pragmatic debate when it comes to health care. With Representative Ryan’s new proposal, on one side Republicans are going to continue bashing Obamacare as more bloated government, and on the other Democrats are going to criticize Republicans for cutting the health-care services for those who need them most. Both sides are maneuvering for the next election, in 2012. The political posturing is a vivid reminder of how hard it is to have real, honest, and productive discussions about this issue that is of vital importance to so many Americans. In the meantime we are left with the pleasure of mocking the hypocrisy of our politicians.
During the 2010 campaign one Republican candidate, Andy Harris of Maryland, defeated the incumbent Democrat by promising to repeal health-care reform. But reality proved embarrassing and shocking to Harris. When he attended orientation for new members of Congress and was told that his government-subsidized health-care plan would not go into effect until a month after he took office, Harris reacted with outrage. How could he and his family make do without health coverage for a month? Harris asked why he could not buy insurance from the federal government to cover the gap in his insurance, the same public option for health insurance that he had denounced as socialism during the campaign.
The Andy Harrises of the world can’t even think honestly about health-care reform. When smart people are so unaware of what they are saying that they make fools of themselves, the power of political correctness to stifle debate becomes obvious.
As Time’s Fareed Zakaria noted in an article published just after the Ryan budget was released, despite its many flaws the Ryan budget would be a test for President Obama when it came to the big issues at stake, showing whether or not he could break the stranglehold on the American dialogue. As Zakaria wrote:
The President has talked passionately and consistently about the need to tackle the country’s problems, act like grownups, do the hard things and win the future. But he has also skipped every opportunity to say how he’d tackle the gigantic problem of entitlements. Ryan’s plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous. It should prompt the President to say, in effect, “You’re right about the problem. You’re wrong about the solution. And here’s how I would accomplish the same goal by more humane and responsible means.” That would be the beginning of a great national conversation.…
Obama has an obvious script in front of him. He could turn every item in Ryan’s plan into an attack ad, scare the elderly and ride to victory in 2012. But that would probably mean we had pushed off reform of entitlement programs one more time, hoping that someone sometime in the future will lead this country.
I hope that, by the time this book is published, President Obama has risen to the challenge put forward by Zakaria. His response to Ryan’s budget plan shows that he very well may. Many Americans other than Zakaria are counting on this president to lead great national conversations, and indeed many elected him precisely because he seemed the person most likely to do so.
CHAPTER 6
IMMIGRATION, TERROR BABIES, AND VIRTUAL FENCES
WELL AFTER GEORGE W. BUSH LEFT OFFICE, once he’d escaped the punishing grip of right-wing bullies enforcing their brand of politically correct ideas and speech codes on him, here is what the conservative Republican president dared to say about the repeated breakdown of government eff orts to resolve the national crisis over immigration.
“I not only differ from my own party but the other party as well,” the former president said in a C-SPAN TV interview. “The reason immigration reform died was because of a populism that had emerged.” The news here is that the former president was willing to point to his own party’s culpability for wasting time with political posturing that stalled much-needed national action on a serious issue.
The former president strained to walk a fine line, pointing a finger at Democrats as well as Republicans for not reaching agreement on immigration. But the “populism” he blamed was almost completely to be found on right-wing talk radio and among the most conservative voices in Congress. When the former president let it be known that even as the most powerful man in Washington he had been unable to act in America’s best interest because of “a populism that had emerged,” anyone paying attention drew an inescapable conclusion. In his heart Bush blamed bitter, frenzied talk by extremists in his own party. Extremists impose a cancerous form of political correctness that demands conformity and kills any possibility of a reasoned approach to immigration reform and other issues.
“The failure of immigration reform points out larger concerns about the direction of our politics,” President Bush wrote in his memoir. “The blend of isolationism, protectionism, and nativism that affected the immigration deba
te also led Congress to block free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. I recognize the genuine anxiety that people feel about foreign competition. But our economy, our security, and our culture would all be weakened by an attempt to wall ourselves off from the world.”
“What is interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some ‘isms’ that occasionally pop up,” President Bush explained in the TV interview on C-SPAN. “One is isolationism and its evil twin, protectionism, and its evil triplet, nativism. So if you study the twenties, for example, there was an America-first policy that said, ‘Who cares what happens in Europe?’ … My point is that we’ve been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism, and nativism. I’m a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope these ‘isms’ pass.”
The former president’s remarks set off the right-wing talk-show hosts. One conservative pundit, Laura Ingraham, said that “to say that it’s all about hostility to foreigners is ludicrous.… Maybe President Bush was right. We are suffering from an outbreak of isms. Elitism comes to mind.”
It was just the kind of attack Bush had experienced when he tried to grapple with the issue of immigration as president. Those on the extreme Right labeled him a moderate and said he had lost touch and abandoned the Republican Party for attempting to pass immigration reform in 2007.
That year the president supported an immigration reform bill supported by Republican senator John McCain and Democratic senator Ted Kennedy, among others. But the right wing tore into the bill as “amnesty for illegal immigrants.” Conservative writer Ann Coulter claimed it would turn America into a “roach motel.” And the king of conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, said the bill was the first step on the road to doom for the Republican Party because it invited a flood of likely Democrats into the country. He said it also spelled doom for schools, hospitals, and welfare lines burdened by this mass of newcomers. Any Republican senator who dared to voice support for President Bush and the bill came under fire as a RINO (Republican in name only), a traitor to conservative principles. Senator Lindsey Graham was labeled “Graham-nesty” for his support of the bill. The harsh rhetoric poisoned any chance for reasoned, honest debate, and the bill died. Even as late as 2010 the power of the extremist poison was still being felt. Senator McCain, fighting for his political life in a primary challenge from a strong anti–immigration reform opponent, had to renounce his support for his own bill and take a hard-line position against immigration reform.
The pattern of paralyzing attacks from politicians and the media that killed the Bush immigration-reform plan fits a pattern that is now standard theater in Washington, courtesy of both sides of the aisle and their supporters.
In the opening act the nation faces a difficult issue. A glimmer of hope appears when a group of Republican and Democratic leaders begin talks and work on a serious, practical resolution. And then the curtain comes down on act 1. In the second act, those statesmen are attacked as elitists for ignoring the will of the people as expressed in popular partisan positions. They are derided as weak-kneed people ignoring supporters on the Left and Right. In the third and final act, the political leaders stop talking to one another across party lines and eventually stop looking for answers as they become preoccupied with countering threats from party members and political supporters to cut off campaign funds. That is immediately followed by announcements that fiery political opponents will challenge those “out-of-touch” members of Congress in upcoming primaries.
That modern political drama in the Capitol also includes a subplot featuring a cast of second-string politicians who make no effort at serious debate in search of answers but gain several minutes of fame for denouncing anyone suggesting new, pragmatic thinking about the issue. They are rewarded with cameo appearances in which they make outlandish statements. In the immigration fight Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, got a ton of media attention and praise from talk radio in 2006 when she appealed to fears of an immigrant invasion by declaring, “Every town has become a border town. Every state has become a border state.” Congressman Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican, won major press coverage in 2010 when he denounced what he described as “anchor babies.” He said illegal immigrants regularly plotted to have their children born in the United States to gain citizenship rights granted under the Constitution to anyone born on American soil. That same year, Congressman Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, won headlines when he took concern over the American-born children of illegal immigrants in the United States to a new level, warning of “terror babies” who are brought into the country by terrorist mothers and raised to carry out terror attacks in the future. And Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo got more than a cameo when he criticized the pope and the Catholic Church for being less interested in offering a Christian, charitable response to illegal immigrants than in “recruiting new members.” The congressman gained further attention when he tied lax immigration enforcement to President Obama. Speaking at a Tea Party convention, Representative Tancredo said, “People who cannot spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House—his name is Barack Hussein Obama!”
These congressmen and other politicians have every political and financial incentive to stake out extreme positions. When they make offensive comments about illegal immigrants, for example, they become the subjects of heated debates. Videos of their remarks become YouTube sensations. They get invitations to appear on national television. Speech requests pour in from like-minded groups. They suddenly attract campaign contributions nationally. But while there are plenty of incentives to stake out extreme positions on issues, there is little incentive for them to roll up their sleeves and work out a compromise on issues of critical importance to the future of the nation.
Looking back, the 2007 immigration-reform bill, for example, does not seem so wild and radical an idea as to generate talk of “terror babies” and attacks on the integrity of the pope and worsen an already bitter national controversy. The bill proposed a pathway to citizenship for the twelve million illegal immigrants in the United States. They would have been allowed to enroll in a special “Z visa” program, a point-based merit system that would have taken into account their education, as well as job-related skills, family connections, and proficiency in English. Far from granting “amnesty” to people who entered the country illegally, the law would have required immigrants without proper documents to register their presence in the United States, pay a fine, pay back taxes, and leave the country before applying for legal immigrant status.
The bill also provided more money for border security. Lack of funding for surveillance and armed patrols is a sticking point for many when it comes to immigration reform. Over the last few years Mexico has been ravaged by corruption, kidnapping, human trafficking, and murder associated with the drug trade. There is rational fear, especially among people living in U.S. towns bordering Mexico, of violence and anarchy following the drug trade into the United States. Had the bill backed by President Bush become law, there would be more surveillance technology and more agents patrolling the borders. Anyone who said the bill did not increase border security was misrepresenting the truth. But the lie was repeated again and again until it appeared that the bill’s commitment to border security was up for debate, a matter of partisan dispute.
One congressman, Republican Steve King of Iowa, an opponent of the 2007 bill, said the only satisfactory border security is a massive wall across the thousands of miles of the U.S. border. Representative King actually brought a scale model of such a wall to the House floor, and he had a simulated electrified wire on top of his wall. He was outraged when critics said his wall looked like a prison and posed a danger of electric shock to people coming near the wall. The congressman said the electric wire would not kill people but act as a “discouragement” to trespassing. “We do this with livestock all the time.”
King’s impractical propo
sal for a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific is one more example of how rational debate is derailed by the sensational time and again. This is what President Bush referred to as isolationism run wild. Even if the wall were built, it would not be effective in stopping illegal immigrants from crossing the border. In his 2010 memoir President Bush wrote, “The longest and tallest fence in the world would not stop those determined to provide for their families.” Janet Napolitano, former governor of a border state, Arizona, and now secretary of Homeland Security, said it best when she said that fifty-foot-tall walls result in fifty-one-foot ladders. A similarly impractical proposal from opponents of immigration reform is that all illegal immigrants be deported. Senator McCain’s response to that suggestion (at least in the past)? To point out that the United States doesn’t have twelve million pairs of handcuffs.
But the Democrats are hardly idle in the audience during such Republican political dramas. They actively encourage these displays by issuing expressions of outrage that delight the Far Right and prompt more offensive statements about immigrants. In the case of the 2007 immigration debate, the Democrats claimed that the guest-worker plan created levels of immigrants that amounted to a medieval caste system by stigmatizing low-wage temporary workers. It was a weak argument when compared to the potential passage of a bill that opened a legal door for people to get jobs without worry of being exploited by employers or chased by immigration agents. But the Democrats’ posturing allowed them to claim the mantle of being defenders of the immigrant community. Democrats saw political opportunity in the Republican excess. The Hispanic community increasingly identified with Democrats as the pro-immigrant party and voted for them. The rising Hispanic vote is a potential political gold mine for Democrats. The result? Neither Republicans nor Democrats have a strong reason to alter their positions in search of a compromise that might lead the nation to come to terms with a dysfunctional immigration policy, as we shall see.
Juan Williams Page 14