Speaker of the House is calling it quits

Every politician trying to get out while the getting is good claims he/she wants to "spend more time with my family." In Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's case, this excuse may actually be truthful, at least in part. His children have largely grown up without him over the past 20 years.

Nevertheless, Ryan's decision not to run for re-election to a safe seat in Congress and to not continue as speaker of the House has to have been influenced by several factors: the difficulty of legislating with an impulsive, unpredictable, often angry and spiteful president in the White House; the nearly impossible task of getting a majority of House members to agree on legislation of any kind in a hyper-partisan atmosphere, the frustration of trying to work with members of the Republican right wing that wants to cripple the federal government as a means of realizing their dream of a more decentralized, unregulated society.

Ryan may also not want to preside over a congressional minority if Republicans lose enough seats, as many are predicting, to give the Democrats a majority. Who wants to be the minority leader after you've been Speaker of the House? Just ask Nancy Pelosi. Republicans have already been wounded by an unusual number of decisions not to seek re-election. Mid-term elections usually result in lost seats for the party in power.

Whatever his reasons might be, Ryan's decision will likely weaken the GOP effort to retain control of the House and the Senate, if for no other reason than the appearance that the party's leader is giving up.

Democrats are excited and optimistic about mid-term elections. They plan to run against an unpopular president and a Congress that has done little to address key issues that are priorities for many Americans. However, Democrats would be foolish to be over-confident. Few, if any, Democrats thought Donald Trump could win the White House in 2016, and gleeful Democrats are probably underestimating his support again this year. Polls and other indicators show that Trump supporters are more loyal than ever and are determined to follow their leader wherever he goes.

November's election results might hinge on Trump, but at this point no one knows whether Trump will turn voters toward Democratic candidates or will drag Republicans into an abyss.

Trump the Democrat

Suppose Donald Trump runs for re-election on the Democratic ticket!

After yesterday's new coalition of Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer plus Trump's indication that he might eliminate the debt ceiling altogether, Trump seems more Democratic than some Democrats. And he clearly left some Republicans (Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) miffed by the Republican president's detour around the party's congressional leadership.

The Trump-Pelosi-Schumer triumvirate got together on a legislative plan that appears to be counter to the Republican Party's interests. Ryan and McConnell wanted to put off debt ceiling and 2018 budget decisions until after the 2018 mid-term elections. Making painful and controversial decisions after the election instead of before would be in the best interests of the majority party. Democrats wanted action sooner rather than later, giving them the opportunity to force Republicans to state where they stand on controversial but essential legislation before Americans go to the polls.

Some Republicans have complained that Trump is not really a Republican, which is true. He is Trump, and what is good for him and his friends is his policy, regardless of partisan concerns. Bipartisanship, if that is what Trump is able to bring about, would be welcomed by many Americans and by some members of Congress in both parties.

Bipartisanship would be helpful in repairing Trump's initiative on immigration. Trump was prompted (by Pelosi) to say some nice things about young immigrants while his attorney general announced the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy of the Obama administration. Trump tweeted (how else would he make an important announcement?) that the "Dreamers" protected by DACA would have nothing to worry about in the six months before DACA expires under the new policy.

Critics are portraying the administration's decision as a cruel betrayal of these young immigrants brought here illegally as children. But what the administration is doing is forcing Congress to pass DACA-type protections into federal law. It gives Congress six months to pass legislation. There is no guarantee that Congress will do its duty, but there seems to be overwhelming support for providing a means for these innocent young people to avoid deportation. Members of Congress who fail to support a fair and reasonable bill to protect "Dreamers" will face political consequences. A long-sought comprehensive immigration overhaul might even come from this motivation.

Both of these actions this week by the president relates to his impatience and impulsiveness. Trump has been critical of Congress for its failure to pass health care legislation and other important measures. He has accused his own party's leadership of dragging their feet. Most successful businessmen have an impatient streak, and Trump's streak is long and deep. If his impatience gets Congress to start things moving, he could salvage his own failing presidency.

Health care for all has only one option

After dozens of votes to repeal "Obamacare," Republicans in Congress have gotten their wish. They have the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they now face the reality that repealing the act does not improve health care. The repeal leaves huge gaps in health care and eliminates many popular aspects of the Affordable Care Act, such as protecting patients from being punished for having pre-existing conditions.

The reality has hit the GOP leadership: They can't just repeal Obamacare. They have to replace it. A proposed replacement was rolled out this week, but the Congressional Budget Office has found that the GOP health care plan leaves an additional 24 million Americans without health insurance. That figure frightened some less ideological Republicans, and votes to pass the GOP plan are dissipating.

The GOP plan is under attack from the left, as Democrats decry numbers of people who are left out of the new plan, and from the right, as far-right Republicans complain that the new plan is just warmed-over Obamacare.

Maybe this is an opportunity for a bold new approach. Both the Obama plan and the new GOP (Paul Ryan) plan are built on an inherently flawed premise — that America has to keep its network of employers paying premiums for employees and insurance companies paying the bills (or part of the bills) for U.S. healthcare. This system leaves out the unemployed, under-employed and just plain unfortunate. Obama's plan, like the one Hillary Clinton tried to push through during her husband's first term, tried to force the uncovered into buying insurance. Obamacare used tax penalties and government subsidies to make people get health insurance. It increased the percentage of people with healthcare but still left many people uncovered. The new GOP plan uses the same basic strategy but uses incentives to get people to buy health insurance rather than penalties and subsidies. It would leave even more people uncovered.

Perhaps the time is right for a new strategy — one that was rejected in earlier debates, but the only one that will truly cover "all Americans," which President Trump promised the GOP plan would achieve. That option is "single-payer," which is the model nearly all Western democracies use to provide truly nationwide coverage. In this option, all Americans would pay into the system, just as we all pay into Social Security and Medicare, and a federal agency would disburse payments to health care providers. Overhead would be sharply cut with just one agency handling accounts payable rather than hundreds of insurance companies, many of whom pay their CEOs multi-million salaries.

Taxes would rise, but health insurance premiums would be eliminated for both employees and employers. How much does the average worker pay for health insurance? $500 a month? $1,000 a month? How much do employers pay? That amount (or less) would be collected in taxes and used to pay for health care of everyone. The uninsured, who are a drain on the system now, would be eliminated. Taxation could be designed to be fair to all, with the lowest-income paying lower taxes and the most affluent paying more. Making the healthcare tax a separate form of tax on both employees and employers just like Social Security and Medicare, would keep the system transparent. Some co-pays would be appropriate to keep the public from abusing the system.

This is the only way everyone would be covered. Everyone would share the risks in a risk pool of 300 million-plus people. Insurance companies would fight for their survival, but the advantages of this system is too great to allow one interest group to sabotage it.

Budget solution: Place a sales tax on members of Congress

Rep. Paul Ryan has a new budget outline, which the House has approved, despite no hope that the Senate will even consider it. This semblance of progress on balancing the federal budget gave me an idea:

Let's place a sales tax on members of Congress. Disabuse yourself of the notion that our representatives are not really beholden to the people who give them thousands or millions of dollars every day. Congress is for sale, and members are not even coy about it. The selling has become brazen. Despite what the Constitution might imply, Congress' real job is not to pass legislation, it is to raise money for the next election. And most members do it very well.

My proposal would force the nation to recognize the reality of the Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions that make the selling of Congress the nation's most productive business. Instead of fighting this tidal wave, let's tax it.

Every dollar given to a member of Congress or candidate for Congress, his/her election campaign treasury, or any "third party" organization, including political parties, political action committees, so-called "voter education" groups or any other entity seeking to influence a congressional election shall be taxed at the rate of, let's say, 10%. This taxation would go into the U.S. treasury and would be counted as revenues in the federal budget. Once this influx of money balances the budget and pays off the federal debt, the taxation rate can be adjusted downward. We don't want to be greedy about this.

The advantages go far beyond the balancing of the budget. This tax would make nominally honest men and women of members of Congress. We had known all along they were for sale to the highest bidder; now they will have to admit it. Their admission of this fact would bolster federal revenues. It would also make moot the differences between personal income, campaign income and special-interest groups' income. All of them would be taxed equally because they are equivalently responsible for the selling of Congress. So what if the Supreme Court says corporations can poor millions of dollars into buying congressmen? At least we'll get tax revenue out of the transaction.

No doubt, soon after passage of the sales tax on Congress, members will be bragging about how much revenue their campaigns have contributed to the treasury.

The other "third rail of politics"

The late House Speaker Tip O'Neill once called Social Security the "third rail of politics" — meaning anyone who touched the program risked instant death, at least politically. If O'Neill were still around, he might say the same thing about Medicare.

It was Medicare, apparently, that turned the tables in Tuesday's election in upstate New York, where Democrat Kathy Hochul won a special election in a traditionally Republican district. Hochul's campaign emphasized her opposition to Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program — instead of the government paying directly to providers for the health care of Medicare recipients, Ryan would reduce costs by giving vouchers for recipients to purchase their own health care in the private sector.

What is interesting is that both parties have recognized that the current Medicare program is unsustainable. Some type of reform is necessary. President Obama took a lot of heat because his health care program required cuts in Medicare reimbursements to save money. Republicans screamed. President Bush had proposed cuts in Medicare reimbursements, too. Democrats had screamed. Tuesday's election indicates that we may have reached a point at which no one can afford to reshape Medicare, and both parties see Medicare changes as an invitation to attack the other party. This will lead to an impasse in which Medicare costs outgrow taxpayers' ability to pay for the program.

Then what?

Government shutdown looms again

In less than 18 hours, as I write this, the federal government is expected to go into partial shutdown. The reason: Congress has not passed a budget for the 2011 fiscal year (that's the one we're now halfway through), and the interim spending resolution is expiring. Democrats and Republicans are blaming each other for the impasse, and it appears that a budgetary dispute will lead to a governmental closure for the first time since the Clinton-Gingrich game of chicken in the 1990s.

The thing to remember about this impasse is that it is not about next year's budget. This dispute is over the current fiscal year budget, which began Oct. 1, 2010. This budget should have been passed last summer and should have been in place before Oct. 1. Once this cat fight is out of the way, which it surely will be sooner or later, Congress faces the much more daunting task of passing the budget for FY2012, which begins Oct. 1.

Passing a budget, one can argue, is the primary, fundamental duty of Congress. But Congress has consistently failed to pass budgets on time. Call it attention deficit disorder on a massive scale. Congress can't seem to concentrate on its primary mission — setting a spending plan for the federal government. This is not a new phenomenon. I was on the federal payroll (as a Coast Guard officer) when the federal government changed from a July-June fiscal year to an October-September fiscal year. That year, we worked with a 15-month fiscal year. The extra three months, we were told at the time, would give Congress the additional time it needed to pass a budget on time. Ha!

Last year, when the FY2011 budget should have been passed, Democrats in control of Congress didn't want to pass a budget that could become a political hot potato in the 2010 elections, so they let government slide through a continuing resolution. That strategy didn't work out too well in November. With Republicans now in charge of the House and holding more votes in the Senate, they are determined to use the overdue budget to win ideological points. The year-round campaigning and 24-hour news cycles (which must be fed with controversy day and night) have made any legislative agreement more difficult. But if Congress cannot agree on how to fund the last six months of this fiscal year, how will our representatives ever find common ground to steer a new fiscal course in 2012?

Both sides, it seems to me, would be better off yielding on FY 2011 and saving their energy for the FY2012 fight. Rep. Paul Ryan has already thrown down the gauntlet with a radically different FY2012 budget plan that would fundamentally change Medicare and Medicaid and sharply reduce federal spending. The fight over Ryan's plan and alternatives yet to be revealed will make tonight's threatened government shutdown seem inconsequential. There is a growing consensus that the federal deficit and debt are much too large and must be trimmed. The fight will be over where and how to cut spending and whether to include some tax increases (or sunsetting of tax cuts), as the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission had proposed, in the budgetary solution. The battle over Ryan's plan or some alternative to it could be the political fight of the decade. Both sides should stockpile some ammunition for that fight and not waste it all on today's interim measure.