I truly believe in a non-political federal civil service. Honestly. At work I will enact a policy whether it's a Republican or Democratic policy (God forbid we include other parties in our system, but that's a rant for another day). I still believe in the right to express my political position in my personal life and even in small talk at the office, but I also swore an oath to the constitution and in the end of the day I will discharge the duties of my office as required by the constitution. In other words, the law is the law.
But what happens when one party abrogates its responsibility and is fundamentally opposed to the very idea of governing? Make no mistake, this is not a question of President Obama refusing to negotiate with the U.S. House of Representatives. I would argue that this shutdown crisis is the culmination of President Obama caving too much over the past 5 years and the time has come for an actual confrontation. Speaker Boehner, you don't get to control the entire government just because your party gerrymandered itself into a tenuous majority in one house despite the fact that the majority of the country voted for democrats.
If I don't work on Tuesday, I'll survive. Spouse and I have some savings, we're not living paycheck to paycheck yet. But I will be taking to the internets to reach out to all of my friends and family to make sure that they're aware that I am personally affected by Mr. Boehner and the Tea Party's ideological war against the government. And if it goes longer than a day or so, I'll march on the Capitol. I don't have a representative because I'm a resident of the District of Columbia (another rant for another day). So I will call upon the overlords in congress that have self-appointed themselves as my representatives (the congressmen and women that are on committees that oversee the District of Columbia). I will tell them that I will be using all of my powers to get rid of the scourge of Republican non-governance in the elections next year.
The spouse and I very rarely invest time or money in political activities. Very occasionally we'll donate some money to a cause that we believe in. This shutdown (and the next one if the brinkmanship extends to the debt ceiling fight) will change this. And I hope that this extends to our family and friends. This may be the catalyst to move the country back from crazy to an actual sane policy.
Look, I'm the first to admit that the Democratic Party has issues. It's a very wide tent of people that only vaguely have the same principles and values. But at least they want to govern responsibly. So Speaker Boehner as the news unfolds over the next few days and weeks, remember this one simple fact: actions have consequences. And we in the federal workforce will make this country remember.
This sucks. I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteIt's very frustrating from the outside to see this. I personally have a ton of concerns about the ACA, and I'm worried that, in the long run, it will only hurt those it is trying to protect (particularly low-income and elderly individuals). I think the cost-saving measures are inadequate and fail to address the deeper causes of why our health care system is so expensive. I think that many Democrats' fixation on a single-payer system is narrow-minded, misguided, and fails to recognize just how serious the budget problems facing the US health care system are.
But this shutdown is ridiculous. The ACA is not the Antichrist. The problems with the health care system are not new. While I'm not convinced the ACA will have any positive impact, I'm also not convinced it will have an enormously negative one. In any case, so many of the arguments on both sides are so clouded by misguided ideological arguments and half-truths that it's hard to believe anything anyone says.
The only thing that is certain is that a government shutdown is completely counterproductive, actively harmful to government employees and taxpayers, and extraordinarily wasteful . . . ironic given that the party responsible claims to be on the side of "fiscal responsibility."
Yeah I respect your opinion as a healthcare professional on the ACA. I'll be the first to argue that it's not perfect and that it will neither be the panacea that some centrists in the administration hope it to be, nor the end of life as we know it as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and their ilk would have us believe. I like to think that the fixation by some on the left with single-payer is partially about the narrow narrow window of debate that we witnessed in the lead up to the ACA.
ReplyDeleteWe've seen such a shift in the Overton Window (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window) in this country over the past 40 or so years on a range of topics, some toward the left (Gay Marriage and acceptance of Homosexuality being a prominent example) but most to the right. I think how we approach healthcare is one of those issues that has shifted far enough right that it's time that the left pushes back and shifts the window again. I don't claim to be an expert on healthcare, but I can see that the pre-ACA system was fiscally unsustainable; maybe the ACA system is unsustainable too, and if that's the case then we look to other solutions and at least the hope is that it's a step in the correct direction.
What I do know is that other countries don't seem to have the same healthcare budgetary issues that we do. And if that's because the U.S. consumer of healthcare is absorbing the investment costs for the entire world's medical system (things like R&D, innovation, medical school, etc.)... well that's just unfair and we need to find a more just way of sharing those costs. And single payer, whatever you think about it, is certainly a tactic used worldwide for bringing down costs of things like insurance. So what galls those on the left is that this topic wasn't even allowed to be discussed by committee putting together the ACA.
But turning back to the politics, I don't think that you could get a system like Medicare passed in this country today, given the fact that the right has organized around what seems to be the fundamental principle that government is not good for anything but enriching already entrenched wealth. This applies to the healthcare system, Wall St., lobbyists, defense contractors, agribusiness, you name an issue and I can show you where efforts by (often but not exclusively) "conservative" legislators/representatives have enacted laws to gift their allies with contracts in the name of the popular good. The left and center of the Democratic party at least feels the need to go for the "greater good." A good example of this would be the food stamps vs. farm bill debate. And yes, food stamps are good constituent services for the left, but they also not incidentally provide a much needed social safety net that prevents a whole host of public health concerns. I very much would prefer not to return to the Hoover 1930s, but some on the right appear more than willing to go there.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm glad we can agree that a government shutdown is counterproductive and wasteful. Living in Washington DC for as long as I have I shouldn't be surprised that it's about to happen again. But even though I've seen the political forces at work here rising for a long time, I thought that maybe, just maybe there were some in the Republican party that would prioritize the country over their personal short-term political futures. Guess I was wrong or naive or something. I never thought that the discord on the right would be so overt and swift to exert a power grab.
In a way I'm somewhat glad this is happening. I'll make the short-term sacrifice if it gets the rest of the country to wake up. If I didn't know how much people would suffer from it, I almost wish that mandatory spending would stop and the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid checks/reimbursements would stop going out. That would really wake people up as to how truly insane these people are. Don't get me wrong, I think that people will see the issues like they did in 1996. But I don't know that this shutdown is going to overcome the advances in political gerrymandering that have occurred in the two decades since. And thus, there is no motive for house to capitulate, save the amount of noise that ordinary citizens can make.
I agree, there has been little to no real debate about what's wrong with the healthcare system and how to fix it. I follow other topics much less closely than the healthcare debate, but I sense the same is true across the board.
ReplyDeleteI think in some ways the system has become polarized between the Champions of the Poor People (how the left sees itself) and the Champions of Freedom (how the right sees itself). On the left, you have many people who want to preserve and even expand social programs at all cost, regardless of whether or not it's realistic and sustainable (hint: with respect to Medicaid/Medicare, IT'S NOT. And that is the problem -- WANTING to go for the greater good is great, but also incredibly dangerous when those aspirations are out of touch with reality). On the other hand, you have the hypocrisy of those who on one hand think we should be the world's police and have no problem spending outrageous amounts, but on the other argue that we need to balance our budget and want to cut all government programs to the bone indiscriminately (indiscriminately being the key word). Not to mention the nutcases who think that they are justified in imposing their (sometimes hateful) moral views on the rest of society.
Unfortunately, there's not much space for anything really that doesn't fit into either of those two boxes. And that's very dangerous.
I had (obviously ridiculous) high hopes that the general disillusionment with the political system would lend more strength to third parties and encourage more of a real dialogue. But instead, almost the opposite seems to be true. The right becomes increasingly nuts, and the left becomes increasingly unable to do anything but complain about how crazy the right is.
(Side note: With respect to a single-payer system, I agree that it should have been an option on the table to be discussed. I think that there's no way to come to a conclusion about the best options if all of the options don't even make it to the table.
Having said that -- saying that it is a "tactic used to keep costs down" is true, but misleading. One, the claim that all advanced countries except our own have a single-payer system is patently untrue -- the Netherlands and Switzerland are examples. Yes, they are extremely heavily government regulated, but they still have private health care systems.
Besides that, it's comparing apples to oranges. The USA has so much more diversity than most European countries -- demographically, geographically, etc -- that it's very difficult to compare. Even within my program, training at the public hospital in town and the private hospitals, the patients have HUGELY different needs -- patients that live within miles of each other.
I am not anti-government. However, I do think there are some things that governments do well, and others that they do not. I think that health care is a rapidly changing, difficult to standardize field. I think that government does not do rapidly changing efficiently. Nor does it do difficult-to-standardize well.
Just my two cents :) )