Somehow, I was led to believe that voting was a fundamental part of democracy. And when a majority exists, and no vote can take place – well, that is more than just a shame; it’s not democracy.

At center stage on this is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). There are currently forty-seven Democratic senators who want to pass legislation to open most of the closed departments and agencies of the federal government. There are also at least four Republicans; that makes a total of fifty-one; i.e. a majority of the one hundred members of the Senate.

But McConnell refuses to allow the Senate to vote on the bills that have already passed the House. His reasoning is that the president has said that he would veto such legislation.

McConnell was not born yesterday. The fact that Donald Trump is unpredictable and not good to his word is not a surprise to most people, and that includes him. If McConnell would allow the Senate to vote to reopen most of the agencies that are currently closed, who knows what Trump would do? In a sense, McConnell is now doing Trump’s bidding. A more responsible Majority Leader would let democracy prevail, and if the president would want to veto the bills, he would be free to do so. We have no way of knowing what he actually would do, because Trump himself has no idea.

The problem is not just McConnell. It is a system that has existed in Congress since its origins. Each house has its leadership. It makes sense to have men and women in positions to organize the legislation that is considered before Congress. There need to be traffic cops; one who will say let’s deal with Bill ‘D’ before Bill ‘A’ because it currently is more urgent. For example, it is far more important now for each house of Congress to deal with issues reopening the government, and even addressing border security, than it is to vote on a bill that would rename a post office.

We often talk about presidential abuse of power, and we are certainly seeing quite a bit of it with Donald Trump. Seldom do we talk about abuse of power with Congressional leaders, but it may be more prevalent and nearly as insidious. This is what we are seeing now with Mitch McConnell. He is essentially ostracizing fifty-one or more members of the U.S. Senate, leaving them with as much power to effect policy as you and I, as ordinary citizens, have.

We talk a great deal about structural changes necessary to improve our democracy. These include abolishing the Electoral College, eliminating gerrymandering, and eradicating voter suppression. But equally important is for Congress to drastically reduce the power of its leaders, including committee chairpersons.

Right now, Mitch McConnell is being cowardly, loyal, undemocratic and savvy all at the same time. It seems that he prefers to think of himself as loyal and savvy rather than cowardly and undemocratic. But his audience is more than a crowd of one – Trump. It is the American people, and in particular the 800,000 government workers who did not receive their paychecks yesterday.

Come on, Mitch, show Trump what courage and good judgment look like. It’s a way to try to rejuvenate the Republican Party.

The post McConnell As Much at Blame as Trump appeared first on Occasional Planet.

“I came in like a wrecking ball

Yeah, I just closed my eyes and swung

Left me crashing in a blazing fall”

Do these lyrics remind you of a political party? They certainly should. Miley Cyrus’s pop single “Wrecking Ball” is probably the best description of the recent antics of Tea Party Republicans in the House we’re ever going to get. Where mainstream journalists failed, the lyricists of Miley’s song succeeded.

Did you notice how mainstream-media commentators twisted themselves into knots during the sixteen days of the government shutdown, searching for so-called balanced, mostly non-confrontational, words to describe what the marauding Tea Partiers had wrought? The lost wages, lowered consumer confidence, postponed medical trials, interruption of scientific studies, doubt about the stability of the American economy and political system. And worst of all—the undermining of trust in the instruments of democracy. Well, step aside, talking heads, Miley’s three lines capture the craziness better than any long-winded punditry you could possibly summon.

Therefore, in recognition of their prescience, I hereby nominate the composers of “Wrecking Ball” for a special Grammy for capturing perfectly the twisted and destructive fallout of the Tea Party’s government shutdown.

Is it far-fetched to link a self-destructive pop star and Tea Partiers in the House? Think about it. They have a lot in common. Self-delusion and a penchant for juvenile stunts. Creative derangement and the urge for reckless spectacle. Miley strains to hold our attention with one fleshy facial part – her tongue. Tea Party Republicans choose another, thumbing their noses at the conventions of our democratic institutions.

And what was all this swinging of ball and chain actually about? Was it motivated solely by animus toward the Affordable Care Act—a good faith effort to reign in healthcare costs and make it possible for millions of the uninsured to obtain insurance?  Or was it motivated by even darker, more cynical motives to swing the sledgehammer and shatter the presidency of the first black man to reside in the White House? In truth, it appears that the wrecking was an angry spasm that started with nothing and ended by accomplishing nothing.

Nothing, however, does not describe the collateral damage.

$24 billion. That’s right, fiscal-conservative charlatans, that’s what Standard & Poor’s Index says you cost us in just sixteen days. How about giving that number some context? How about looking at how that pile of wasted cash could have been spent to benefit the American people, instead of, as Senator Elizabeth Warren put it so delicately, “flushing it” away?

The flu season provides a good test case. That $24 billion could have immunized every man, woman, and child in the U.S. for two consecutive seasons, potentially preventing the roughly $87.1 billion that is taken out of the U.S. economy annually as a result of lost work days due to influenza.

To take stock of the full extent of the damage, however, you’ve got to dig down deep into the rubble. Nearly one million federal employees were furloughed during the shutdown. It’s true that federal employees will be receiving back pay for their sixteen furloughed days. But what about private contractors? “Well, too bad, buddy,” is what Republicans might say.

(Do you recall which party pushed privatization of government functions?  You bet the answer is the same Republicans who have now snatched the wages out of the pockets of working people who are employed by private companies providing essential services to the federal government.)

Some of the most far-reaching effects of the sixteen-day shutdown will be felt by the scientific community, which depends on consistent, long-term data gathering. Remember, this is the same scientific community that is already reeling from the effects of deep budget cuts mandated by the sequester.

During the sixteen-day shutdown, The National Institutes of Health reported that new enrollment in clinical trials slowed to a crawl. In a typical week, two hundred new patients enter potentially live-saving trials. In the first week of the shutdown, only twelve new patients, many in danger of dying, were admitted to trials. What do you say to parents of a child who desperately needs to participate in a clinical trial and who has now lost two weeks of potentially life-saving measures? Perhaps we should ask Senator Cruz and his buddies to give us an answer to that one.

The Food and Drug Administration furloughed half its staff, curbing its ability to monitor and prevent food-borne illnesses. Delays in grant approvals for scientists working in government and at private institutions in multiple fields may result in interruptions to long-term data collection, disassembling experiments, or not starting new studies at all.

So here’s to you, Tea Party House Republicans. Go and have your non-victory victory party. Take a few wild turns round the dance floor but then stop and listen to Miley’s final words:

“All you ever did was wreck me

Yeah, you, you wreck me

Yeah, you, you wreck me”

The post The Republican wrecking ball appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Eleven days and counting into the government shutdown, here’s Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on day three channeling anger, disappointment, and utter incredulousness at the “anarchy” that Tea Party Republicans (and their Republican colleagues who lack the spine to stand up to them) have foisted upon us.

Watch as Senator Warren pulls no punches as she debunks the false media meme that the shutdown is the result of congressional dysfunction across both aisles.  Take heart as well in the Senator’s words that “we’re not a country of anarchists” and that this “reckless faction,” like the reckless factions that have come before them, will fail.

The post Elizabeth Warren: Straight talk about the Republican shutdown appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Sometimes it seems that contemporary American politics and the sometimes upside-down policies of our dysfunctional Congress are so entangled and opaque that it’s impossible to sort out what’s true and what’s false.

Thankfully, there are a few people on the national scene that have the right combination of communication skills, brain power, and moxie to come to our aid and ease our troubled minds.  One of those people is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

In the video below Senator Warren rides to the rescue and demonstrates how to tease out the knots and connect up the dots. Listen—and listen well—to her description of her “state of disbelief” and her clear-eyed explanation about how Republicans took us all hostage with their delusional shutdown of our federal government.

The post Teasing out the knots. Connecting up the dots: Sen. Warren on the government shutdown appeared first on Occasional Planet.

They can hold their breath, stomp their feet, throw their toys, lock themselves in their rooms, refuse to eat dinner, and shout bad words at the top of their lungs, but even if Republicans manage to shut down the federal government, that supreme and reckless act of anti-democracy defiance will not stop the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] from starting up on October 1, 2013. And  not just for political reasons.

True, President Obama and the Democratic majority have stated that they are not going to approve any bill that defunds the new health care act, but there’s more to this story than parliamentary maneuvering.  The October 1 launch will take place—even in the event of a Republican-forced government shutdown–because of the fundamental structure of the new law’s funding.  The Obama administration pretty much anticipated that Republicans would try to defund a law that was legitimately passed by the majority, so it built in funding that can’t be stopped by the lack of a continuing resolution.

I’m not making this up out of wishful thinking. According to a report released in July 2013 by the Congressional Research Service [CRS], “It appears that substantial ACA implementation might continue during a lapse in annual appropriations.”

The Washington Post’s Wonk Blog explains it this way:

There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, the lapse in appropriations only hits so-called “discretionary” funding. But the ACA’s core functions are on the “mandatory” side of the budget. So, for instance, the money for tax credits and Medicaid expansion would arrive on schedule. State and federal exchanges would still operate. The individual mandate would still be in place.

So a lot of the law’s funding would be unaffected. Meanwhile, the more marginal spending that is affected could be backfilled by the Obama administration moving mandatory money around, and even going beyond that, the White House could argue that crucial positions fall into the bucket of essential personnel who are protected during a government shutdown. So while it wouldn’t be ideal, implementation would move forward.

CNN says:

Most of the funding for Obamacare comes from new taxes and fees, from cost cuts to other programs like Medicare and other types of funding that carry on even in the event of a government shutdown. Plus, [even in a shutdown] the law would still be in effect, so its many new requirements – everything  from forcing insurance companies to cover anyone who wants insurance to forcing everyday Americans to carry health insurance or pay a fine – would  still be in effect, too.

So, Republicans, stomp and shout, bloviate and fulminate, foam at the mouth and scream. Your government shutdown will hurt America and may hurt you, but it’s not going to stop the start of the new health care law.  As Tracy Turnblad sang, in the Broadway musical Hairspray, “You can’t stop the beat.” Even Mitch McConnell knows that.

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