8/19/09 12:37 PMWhy Orrin Hatch Lies a Lot (and Pete Domenici, Bob Dole, and Chuck Grassley too)

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August 16, 2009

Why Orrin Hatch Lies a Lot (and Pete Domenici, Bob Dole, and Chuck

Grassley too)

Harold Pollack calls out Orrin Hatch:

Can You Get Your Facts Straight, Senator Hatch? : This morning I watched This Week, where

Senators Hatch and Specter were debating health reform. Senator Hatch, desperate not to be

pinned down defending or criticizing Governor Palin's "death panel" thing, launched into a

stream of his own talking points about nameless, faceless bureaucrats and the public plan...

TAPPER: Senator Hatch, who's right, Governor Palin or Senator Murkowski?

HATCH: Well, Jake, I don't think I'm going to make that decision. You know, there are

many different people who have many different opinions on what is meant by these

programs. But what I do know is that the Democrats want a government plan, where the

government will take over health care.... They want to move, according to the Lewin Group,

up to 119 million people into Medicaid. If that happens, it would destroy the--the health

insurance programs throughout the country. Eight of ten Americans really--really want

their health insurance coverage. They don't want to lose it.

Jake Tapper hit back, noting that the Lewin Group is owned by UnitedHealth Group. The real

problem isn't that the Lewin Group might be biased. Their report just doesn't say what Hatch

said it does. On pages, um, 1 and 2, the authors clearly indicate that this analysis is based on

quite different provisions from what is proposed in the various Senate and House bills.

To my knowledge, the Lewin Group has not analyzed the current legislation. Another

nonpartisan entity, the Congressional Budget Office, actually has. Under the House bill, CBO

estimates that "about 9 million or 10 million" people would enroll in the public plan. Rather

than killing the private insurance market, the House bill would actually increase the number of

Americans who hold private employer-based coverage by about 3 million. And by the way, the

8/19/09 12:37 PMWhy Orrin Hatch Lies a Lot (and Pete Domenici, Bob Dole, and Chuck Grassley too)

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Americans who hold private employer-based coverage by about 3 million. And by the way, the

public plan is quite different from Medicaid.

"Horrendous" is one word that wound up in my news flow this morning. But it is important to

recognize that it is not horrendous by accident, but by design. Call it the Domenici game: talk like a

reasonable, sane, policy-oriented human being in private and in small think-tank conference rooms

without cameras. Demagogue the hell out of issues when the cameras are rolling. And always, always

vote the straight right wing line all the time.

Orrin Hatch is a master at it. And so are others--like Pete Domenici, like Bob Dole, like Chuck

Grassley. In each case, the public-private dichotomy is "striking". This makes it a really important

thing that Max Baucus has given his friend Grassley veto power over every substantive and

procedural aspect of health reform.

A couple of years ago there was a debate I was sorry I did not see, between Alice Rivlin and Paul

Krugman. Alice Rivlin thought that organizations like the Brookings Institution at which she worked

had a role: you could design and argue for good policies, convince senators and influential House

members of their value for the public interest, and then build a bipartisan coalition from the center

out--either to the left or to the right, depending on which ideological extreme's price for coming on

board to support sensible policies that worked was least obnoxious.

Paul Krugman said no: that that strategy worked only as long as the ideological lines of party

cleavage were blurred, which would be the case only as long as there were (a) a larger number of

relatively liberal northerners who voted Republican because Lincoln freed the slaves, and (b) a large

number of relatively conservative southerners who voted Democratic because Lincoln freed the

slaves. Once the parties realigned, zero-sum partisan loyalties would dominate: Republicans like

Hatch would think hard whether it was more important to vote for a bill because it was good for

America or vote against it because then you could paint the Democratic president as a failure and

pick up seats in the next election, and make their decision. You had, Paul said (I think: I wasn't

there) to pick your party and then work hard to make its policies the best policies possible because

"bipartisanship" was no longer a viable legislative strategy.

We saw this in 1993, when Clinton's centrist bipartisan deficit-reducing budget--half tax increases,

have spending cuts--attracted not a single Republican vote. We saw this in February, when Obama's

centrist stimulus package--2/3 spending increases, 1/3 tax cuts (Clinton was Mr. 43%, Obama is Mr.

54%), and 2/3 the size that would have been appropriate--attracted zero Republican votes in the

House and only three in the Senate. We are seeing this on cap-and-trade, where the number of

Republicans willing to sign on to do something about global warming if they can then shape the bill

in the direction of economic efficiency is close to zero, and now on health care too.

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8/19/09 12:37 PMWhy Orrin Hatch Lies a Lot (and Pete Domenici, Bob Dole, and Chuck Grassley too)

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Brad DeLong on August 16, 2009 at 12:28 PM in Economics, Economics: Health, Obama

Administration, Political Economy, Politics | Permalink

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Krugman is absolutely correct on this. With today's Republican Party, Grover Norquist is correct, bipartisanship is

date rape. FWIW, the Republicans are NEVER the rapee.

Posted by: DrDick | August 16, 2009 at 12:41 PM

The same forces work for ideological economists too.

Posted by: elliottg | August 16, 2009 at 12:50 PM

It's what the Founding Fathers called the battling of the "factions" or something. It's the way they set up the system -

- to battle it out.

It's okay. And it's okay to deplore the other side -- but don't despair of the system. (That's what your opponents

HOPE you'll do.)

The thing to do, the thing the Founding Fathers gave you the chance to do, is to fight back with the tools that are

given.

Call your Congresscritter, start yelling from the rooftops that a public option for universal baseline coverage is

WANTED by 72% of the people (probably more, if they had the time to think about it!) because it is very much

NEEDED.

And it's the biggest single way to bend the cost curve.

Put gold-plated private coverage on top for elective procedures if you want it: But get a basic universal public option

without the 20% markup by the insurance industry. This will eliminate the extra costs -- not only that money, but

the time and energy that almost all of us waste, one way or another, on healthcare.

There is no reason to prop up a useless oligopoly just because it has friends taking campaign contributions in

Congress.

This is just the way the battle was set up. This is how it is done.

Posted by: Lee A. Arnold | August 16, 2009 at 01:20 PM

No, Lee, the Founding Fathers tried to AVOID factions. This accounts for the Electoral College, and for other

Constitutional mistakes.

It's true that "despairing of the system" is pointless. But the system is bad in several really important ways, of which

the structure of the Senate is one important one.

Posted by: Historian | August 16, 2009 at 04:27 PM

But Krugman's point, which is clearly true and is the general rule in parliamentary democracies, doesn't explain the

lying. That's possible only because in our system there's no direct confrontation between the parties in a public

forum (as the UK has in the form of Prime Minister's Questions) - in our system, all debate is mediated through the

media. And if the media can't or won't be serious, then lying is the most reasonable strategy for any politician.

8/19/09 12:37 PMWhy Orrin Hatch Lies a Lot (and Pete Domenici, Bob Dole, and Chuck Grassley too)

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Me: Economists:

Paul Krugman

Mark Thoma

Cowen and

Tabarrok

Chinn and

Hamilton

Brad Setser

Juicebox

Mafia:

Ezra Klein

Matthew

Yglesias

Spencer

Ackerman

Dana

Goldstein

Dan Froomkin

Moral

Philosophers:

Hilzoy and

Friends

Crooked

Timber of

Humanity

Mark Kleiman

and Friends

Eric Rauchway

and Friends

John Holbo

and Friends

The real question is, why is lying so common on the right and so rare on the left? Certainly there are plenty of crack-

pots on the left, but their nonsense doesn't make it into the political debate. Why not? Is it because the press has

become entirely a corporate megaphone controlled by monied interests who use it to manipulate the paranoid right?

Posted by: Bloix | August 16, 2009 at 04:47 PM

"Is it because the press has become entirely a corporate megaphone controlled by monied interests who use it to

manipulate the paranoid right?"

DING!!

Posted by: DrDick | August 16, 2009 at 04:48 PM

Historian, you appear to be referring to Madison's discussion of the salutary effects of representative government in

The Federalist #10, (although he in no way asserts that factions will be "avoided;" quite the contrary.) But if we

include the Bill of Rights, and in this case particularly freedom of speech and the press, then a reasonable inference

is that the whole system is set up to fight without bloodletting, is it not?

Posted by: Lee A. Arnold | August 16, 2009 at 09:26 PM

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8/19/09 12:37 PMWhy Orrin Hatch Lies a Lot (and Pete Domenici, Bob Dole, and Chuck Grassley too)

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