Think Progress

CBO Says GOP Health Care ‘Alternative’ Leaves 52 Million Uninsured By 2019

Last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the House Republican alternative health care bill. While the CBO determined the GOP bill’s 10 year price tag to be $61 billion — far less that the Democrats’ proposal — the score also found that the their bill would have little effect on nearly 46 million uninsured Americans:

By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the amendment’s insurance coverage provisions would increase deficits by $8 billion over the 2010–2019 period.

The CBO found that the Democrats’ bill, however, would cover 36 million more Americans and “reduce the number of nonelderly Americans without coverage to around 18 million over the next decade.” Yet, just before the CBO scored the GOP bill, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) falsely claimed their alternative “will cover millions more Americans” than the Democrats’ bill.

Last night on Fox News Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) dodged a question about how many uninsured the GOP plan would cover and instead railed at the Democrats for “trying to get at this business of universal coverage”:

PENCE: We believe you get at the coverage issue by lowering the cost of health insurance. … So Republicans by focusing on the cost of health insurance believe that we are going to take our country in a direction where we also deal with the tens of millions of people and employers that struggle with providing insurance.

Watch it:

Boehner Won’t Pledge To Offer GOP Health Care Plan, Refuses To Post It Online If He Does

Republicans have been insisting for months that Democrats are shoving a secret bill down the throats of the American public. The health reform legislation “should be posted online for 72 hours so members and the American people get a chance to see what’s in these bills,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) told Fox News. “But it seems to me that Democrat leaders want to rush these bills through Congress before anybody has a chance to read them.”

In fact, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) “has repeatedly pledged to Republicans that the health bill and any manager’s amendment would be posted online for at least 72 hours before the House votes,” and he promised again this week.

At a press conference this morning, a reporter turned the tables on Boehner and asked whether he’d post the GOP plan for 72 hours. Boehner declined to make such a pledge:

QUESTION: Will the Republicans put their alternative online for 72 hours as well?

BOEHNER: Uh, we’ll uh, we’ll have our ideas ready. Don’t worry.

Why won’t Bohner post the GOP plan? Because he doesn’t have one. Later in the press conference, this minor detail was revealed when a reporter pressed Boehner for a GOP alternative plan:

QUESTION: Is it your plan to have one Republican alternative that you all would get behind and endorse?

BOHNER: We have a number of ideas that we would like to proffer in this process, and we’re not quite sure how the majority intends to proceed. And so until we understand how they intend to proceed, it’s pretty difficult for us to have a solid plan.

Watch it:

Earlier this month, Fox’s Greta van Susteren asked Boehner why House Republicans didn’t push for transparency when they were in power. “It was a different time,” Boehner said in response.

It’s clear why Republicans have been insisting on having as much time as possible to read the bill. As Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) explained, health insurance lobbyists need to be given “at least 72 hours” so they can try to kill the legislation.

After Previously Blaming Obama For Slumping Markets, Boehner Now Downplays Surging Dow

Today on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed above 10,000 for the first time this year as “U.S. stocks approached their highest levels since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy sent the global economy into a tailspin.” In fact, the index is up 13 percent since the start of the year.

When asked about the surging markets, House Minority Leader John Boehner grumbled at the news. “[You're] certainly not talking to the American people,” if you’re placing any significance on the 10,000 mark, Boehner contended:

“The American people understand that unemployment is almost at 10 percent, they understand that they might be next so there are concerns about the economy,” Boehner said. [...]

Boehner said the stock market’s rebound is a reaction to the extreme shock from earlier this year, but it says little more than that.

“At the end of the day, the American people aren’t looking at the stock market in terms of putting food on the table,” Boehner said. “They want jobs, and they want them now.”

But Boehner hasn’t always been so dismissive of the stock market’s significance. In search of an attack line on the newly-inaugurated President Obama back in March, the GOP leader thought that the dismal numbers coming from Wall Street represented the public’s dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies:

“The president certainly remains popular, but his policies are becoming less and less popular,” Boehner said, citing the continuing slide in the financial markets. “Certainly the stock market hasn’t acted very well” since Obama’s inauguration.

As the markets continue to falter, Republicans are becoming more confident in their criticisms of the president — some have already taken to using the phrase “the Obama economy.”

But Boehner has also used the markets to tout the leadership of the Republican Party. At a rally just before the GOP got its “thumpin’” in the 2006 mid-term elections, then Majority Leader Boehner argued that his party would best handle the economy reportedly by “point[ing] to a hot stock market.”

Boehner Brushes Off Past GOP Moves To Rush Bills Through Congress: ‘It Was A Different Time’

Last night on Fox News, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) complained about the process of moving bills forward for a vote. “I’m going to introduce a resolution here in the House that would require all committees to post within 24 hours the actions taken by their committee,” he declared.

Host Greta Van Susteren piled on. “Why in the world don’t we have that?” After Boehner spent much of the segment calling on the Democratic majority to “let people read these bills,” Van Susteren turned the tables and asked Boehner what the standard practice was when the Republicans were in power:

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, when your party was in leadership in the House and there were issues about transparency, any recollection how you handled it? Did you guys resist it at all? I realize that different times, but did you resist it at all?

BOEHNER: Well, it was a different time. I can tell you when I was Majority Leader, at the time, in almost all cases, I insisted that members have at least 24 hours to read a bill before it came to the floor. But that was — it’s a different time. I’ve made a commitment, and as have my Republican members, that if we take the majority back, we will have a requirement that no bill will come to the floor that hasn’t been out and available to the public and to the members for at least three days.

Watch it:

Boehner may have “insisted” that members have at least 24 hours to read a bill before a vote when he was (briefly) Majority Leader, but that guidance wasn’t always followed. At 9:21 P.M. on Sept. 26, 2006, the House Rules Committee reported the Military Commissions Act to the House, which then was voted on and passed at 4:45 P.M. the next day. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 also had about a day after it was reported out of committee and before it was voted on in the House.

When asked if the GOP leadership waved rules requiring at least 72 hours for members to read bills before voting on them, former Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA) said, “Absolutely — it is among the most commonly waived rules the House has.”

Indeed, during the GOP’s House reign, Republican leaders rushed major pieces of legislation through without giving 24 hours for members to read over the bills, let alone 72, including the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit, President Bush’s second tax cut for the wealthy in 2003, and the USA Patriot Act of 2001.

In fact, presumably much to Boehner’s delight, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently pledged to put health care reform legislation, and any amendment, online “for at least 72 hours before the House votes.”

GOP Chooses Rep. Boustany, Co-Sponsor Of So-Called ‘Death Panel’ Provision, To Deliver Obama Rebuttal

Republicans today announced that Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), a cardiothoracic surgeon, will be delivering tomorrow’s response to President Obama’s joint address to Congress on health care. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) sent out a press release heralding Boustany’s experience and lamenting that Democrats have refused to work with him:

Actually, one of Boustany’s most notable proposals has received bipartisan support and was included in health care legislation: a plan to permit Medicare to pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling. Boustany, in fact, was an original co-sponsor of this provision. Republicans were the ones who objected to this bipartisan proposal, saying it would establish “death panels” ready to “pull the plug on grandma.”

Last month, Boustany said the “death panel” scare-mongering had gotten “out of hand”:

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., a heart surgeon and a co-sponsor of the counseling bill, says the legislation is aimed at promoting important discussions between doctors and their patients about critical end-of-life issues, such as having a living will. He says those discussions are a “good medical practice,” and doctors who spend time counseling their patients about their wishes should be reimbursed through the Medicare system, as the legislation allows.

Now, Boustany says proponents may have to “back off” and reconsider the issue “at some point when the temperature had cooled down.”

“Frankly, this thing got really out of hand,” he says.

So, Democrats did try to work with Boustany…but overheated rhetoric by the GOP blocked any real progress.

Steele Agrees That Boehner And GOP Leadership Are ‘An Absolute Freakin’ Joke’

Earlier this year, RNC chair Michael Steele dismissed Rush Limbaugh as an “entertainer” whose “thing” is “incendiary” and “ugly.” Steele later apologized to Limbaugh after enormous conservative backlash. (But soon after, Steele said the dust-up with Limbaugh was part of his grand strategy).

Last week, local Missouri conservative radio host Vincent Jericho asked Steele about the confrontation with Limbaugh. “Did you get sucked into that?” Jericho asked. “Absolutely,” Steele replied. “In my job as national chairman, I’m trying to heal the party, not create divisions.” Yet later in the interview, Steele appeared to create more divisions within GOP. Steele told Jericho he agreed “1,000%” with his assertion that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and other Republican congressional leaders are “an abosolute freakin’ joke“:

VINCENT JERICHO: For god’s sake’s the Republican Party is supposed to stand for something why don’t they stand up and lead? Because some of the leadership, with Boehner and some of these other guys, they’re a joke. You can’t say anything. But they’re an absolute freaking joke.

STEELE: I’m with you. I’m 1,000% with you. I agree with you. I absolutely agree with you.

Listen here:

Sam Stein reports that spokespeople from both Boehner’s office and the RNC “insisted that Steele’s comments were directed at the broad direction of the GOP and not the minority leader himself.”

But Steele’s troubles with the GOP leadership in Congress didn’t end with Boehner. Later in the interview, Jericho lambasted Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO):

[Blunt] screwed around with a tobacco lobbyist. Then slips language into the homeland security bill favorable to the tobacco lobbyist. I mean here is a guy that has committed adultery multiple times. Yet he had a senior position, and still does, in the Republican Party. Guys like Papa Blunt make us sick to our stomach. They aren’t conservatives, and they sure don’t reflect moral absolutes the way that we expect the Republican Party to stand up.

“I agree with you,” Steele responded. “And when stuff gets in the crapper, you gotta clean it out.”

Boehner Claims ‘No One Condones’ Town Hall Disruptions After He And Other GOPers Cheered Them On

In a USA Today op-ed, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) claims that “Americans are increasingly angry” about Democratic health care reform proposals and that “the backlash isn’t fabricated.” Distorting and mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) claim that “drowning out opposing views is simply un-American,” Boehner asserts that “no one condones” the disruptions that have occurred at town halls across America:

The backlash isn’t fabricated, and those expressing vocal opposition are not “un-American,” as Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer suggested on this page Monday. To the contrary, it is real, and it exists for a single, simple reason: The more the American people learn about the Democrats’ health care bill, the less they like it.

No one condones the actions of those who disrupt public events. Every citizen should have the opportunity to express his or her views in an orderly and respectful way. But those in Washington who dismiss the frustration of the American people and call it “manufactured” do so at their own peril.

Boehner’s claim that “no one condones” the disruptions is laughable considering his office sent out a “GOP Leader Alert” last week promoting the disruptions at Democratic townhalls. In fact, the “Alert” approvingly quoted an Investor’s Business Daily editorial, claiming that “Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, deserved the hostile reception given him at a town hall meeting in Austin.”

Boehner’s not the only GOP leader to cheer on the disruptive protesters. The NRCC sent out an e-mail celebrating “Recess Roasting.” At a “Freedom Conference” meeting last week, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) mentioned that some Democratic lawmakers were almost “lynched” by angry protesters. After the crowd applauded, he added, “with very good reason they” — the protesters — “were upset.”

As Media Matters notes, Boehner’s op-ed is rife with other distortions of the facts, such as his claim that a Health Benefits Advisory Committee would lead to “rationing” because it would determine what “can be covered.” In fact, the provision cited by Boehner merely sets the minimum requirements for what “treatments, items and services” must be covered.

FLASHBACK: Boehner Believed That Anti-Vietnam War Protesters Were ‘Un-American’

Earlier today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) published an op-ed in USA Today condemning the “ugly campaign” this August “to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue” on health care reform. “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American,” wrote the two House leaders.

Unsurprisingly, the right-wing has responded harshly to the op-ed. For instance, House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) claimed it was both “reprehensible” and “outrageous”:

“Each public forum should give every participant the opportunity to express their views, but to label Americans who are expressing vocal opposition to the Democrats’ plan “un-American” is outrageous and reprehensible,” Boehner said in a statement. “…It’s time for Democrats to start listening. When we return to Washington in September, Democrats should scrap their costly plan and finally work on bipartisan reforms that give Americans what they are seeking: better access to affordable care.”

But Boehner hasn’t always been so supportive of Americans “expressing vocal opposition” to government policies. In fact, in 1995, he told The New Republic that he thought protests against the Vietnam War were “un-American”:

In 1969 he took a hiatus from college and enlisted in the Navy. “I didn’t know enough about the intricacies of why we were there, but the fact is we were in Vietnam, and I wanted us to win,” he says. “The people with long hair who were protesting against the war I thought were un-American at the time.” His duty to country would keep him away just six weeks. While driving a heavy equipment truck, Boehner aggravated a high school sports injury. “I was in Mississippi four days, five days, cleaning up the mess from hurricane Camille when my back went out. A disk. They did all these examinations and said, You’re outta here.’” He returned to work and school. By the time he graduated in 1977, he was part owner of a plastics and packaging business. [The New Republic, 2/20/1995]

In more recent years, Boehner hasn’t shied away from using the rhetoric of labeling that with which he disagrees as “un-American.” In a speech on the House floor earlier this year, Boehner called the estate tax “un-American.”

As Media Matters has pointed out, Pelosi and Hoyer never actually called health reform opponents “un-American.” They claimed that the tactic of “drowning out opposing views” was. Boehner, on the other hand, once explicitly called Americans who disagreed on policy “un-American.”