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Economy

Despite Record Student Debt, Republicans Oppose Obama’s Student Loan Plan

By Pat Garofalo on Oct 27, 2011 at 5:35 pm

House Education Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN)

The Obama administration this week, as part of its effort to boost the economy without having to rely on congressional action, announced a new plan to help higher education students reduce their loan debt. The administration’s plan would both help students refinance and consolidate their loans, as well as lower the amount that students can be required to pay from 15 percent of their income to 10 percent.

The GOP, after refusing to even consider President Obama’s American Jobs Act in the House and filibustering it in the Senate, has come out against the student loans plan:

HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN JOHN KLINE (R-MN): “Sadly, the President has once again chosen to put politics before policy, touting a plan that will do nothing to help the nation’s unemployed workers…What this plan will do instead is encourage more borrowing across the board. That means more debt for students, more debt for taxpayers, and more red ink on the government’s books.”

SEN. MIKE ENZI (R-WY): “While I agree that the rising cost of higher education is a problem that must be urgently addressed, the president has made no effort to work with Congress to find any bipartisan solutions on the student loan debt issue…Because this latest plan was literally drafted behind closed doors, we are left with more questions than answers. The president should stop campaigning and start working with Congress to get the results that the American people expect.”

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER (R-TN): Alexander said that “the real way to reduce the burden of student-loan debt is to slow down the growth of tuition and the best way to do that is to ‘reduce health care costs and mandates that are soaking up state dollars that in the past have gone to support public colleges and universities.’”

The right-wing media have also piled on, saying that Obama just wants to “buy some votes of the youth,” or “buy votes at the expense of the American taxpayer.”

It’s not surprising that the GOP is taking a stand against a plan that could lower loan payments for some students by hundreds of dollars per month. After all, Republicans vigorously opposed reforms that stopped billions of federal dollars from going to banks to act as unnecessary middlemen in the federal student loan program, falsely calling the end to flagrant corporate welfare a “Washington takeover” of the student loan industry.

Outstanding student loan debt is expected to hit $1trillion this year, and student debt has already surpassed total credit card debt. Reducing these debt burdens can help create jobs by freeing up money for those with loans to spend elsewhere. But the GOP is still standing against Obama’s plan, for reasons that are entirely unclear, beyond the fact that Obama proposed it

Economy

Republicans Call Rule That Would Make Union Elections Fairer An ‘Outrage,’ ‘Misguided,’ And ‘Reckless’

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 21, 2011 at 5:45 pm

Today, the National Labor Relations Board announced a new rule aimed at speeding up the process for union elections, in an attempt to prevent employers from using the various tactics they break out to delay and ultimately undermine unionization drives. According to research by John-Paul Ferguson of Stanford Business School, 35 percent of the time that workers file a petition for a union election, the election does not occur due to the many steps that employers take — including bringing in anti-union consultants — to delay elections for weeks, if not years.

Currently, the average time between workers filing a petition for an election and the election taking place is 58 days, ample time for employers to engage in coercion and intimidation, or to fire pro-union workers (which happens in 25 percent of union drives). But congressional Republicans — who are whipped into an uproar by any step that favors workers over corporations — still screamed bloody murder over the change:

HOUSE LABOR COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN JOHN KLINE (R-MN) “urged the [NLRB] to ‘scrap’ what he called a ‘reckless’ and ‘job-destroying agenda.” “Not only will this misguided proposal to expedite union elections undermine an employer’s lawful right to communicate with his or her employees, it will cripple a worker’s ability to make an informed decision,” he said.

SEN. MIKE ENZI (R-WY): “This is just the latest outrage from a runaway agency.”

As the Center for American Progress’ David Madland wrote, the rule would simply “address the roadblocks that commonly are thrown up when the NLRB attempts to set up an election”:

The proposed rule would address the roadblocks that commonly are thrown up when the NLRB attempts to set up an election. There is currently no limit on employers’ or unions’ ability to demand a pre-election hearing on most any issue, including the eligibility of employees to vote, or the scope of the bargaining unit, which can be used to delay an election. Many of these issues could be resolved after voting, and others are manufactured for purposes of delay and don’t need to be resolved at all, ever. As former NLRB General Counsel Fred Feinstein explains, “The problem has been that a party in any election case has the ability to undermine the expression of employee free choice by manipulating Board procedures to create delay.”

As CAP CEO John Podesta wrote, “The rule won’t fix every barrier facing workers trying to organize, but it’s a common-sense step to help make the union election process more democratic and restore middle-class Americans’ foothold in the economy.” But for Republicans, any step that might aid workers in joining together to collectively bargain is to be treated with the utmost contempt.

Health

Republicans Regurgitate Insurance Industry Talking Points, Asks Admin To Leave Industry Alone

By Igor Volsky on Sep 29, 2010 at 2:15 pm

This morning, while defending Sen. Mike Enzi’s (R-WY) resolution to eliminate regulations that would dissuade insurers and employers from shifting costs to plan beneficiaries, Republicans proudly regurgitated insurance industry talking points about premium increases and unfair mandates. Without probing the reasons behind the new premium requests, Republicans simply bought the insurers’ explanation that the health care law was primarily responsible for the recent increases and criticized the administration’s efforts to review their rates. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) even accused the HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — who asked the industry to stop misattributing the hikes to the law — of creating an “enemies list” of insurers and gagging the industry’s free speech rights:

ROBERTS: [Sebelius] is threatening to shut down private companies for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and she’s keeping a list it reminds me of the days with a previous administration with an ‘enemies list’ … they’re more subtle than this in Caracas, Venezuela…Stop the gag orders and the administration…don’t tread on the First Amendment.

Roberts and his colleague Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) are repeating the talking points of the insurance industry. Watch a compilation:

To be clear, premiums do follow underlining health care costs, but the new health benefits are responsible for only a very small fraction of the increase. According to actuaries at Hewitt Associates, a global consulting firm, “the most immediate reforms under the law — including the new protections known collectively as the Patient’s Bill of Rights — will contribute ‘approximately 1 percent to 2 percent of the 8.8 percent projected increase for 2011′” — far less than what the insurers are claiming.

The Enzi resolution to eliminate the new grandfather regulations ultimately failed in a procedural vote of 40 to 59, but not before the GOP invented a new stat for attack. Enzi claimed that “there will be 100 pages of regulation for each page of that bill.” “There are 2,700 pages in that bill. That means there are going to be 270,000 pages of regulation,” he said. (Sen. McCain came up with a different estimate, 121 pages of regulation for every 2 pages in the bill.)

But as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) asked, “where did that come from? It sounds like it came from the health insurance industry to me.”

Health

Republicans Will Attempt To Roll Back Popular Consumer Protections With ‘Grandfather’ Resolution

By Igor Volsky on Sep 28, 2010 at 4:21 pm

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)

Back in June, HHS unveiled interim final regulations to exempt health insurance plans in existence before March 23, 2010 — the day the Affordable Care Act became law — from many of the new regulations, benefits standards and consumer protections that new plans now have to abide by. The goal is to allow a consumer to keep their existing plan, while also ensuring that there are some basic patient protections built into these plans. But the exclusion comes with conditions. If the plans or employers make changes that undermine the spirit of the health law and significantly burden enrollees with lower benefits and increased costs, they have to come into compliance with all consumer protections:

- Insurers will lose their grandfathered status if they cancel coverage when a person becomes ill or impose lifetime limits on benefits.

- Insurers will lose their grandfathered status if they eliminate all benefits for a particular condition or if it increases deductibles or co-payments by more than the rate of medical inflation plus 15 percentage points.

- Insurers will lose their grandfathered status if an employer reduces its contribution so that its share of the total cost of coverage declines by more than 5 percentage points.

- Insurers will lose their grandfathered status if they increase co-payments for doctor’s visits to $45, from $30 — a 50 percent increase — while medical inflation was 8 percent.

- Insurers will lose their grandfathered status if they reduce the cap for covered services each year.

Insurers and self insured employers make policy adjustments all the time and over the last few years they’ve been slowly shifting the risks and costs of coverage to the individual. The grandfather regulations don’t really prevent these shifts as much as they discourage employers and insurers from stiffing beneficiaries with very high costs and insufficient benefits and shield consumers from drastic benefit cuts or cost shifts. In other words, they help you like what you have, but not necessarily keep exactly the plan you have. In fact, HHS estimates that a good percentage of small business plans and policies in the individual market will lose their grandfather status and look for cheaper coverage that already meets the new requirements. In this way, the grandfather regulations also serve as a bridge to gradually moving everyone into plans that have the kind of consumer protections that Americans say they want. By 2014 almost all plans will be in full compliance.

Republicans have long claimed that this violates President Obama’s pledge of ‘if you like what you have you can keep it‘ and tomorrow Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) plans to offer a privileges resolution that will try to strike the grandfather regs. It would only require a majority vote:

The Enzi resolution targets the agency’s “grandfathering” rule, which allows plans that existed before March 23, 2010 — the date the healthcare law was signed — to be exempt from certain consumer protections enacted in the law, as long as plans do not significantly reduce benefits or raise consumer costs. HHS estimated that approximately 40 percent to 70 percent of all employer-provided plans will maintain “grandfather” status through 2013.

Enzi argues the provision breaks President Obama’s frequent promise that Americans could keep their health insurance if they liked it.

“An estimated 80 percent of small businesses are expected to lose their grandfathered status based upon the regulations the Administration wrote,” Enzi said in a statement. “That means the small firms that do offer health insurance won’t be able to afford what they now provide.”

The amendment is more about message than substance. Republicans aides are telling Congressional Quarterly that they expect Majority Leader Harry Reid to successfully table the resolution and it will certainly fail if it moves forward. The GOP is using this as yet another opportunity to chip away at reform and rather than proposing its own grandfather standards, the party would allow any existing plan to avoid the new consumer protections, no matter how dramatically they cut benefits, raise co-pays, or lower employer contributions. Sadly, they’d be cutting off the very regulations that will help bring about the popular consumer protections they proclaim to support.

Politics

Republicans now arguing that the Senate health care bill isn’t long enough.

By Amanda Terkel on Dec 10, 2009 at 11:32 am

A constant whine of congressional Republicans about health care reform is that the legislation is just too long and too complicated. “All you need to know is there are 1,990 pages,” griped House Minority Leader John Boehner about the House bill. “It is longer than War and Peace and not near as funny,” said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX). As the Washington Times has noted, Republican senators have “rotated three other copies of the bill among their desks so a giant stack is never more than a desk or two away from any senator who wants to thump it, poke it or heft it for viewers to see.” But today, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) opened the 11th day of Senate debate by arguing that the bill is not long enough:

And we talk about 2,074 pages, which seem like a lot, and it would be for a normal bill that you could debate in a limited period of time, which is what we’re being asked to do. But 2,074 pages isn’t nearly enough to cover health care for America. So why is it only 2,074 pages?

Watch it:

Politics

AFP President: After hearing Enzi speak, it’s clear ‘he’s not going to support the Gang of Six effort.’

By Matt Corley on Sep 3, 2009 at 2:15 pm

Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted that Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) told an Americans for Prosperity (AFP) rally this week that he was “pretty sure” health care reform was “going to fail.” Greg Sargent spoke to AFP President Tim Phillips, who was standing next to Enzi when he spoke at the rally, and he says he believes Enzi has now ruled out supporting whatever compromise the “Gang of Six” reaches:

That’s not all. AFP president Tim Phillips, who was standing next to Enzi and listened to his whole talk, tells me he left with little doubt that Enzi had declared his blanket opposition to the Gang of Six proposal.

Though the AFP event was about cap and trade, it seems noteworthy that a GOP Senator who’s supposed to be negotiating a health care compromise appeared at an event hosted by an ardent anti-reform group — and told them reform is likely to fail.

“Standing next to him as he spoke, it was pretty clear that he’s not going to support the Gang of Six effort,” Phillips said. “I was certainly encouraged.”

As Sargent points out, it’s “noteworthy” that someone supposedly negotiating a bipartisan compromise “appeared at an event hosted by an ardent anti-reform group — and told them reform is likely fail.” AFP has organized a series of anti-health care reform town halls around the country, including one where a Democratic lawmaker was hung in effigy. The organization has also funded television ads attacking reform.

Politics

Enzi: ‘I’m pretty sure’ that health care reform is ‘going to fail.’

By Matt Corley on Sep 3, 2009 at 9:56 am

Following Sen. Mike Enzi’s (R-WY) attack on health care reform in the weekly GOP radio address last week, the White House criticized him for turning over “his cards on bipartisanship.” Though Enzi’s office insists that he’s still trying to seek a bipartisan compromise, he indicated again at an Americans for Prosperity rally on Tuesday that he has given up striking a deal, saying that he was “sure” that reform was “going to fail“:

Enzi and John Barrasso, Wyoming’s delegation in the U.S. Senate, have been among the leaders of those opposing the cap and trade legislation, which Enzi referred to as a “cap and tax.” It is a “hidden tax” in which the government will print and sell certificates to companies who will pass the expense on to customers, Enzi said.

“They aren’t going to be able to say they passed it on, so you’re not going to know how much of that bill increase is because of higher energy costs and how much is because of taxes,” he said.

Congress won’t start serious work on cap and trade until after the health care bill is taken care of.

“That (the health care bill) is going to take awhile and I’m pretty sure it’s going to fail,” Enzi said.

Update

Enzi put out a statement today claiming that he hasn’t “walked away” from seeking a bipartisan compromise and that he plans to “continue” with the Gang of Six discussions.

Politics

Axelrod hits Grassley and Enzi for not ‘negotiating in good faith.’

By Matt Corley on Sep 2, 2009 at 10:44 am

Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod On Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used his daily press briefing to criticize “Gang of Six” health care negotiator Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) for attacking Democratic health care proposals with “generic Republican talking points” when he delivered the weekly Republican radio address on Saturday. “I think Sen. Enzi’s clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it’s time to walk away from the table,” said Gibbs. Now, another top White House aide has dug into Enzi as well as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who recently sent a fundraising appeal saying he was working to “defeat ‘Obama-care.’” In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, senior adviser David Axelrod said the two senators appeared to be “satisfied with the status quo“:

“If you’re sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don’t send out mailers saying, ‘Help me stop Obama-care.’ That’s just common sense,” Mr. Axelrod said. The two senators’ actions, he said, “suggested they don’t want to participate” in bipartisan talks. “They’re satisfied with the status quo. We are not,” Mr. Axelrod said.

Politics

White House: Mike Enzi Has Shown He’s No Longer Interested In A Bipartisan Solution

By Matt Corley on Aug 31, 2009 at 5:00 pm

Earlier this month, when media outlets reported that top Democrats and White House officials seemed set to go it alone on health care reform due to “hardening Republican opposition,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs pushed back on the story by saying the he had “no reason to believe” that Sens. Charles Grassley (R-IA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), and Olympia Snow (R-ME) weren’t “working in good faith” to forge a bipartisan compromise.

But since then, Enzi and Grassley have taken actions that have called their commitment to bipartisan reform into serious question. On Saturday, while delivering the weekly Republican address, Enzi attacked Democratic reform plans using misleading and false talking points such as claiming that “the bills would expand comparative effectiveness research that would be used to limit or deny care based on age or disability of patients.” Grassley, for his part, sent out a fundraising letter saying he was trying “defeat ‘Obama-care.’”

At the White House press briefing today, Gibbs said he hadn’t seen Grassley’s letter yet, but declared that Enzi’s address meant that he had “clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship”:

GIBBS: The president is firmly committed to working with Democrats, Republicans, independents, anybody who wants to see progress on health care reform. I will say this. I haven’t seen the contents of that letter. Certainly, I think the radio address over the weekend by Sen. Enzi repeating many of the generic Republican talking points — that Republicans are using that have bragged about being opposed to health care — are tremendously unfortunate, but in some ways illuminating. It appears that at least in Sen. Enzi’s case he doesn’t believe there’s a pathway to get bipartisan support and the president thinks that’s wrong. I think Sen. Enzi’s clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it’s time to walk away from the table.

“It doesn’t help to have Republicans who say they’re for bipartisanship and say they’re at the table to try to find a solution repeating Republican party talking points about what they know is not true in the bill,” said Gibbs. “It’s bad for this town, but it’s much worse for this country.” Watch it:

Grassley spokesperson Jill Kozeny tells Greg Sargent that the senator’s fundraising letter only “describes the government-run plan in the House and HELP committee bills that President Obama supports and Senator Grassley opposes.” But the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, who uncovered the fundraising letter, writes that Grassley “is creating a campaign premised on his role in stopping Obama’s health-care reform effort” and is “not leaving himself political room to compromise on health care.”

Additionally, both Enzi and Grassley have advocated for an unrealistic standard for bipartisan reform, saying that a bill needs 75 or 80 senators supporting it for it to be bipartisan. Considering that Republicans believe that “the No. 1 assignment in 2009 is to kill Obamacare,” it’s hard to believe that the two senators are continuing to negotiate in “good faith.”

Yglesias

Enzi Claims Credit for Derailing Health Reform

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 26, 2009 at 3:57 pm

Is Mike Enzi (R-WY) negotiating in good faith?

In the gang

Via Steve Benen, Mike Enzi outlines his approach to the “Gang of Six” health reform negotiations:

“If I hadn’t been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care,” he said.

“Someone has to be at the table asking questions,” Enzi said, showing a flash of passion.

But Max Baucus still thinks this Grassley/Enzi process is going to deliver a bill….

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