[W]e would require traditional Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) and private plans to compete with each other. In 2016, the first year of bidding, FFS Medicare and Medicare private plans would participate in competitive bidding at a regional level to offer a package of health care benefits actuarially equivalent to the previous year’s Medicare benefit. While there would not be a specific, required benefit package required for new Medicare plans that would be spelled out in detail, all plans would be required to cover basic hospital, surgical, physician, and emergency care. [...]

[S]eniors would receive their Medicare benefit as a defined contribution. Key to making this proposal work is to give seniors in a region a fixed amount from the government for which to buy a Medicare plan. The government administered plan and private plans would both bid to provide the Medicare benefit for a region. The Federal Government’s contribution for the first year’s bid would be the Government’s share of spending (in Parts A and B) for the prior year. The Federal contribution for each senior would be tied to the weighted average bid. The defined governmental contribution would be adjusted for income levels, so the wealthiest seniors would pay more and the lower-income seniors would pay less. However, the contribution would not increase if a given senior simply picked a more expensive plan – the amount of the governmental contribution would be fixed, regardless of what plan a senior chose. The dollar amount of the defined contribution would increase each year based on the competitive bidding system that accounts for the prior year’s expenses and enrollment.

The proposal is very similar to the bipartisan framework outlined by Ryan and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) last year and adds little to the Medicare reform debate. Without attracting another Democratic co-sponsor, the two Republicans seemingly walked back Ryan’s original Medicare proposal — by maintaining the existing Medicare program and giving up on the ambitious indexing of inflation plus 1 percent — and introduced a plan that could potentially serve as a new foundation for future reform and momentum.

But the policy is still shaky at best. Like Ryan and Wyden before them, Coburn and Burr are willing to set the nation on an untested path of private competition that breaks up the large market clout of Medicare and pushes seniors into less efficient private insurers. Under Coburn/Burr’s loose regulations, private plans will be able to cherry-pick the healthiest beneficiaries and leave sicker applicants to the government. In fact, without having to offer a defined package of benefits, private insurers could attract a healthier population by simply ratcheting down services that sicker beneficiaries rely on (like chemotherapy) and building up coverage for healthier applicants (like preventive services). Should they succeed, traditional Medicare costs will skyrocket, forcing even more seniors out of the government program. Seniors who are priced out of traditional coverage over time would enroll in private plans and receive care through more restricted provider networks relative to what they currently enjoy (where nearly all hospitals, doctors, nursing homes participate). Although the Coburn/Burr incorporates “a risk-adjustment process,” existing mechanisms are still “less than fully effective in adjusting payments downward based on how much healthier these enrollees are” and private plans participating in Medicare Advantage continue to, on average, enroll healthier beneficiaries.

The vouchers seniors will receive are no longer indexed by inflation. They instead rely on actual average bids in any given geographic area and would do a better job of keeping up with health care costs every year than the original Ryan proposal. But seniors in high cost Medicare areas could still experience a cost-shift and would be responsible for the difference between the amount of the premium credit and the actual cost of the policy.

So there, in a nutshell, is the problem — at least from a policy perspective. Despite its concessions, Coburn/Burr moves the health care system closer to the Ryan ideal, in which future Congresses would be able to reduce federal costs by eating away at the premium credit seniors receive. The plan does little to address the root of the cost problem — changing how we pay doctors and hospitals by moving away from fee-for-service payments — and instead limits the government’s commitment by shifting more costs to beneficiaries.

Wildfire damage in Texas

This disastrous year is also the year that many Republican lawmakers have also decided to break precedent and demand that much-needed disaster relief be offset with cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) vowed to quickly usher $6 billion in emergency disaster relief for states through the Senate. However, even as wildfires obliterate more than 1,000 homes in his state, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) insisted that those funds be offset because “we can’t keep spending money we don’t have.” Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), whose state has suffered “millions and millions of dollars” in wind and flood damage from Hurricane Irene, simply demanded that “we’ve got to offset everything“:

“We can’t keep spending money we don’t have,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, where deadly wildfires have charred tens of thousands of acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes. [...]

“I think we’ve got to offset everything; anything that’s not allocated has got to be offset these days. It shouldn’t delay it,” Burr told POLITICO. “There’s hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse that could be accessed like that.”

This purist principle did not stop both Cornyn and Burr for voting to fund rebuilding efforts in Iraq without a single offset. Indeed, Cornyn voted against delaying $20.3 billion in Iraq infrastructure funds even though the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) noted that such a payment would increase the budget deficit. Overall, the U.S. has spent $44.6 billion in taxpayer funds on rebuilding Iraq through emergency supplemental bills — and not a penny was cut from elsewhere in the budget.

Cornyn and Burr’s position — first espoused by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — is so callously out of touch that even fellow Republicans are slamming the idea. After enduring serious bipartisan backlash, Cantor is now gun-shy. Calling Reid’s emergency funds bill “unprecedented,” he is not clearly taking a stand against it.

Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, established 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon to give Americans clean air and water. The bill, introduced by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), would merge the EPA, which enforces environmental laws, with the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear energy and energy research, into one department.

In January, Newt Gingrich proposed abolishing the EPA, and several House Republicans have supported that goal, while making numerous attempts to hamstring limits on industrial polluters. Burr’s statement announcing his bill to eliminate the EPA argues that “duplicative functions” can be eliminated, even though the two departments are completely different:

U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) introduced a bill that would consolidate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency into a single, new agency called the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). The bill would provide cost savings by combining duplicative functions while improving the administration of energy and environmental policies by ensuring a coordinated approach.

Burr’s bill has fifteen co-sponsors, all of them global warming deniers: Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Enzi (R-WY), John Thune (R-SD), John McCain (R-AZ), Dan Coats (R-IN), Richard Shelby (R-AL), John Barrasso (R-WY), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), David Vitter (R-LA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT).

Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, established 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon to give Americans clean air and water. The bill, introduced by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), would merge the EPA, which enforces environmental laws, with the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear energy and energy research, into one department.

Burr’s statement announcing his bill to eliminate the EPA argues that “duplicative functions” can be eliminated, even though the two departments are completely different:

U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) introduced a bill that would consolidate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency into a single, new agency called the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). The bill would provide cost savings by combining duplicative functions while improving the administration of energy and environmental policies by ensuring a coordinated approach.

In January, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich proposed abolishing the EPA, and several House Republicans have supported that goal, while making numerous attempts to hamstring limits on industrial polluters.

Burr’s bill has fifteen co-sponsors, all of them global warming deniers: Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Enzi (R-WY), John Thune (R-SD), John McCain (R-AZ), Dan Coats (R-IN), Richard Shelby (R-AL), John Barrasso (R-WY), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), David Vitter (R-LA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT).

Burr’s vote took repeal advocates and his conservative constituents by surprise. Qnotes, a North Carolina based newspaper, is reporting that the harshest remarks came from Mecklenburg County commissioner Bill James, who compared gay people to “sexual predators” and warned that Burr will pay a price for his vote:

“Homosexuals are sexual predators,” James wrote in one email from a string of several between county board members, Roberts and County Manager Harry Jones, and provided by James to qnotes. “Allowing homosexuals to serve in the US military with the endorsement of the Mecklenburg County Commission ignores a host of serious problems related to maintaining US military readiness and effectiveness not the least of which is the current Democrat plan to allow homosexuals (male and female) to share showers with those they are attracted to.”

James added, “The US Government would not allow Hetero men and women to share showers and other personal facilities yet the leading homosexual in Congress (Barney Frank) thinks it is OK for homosexuals to do so allowing enlisted men and women to fall prey to higher ranking or more powerful homosexuals who ogle them (or worse).” [...]

“I suspect Richard Burr will pay a high electoral price for his actions but whether it boots him from office next time is unknown,” James wrote. “I know I won’t be supporting him even if he does have an R after his name.”

This isn’t the first time James has relied on homophobic slurs, Qnotes reports: “He often uses derogatory language or slurs to describe LGBT people in debates or communication with fellow public officials and constituents. During debate last December on domestic partner benefits for county employees, James leaned over to his Democratic colleague, Vilma Leake, and called her son a ‘homo.’ Leake’s son died from AIDS in the 1990s.”

But while conservatives in North Carolina are only rhetorically condemning repeal, social activists in Virginia — whose two Democratic Senators also supported lifting the ban — are proposing a bill that would ban gays from serving in the Virginia National Guard. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), commander in chief of the Guard, still supports DADT but said that the proposal is unconstitutional, since the “National Guard should follow the same rules as the rest of the military.”

BURR ON THE 14th: But I think when you have a debate in the country and that issue is raised, then it’s important for us to have that arbitrator, the courts to come in and tell us did our founders, when they wrote the 14th, did they have something else envisioned?

But the opposite should happen to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Burr insisted. That policy should be taken out of the courts and left to Congress. He didn’t know if being gay was a choice but worried that repealing the policy would require the military to change “the accommodations for troops”:

BURR ON DADT: Now personally I don’t see a reason to reverse it. But that’s a personal opinion. I think the country should have a debate. And what we should do is we should wait until the Department of Defense has gotten back the survey of those individuals who serve…. But I’m confident of this—that this is the wrong time to change this policy. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of troops deployed. We don’t yet know what we might have to do, from a standpoint of changing the accommodations for troops if the policy changed.

Watch a compilation:

As Pam Spaulding points out, Burr’s concern about “soap dropping in the shower,” so to speak, is unfounded. American soldiers are already showering alongside gay troops and so are the foreign troops who serve alongside openly gay servicemembers. None of our 25 allies that allow open service segregate troops on the basis of sexual orientation. As Larry Korb argues in this report, “the militaries of Great Britain, Canada, and Israel amply demonstrate that lifting the ban on openly gay service will not require the U.S. military to provide separate housing, shower, or other common-use facilities for gay and lesbian service members.” In fact, even General Carl Mundy, commandant of the Marine Corps from 1991 to 1995 and an opponent of a repeal, has predicted that segregating the forces “would be absolutely disastrous in the armed forces. … It would destroy any sense of cohesion or teamwork or good order and discipline.”

On the topic of health care, Burr said that he supported provisions that ban insurance companies from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions and close the Medicare Part D doughnut hole, but insisted that the Affordable Care Act must still be repealed.

“Actually, Judy, those provisions are acceptable to me and most Republicans and most Americans,” he said. “I think it’s important to realize we could have the elimination of pre-existing conditions tomorrow. We could have the elimination of lifetime caps tomorrow. We could begin to close the doughnut hole tomorrow. But you can’t fix the current health care bill that the president passed. And the truth is it doesn’t close the doughnut hole.”

When President Obama renominated Wynn, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Burr supported the decision. Although Wynn cleared the Judiciary Committee, a vote on his confirmation has not been scheduled because, despite his public support for Wynn, Burr placed a hold on Wynn’s nomination. When asked for comment by the press, Burr duplicitously said he that he “applauds Sen. Hagan for her ongoing efforts to encourage Majority Leader Reid to schedule their nominations for votes on the Senate floor.”

Marshall noted that Burr’s two-faced approach to Judge Wynn appeared to echo the tactics of Helms, who made a career of race-baiting, fighting Civil Rights laws, and intentionally blocking African American judges like Wynn:

MARSHALL: One of our judges who has passed the Judiciary Committee who cannot get a vote was also held up by Jesse Helms. A talented judge, this is now the second time he’s been nominated by the Fourth Circuit. He’s an African American judge, highly, highly qualified. And Richard Burr has the same hold on him that Jesse Helms had on him. North Carolina has got to put these vestiges behind them. Richard Burr, while he’s said wonderful things about Judge Wynn, presenting him and all that kind of stuff, he’s behind the curtain holding him up. [...]

One of them is Hispanic, one of them is African American. They both have military background. They both have strong judicial careers. They really don’t have valid enemies for reasons that anyone would talk about in the hearing. There are these subtle enemies, these subtle forces, the legacy of Jesse Helms, that are holding them back. So, I’m very unhappy about that.

TP: In terms of the legacy of Jesse Helms, do you think Jesse Helms in other ways is replicating the same type of politics Helms used to hold power for so long?

MARSHALL: Jesse Helms is his mentor and he learned his lessons well, yes.

Watch it:

Indeed, as Marshall contends, Burr ran for Senate in 2004 with Helms’ blessing. “North Carolina needs him in the United States Senate. The country needs him. And the president needs him—and he told me so,” Helms said of Burr when he made his official endorsement.

First, Reid attempted to pass the extension by unanimous consent late last night, only to see the attempt thwarted by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who blocked the measure because of “a dispute over how it should be funded.” Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), meanwhile, said that he would support a short-term extension of benefits, but doesn’t want to accommodate Reid’s request for a full-year extension:

If we intend to have some immediate impact on the economy through what we’re doing, why would we be extending unemployment insurance for a year?

This is problematic on a couple of levels. First, providing unemployment benefits is one of the best actions that the government can take in terms of stimulating the economy, because the money is almost certain to be spent quickly. Every dollar spent on unemployment benefits generates more than $1.60 in economic activity, which is far more stimulus than is generated by any sort of tax cut. So the benefits extension, by itself, has an “immediate impact on the economy.”

Second, even if job creation were already booming, it would take some time for the number of jobs lost during the recession to be regained. In the meantime, 1.1 million workers are scheduled to have their unemployment benefits expire in the next month, and 2.7 million are on track to lose them by April. By June, the number is 5 million. Even if the economy starts adding jobs, all of these people are not going to find work right away.

There are currently six unemployed workers for every job opening. And to provide a sense for how long it will take to claw back to full employment, even without compensation for population increases, we’d need to generate 350,000 jobs a month for two full years just to make up the jobs lost in the recession.

So it’s a very steep hill to climb, and in the meantime, people’s benefits are going to run out and they’ll be left with nothing. In fact, some jurisdictions are already sending out letters informing people that their benefits are going to expire. And let’s not forget, the last time an extension was considered, the GOP obstructed it for weeks with procedural hurdles and nonsense amendments about ACORN, and then the bill passed on a 98-0 vote. Perhaps this time they can dispense with the gamesmanship and do what needs to be done?

Via Eric Kleefeld, a bold proclamation from Senator Richard Burr (R-NC): “The fact is it is impossible for any candidate to get to the right of me from an ideological standpoint of my record.”

According to DW-NOMINATE, in the 111th Senate Burr is close to correct, only Senators Burr, Ensign, Sessions, Kyl, Inhofe, Bunning, DeMint, and Coburn are more rightwing. In the 110th he was slightly more rightwing, with only seven Senators to his right. In the 109th there were only five to his right. So the ideological space to the right of Richard Burr is, indeed, extremely small. In recent years, thought, I would say that Senators Kyl and DeMint have been the most consistently on the right.

Thus far, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) doesn’t have an announced opponent in 2010, but one possible candidate would be North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper. And even if Cooper doesn’t throw his hat in the ring, this is not the polling an incumbent likes to see:

In a recent poll of nearly one thousand voters across the state, Attorney General Cooper, a Democrat, leads Burr by four points in a hypothetical Senate race. NewsChannel3 asked Cooper if he will run for Burr’s Senate seat. “No, I have not made a decision on that. I want to serve the people of North Carolina and just need to determine the best way to do that.”

Given that Obama carried North Carolina, and that Burr doesn’t seem very popular, I find it surprising that Burr doesn’t seem to be trying harder to find a high-profile issue on which he can buck his party and partner with the president. Certainly, blanket opposition is a novel strategy under the circumstances.

Richard Burr continues to be dogged by complaints about his irresponsible rhetoric on bank deposits, and his allies, such as Richard Danos, chairman of the Henderson County Republican Party, continue to dissemble about what he said:

The Times-News reported that as part of an economic talk to the County Chamber of Commerce, Burr told of urging his wife to withdraw some cash from their ATM during the banking crisis — a story he has repeated dozens of times. Many Americans took out some extra cash as a common sense precaution during that period.

Look. People withdraw cash from ATMs all the time. That would be a ridiculous anecdote to tell. Here’s what he actually said:

“On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, ‘Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take,” Burr said, according to the Hendersonville Times-News. “And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.’ I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”

This is Burr, implying to his audience, that their bank deposits are not safe. In fact, bank deposits are insured by the FDIC. This is supposed to give people confidence that they need to have these kind of fears, and thus prevent bank runs. And with few bank runs, there’s little need for the FDIC to actually step in. When Burr implies that the deposits are not safe, he’s encouraging runs on banks. That won’t lead to anyone losing their deposits—whether or not Burr understands it, the deposits are insured—but it will lead to losses for taxpayers who need to pay out insurance claims, and it will lead to bank failures and job losses.

This isn’t a huge deal, in the scheme of things, but it was an irresponsible thing to say. Burr and his friends should just take responsibility and move on.

Roll Call looks at three Senators whose weak poll numbers usually spell big-time trouble for incumbents—Jim Bunning (R-KY), Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Richard Burr (R-NC).

The Bunning situation is clearly sui generis, so I’ll leave it one side. I think a flaw in the article is that it treats the Burr and Dodd situations as basically similar when they’re actually extremely different. Dodd is basically a case of a politician coming under a cloud of unpopularity for idiosyncratic reasons. It seems that if Dodd were to bow out of the race and be replaced by Richard Blumenthal or any other reasonable Democrat, that the Democrat would be very strongly favored. Consequently, Dodd’s strategy is to play up the idea of Chris Dodd Generic Democrat. Legislatively, he’s aiming to be an ally of the popular president Barack Obama and emphasize his likely opponent’s support for the failed and unpopular agenda of George W. Bush.

The Burr situation is rather different. He seems to be a more unusual case of a politician who was elected at a time when being an orthodox conservative was a great political strategy in his state, now running for re-election at a time when it’s not clear that that’s true anymore. Suddenly it seems that North Carolina has a Democratic governor, one Democratic US Senator, and was carried by a Democrat in the presidential election, and its incumbent conservative Republican Senator Richard Burr is polling poorly. It’s potentially a state that’s just transforming its demographics and political culture under Burr’s feet. And he doesn’t seem to be trying to adapt. He’s not trying to position himself as a moderate by selectively supporting some element of the Obama agenda. He’s just charging ahead on the assumption that North Carolina will swiftly return to its conservative roots.

And maybe it will. But it seems like a risk.

Eyewitness News spoke with Burr Thursday, and he said the comment was misconstrued. He reacted to his Democratic critics and says he meant what he said 6 months ago, but times have changed. “That was done long ago. That part of the economic crisis is over. And it was I think helpful. I think to people who heard me speak to give them a firsthand understanding of my frame of mind in that early week,” he said.

Still unclear here is why it’s ever a good time for political leaders to be sparking runs on banks. But it’s nice that Senator Burr is acknowledging that we’ve brought some additional stability to the financial system. Under the circumstances, I wonder if he regrets his vote against a key element of the financial stabilization package?

Meanwhile, talking to WGHP Burr offered a somewhat different take and “said his point is every American should keep some cash on hand and not be totally dependent on ATMs and banks.” That bears no resemblance whatsoever to his original comment, “Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take . . . And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.” You’d have to be pretty dumb to mistake those remarks for a pragmatic warning that you should keep some cash on hand in case of a blackout or something.

I’m not sure I understand why it’s so hard for Burr to just admit he made a mistake and try to move on. It’s a kind of unseemly arrogance.

I noted back on Tuesday that Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) has apparently been touring the state trying to spark bank runs with an anecdote about telling his wife to panic and pull money out of their bank accounts. It seemed irresponsible to me. And the issue caught some fire in the blogosphere, then the DSCC started pushing it out, then the North Carolina press started taking a closer look. So naturally the RSCC is firing back. But as Chris Orr observes, the RSCC is firing in a strange direction; instead of just dismissing the story as a mountain/molehill kind of thing being constructed out of a joke, their spokesman is saying that “The Democrats’ response highlights perfectly the competing views of the two parties when it comes to strengthening the economy.”

The Democrats’ response, as best I can tell, is that it’s a bad idea for politicians to frighten people and provoke bank runs. Is that really such a bad approach?

Via Chris Orr, some irresponsible talk from Senator Richard Burr, who really ought to know better:

During a speech on the economy last night, [Sen. Richard] Burr related his immediate reaction the week the crisis began.

“On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, ‘Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take,” Burr said, according to the Hendersonville Times-News. “And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.’ I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”

Thanks to deposit insurance, there’s no actual need for people to be worried. But Senator Burr’s effort to whip people into a panic could lead to runs and bank failures. That, in turn, will lead to people losing jobs. People could even lose their business through no fault of their own other than having customers who chose to take the words of a United States Senator seriously. I’m having a hard to imagining what Burr could have been thinking.

I’ve been remarking for some time on how odd it strikes me that the bulk of Republican Senators representing states that Barack Obama carried in November seem to have no worries that blanket opposition to his agenda will hurt them at the polls. Now via Steve Benen, I Rob Christensen in the Raleigh News & Observer wondering if Richard Burr (D-NC) is going down to defeat: “Two statewide polls show Burr’s approval rating in the mid-30 percent range, regarded as a dangerously low number for an incumbent.”

That really is dangerously low. I have no idea what kind of candidates are out there to run against him, but mid-thirties is terrible for an incumbent in re-election cycle.

Meanwhile, you don’t seem to hear much about Kay Hagan, do you? But I suppose the same could be said for all the newly elected Senators. The newly appointed ones seem to have hogged most of the press.

Chris Cillizza reports that Organizing for America, the successor-organization to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, is going to kick into gear for the first time to try to mobilize support for the president’s budget. That seems like a good idea to me. Ordinarily, you think of a brand-new president’s main initiatives as being able to attract a fair amount of support from opposition party legislators whose constituencies he carried in the election. After all, an Obama platform of letting the Bush tax cuts expiring and auctioning carbon permits in order to pay for health care and a tax cut for working people carried the day in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, and Iowa so you might think that Richard Burr, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, George Voinovich, Dick Lugar, Mel Martinez, and Chuck Grassley would be a bit leery of opposing a budget framework that just lays out those campaign promises. But instead Obama’s seemed to have trouble getting Democrats on his side—including Democrats in whose states he’s popular.

Organizing, roughly speaking, is the difference. The top two percent and the pollution lobby don’t really care who won the election, aren’t impressed by slogans about how elections have consequences, and don’t care if people have health care or if the working class gets a tax cut. They just go to work every day to press for their agenda, and they’ll get their way unless people are pressing back.