Trump Thread

[Kralizec]

Trump's healthcare overhaul is essentially dead.

I read that his next idea is to simply repeal the ACA with a two year delay, giving congress time to work on a replacement which would take effect after the 2018 midterms elections. I don't think that idea is going to fly, because there's no reason to believe that moderate Republicans, who opposed the bill because it would lead to millions of uninsured, will have any confidence there will ever be a GOP-only effort that they can get behind.

If we look broader than the GOP, it's doubtful that even a single Democrat lawmaker will cooperate because:
1. Nobody asked for their input before
2. The whole enterprise is an en excercise in Damnatio Memoriae. They will not cooperate with anything that is sold as a replacement, rather than an improvement of Obamacare.
3. Health care is a continuing embarassment for the GOP. The Republicans passed multiple repeal bills during Obama's presidency, knowing that he'd veto it anyway. Trump promised that a seamless repeal & replace would take place in the first month of his term. He also promised it would deliver better healthcare, for more people and at lower prices- a promise that flatly contradicts basic Republican ideas and was which was never going to happen by relying 100% on the GOP members of congress.

[Montmorency]

Meanwhile, some research on the fundamental supra-partisanship of democratic legislating:

To what extent has centralization of power in Congress enabled majority party leaders to shepherd their programmatic platforms into law? To address this question,
we examine congressional votes on all enacted laws from 1973-2014, as well on the subset of landmark laws identified by Mayhew (2005). In addition, we analyze the efforts
of congressional majority parties to enact their legislative agendas between 1993 and 2017. We find that legislating in recent congresses is nearly as bipartisan as it was
in the 1970s. Most laws, including landmark enactments, continue to garner substantial bipartisan support, and laws are rarely enacted over the opposition of a majority
of the minority party. Furthermore, there is no evidence that majority parties have gotten better at enacting their legislative programs. In fact, contemporary
congressional majorities fail in enacting their agenda items at rates that are equivalent to (and often inferior to) benchmarks set in less party-polarized congresses.
When majority parties succeed in legislating on their agenda priorities, they usually do so with support from a majority of the opposing party in at least one chamber
of Congress and with the endorsement of one or more of the opposing party’s top leaders.

The majority is not enough, people.

[Husar]

It makes perfect sense given that both parties are in the pockets of big business.

http://www.businessinsider.com/major...hy-2014-4?IR=T

The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

So it's really nice to know that stomping poor people and the middle class further into the ground gets bipartisan support in the US.

[Montmorency]

It makes perfect sense given that both parties are in the pockets of big business.

http://www.businessinsider.com/major...hy-2014-4?IR=T



So it's really nice to know that stomping poor people and the middle class further into the ground gets bipartisan support in the US.

We discussed this very paper in 2014, so I'm more interested in hearing how the findings have been expanded and corroborated since then.

But we're talking about slightly different things, how agendas are constructed (and the 2014 study points out it's lobbying groups in general, not just big business) and how agendas are legislated in the chambers of Congress between parties.

[Husar]

We discussed this very paper in 2014, so I'm more interested in hearing how the findings have been expanded and corroborated since then.

Yes we did, that's how I knew about it. And that was exactly my point, that the findings of your linked research don't do us much good if they are not cross-checked with the findings of the old paper to see which kind of legislation exactly gets the bipartisan support. Bipartisan support is not inherently a good thing after all. If killing five million people got bipartisan support you surely wouldn't celebrate that as a victory of democracy or whatever exactly you were insinuating.

But we're talking about slightly different things, how agendas are constructed (and the 2014 study points out it's lobbying groups in general, not just big business) and how agendas are legislated in the chambers of Congress between parties.

Eh, no, not according to this direct quote:

"When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."

Of course you have to factor in that people who work 3 factory jobs to feed their family have a much harder time organizing politically than those who call their wealth manager twice a day to hear how their money multiplies itself. Of course the latter will also tell you how they work 80 hours a week....in lobbying groups to get more legislation that makes their money multiply faster...

The point that we are talking about slightly different things seems a bit desperate since I was obviously aware of that. I wasn't saying your research is wrong, I was saying it is pointless in terms of achieving the goal of a better democracy if you ignore the other factors and parts of the legislative process. Which brings us right back to the point that your study should have done the corroboration work you asked for and checked what kind of legislation gets the bipartisan support and who benefits from it.

[Montmorency]

Yes we did, that's how I knew about it. And that was exactly my point, that the findings of your linked research don't do us much good if they are not cross-checked with the findings of the old paper to see which kind of legislation exactly gets the bipartisan support. Bipartisan support is not inherently a good thing after all. If killing five million people got bipartisan support you surely wouldn't celebrate that as a victory of democracy or whatever exactly you were insinuating.



Eh, no, not according to this direct quote:


Of course you have to factor in that people who work 3 factory jobs to feed their family have a much harder time organizing politically than those who call their wealth manager twice a day to hear how their money multiplies itself. Of course the latter will also tell you how they work 80 hours a week....in lobbying groups to get more legislation that makes their money multiply faster...

The point that we are talking about slightly different things seems a bit desperate since I was obviously aware of that. I wasn't saying your research is wrong, I was saying it is pointless in terms of achieving the goal of a better democracy if you ignore the other factors and parts of the legislative process. Which brings us right back to the point that your study should have done the corroboration work you asked for and checked what kind of legislation gets the bipartisan support and who benefits from it.

You have to recognize the different scope? Research doesn't have to be about what's good or bad in life or the dialectic of What Is and What Should Be, it can just dig up patterns on how things work in practice, and about different aspects of the whole.

The specific study I posted is relevant now as applied in the context of Republican struggles to get much done while controlling the government, and isn't designed to consider why parties do the things they do or how representative of their constituents they are. Those are different subjects that need separate research.

[Husar]

You have to recognize the different scope? Research doesn't have to be about what's good or bad in life or the dialectic of What Is and What Should Be, it can just dig up patterns on how things work in practice, and about different aspects of the whole.

The specific study I posted is relevant now as applied in the context of Republican struggles to get much done while controlling the government, and isn't designed to consider why parties do the things they do or how representative of their constituents they are. Those are different subjects that need separate research.

Yes, absolutely, it might just be that your post gave me the wrong idea about what you wanted to say. To me it looked a lot like "see, bipartisanship isn't dead since politicians get a lot done in a bipartisan way". And my response was meant to be that it may be a useless or incomplete study if the things that do get done in a particular way are the "wrong" things or the things that are not of particular public interest. Because then the important big issues may not fall into the relevant category of things that can (only) get done in a bipartisan way. That's why the nature of the legislation that makes up this bipartisan majority of legislature might also be important. Perhaps the reason they don't get anything done is exactly the nature of what they're trying to get done.
I also didn't post the other study to say why parties do what they do, but to show what kind of issues do get done (tendentially of course).

Take the ACA for example: https://www.healthreformvotes.org/co.../h165-111.2010

Your study says that most bills only get through with both a government and opposition majority, but for the ACA for example that doesn't seem to have been true, in fact I can't find a single Republican under the Yes votes. So a lot may simply depend on how devisive the issue is. On issues like health care and aimmigration, the two parties are more or less polar opposites whereas on other issues like corporate tax cuts they may actually agree (or did agree until recently).

Therefore the issue of the bill may be just as important in whether the findings of the study apply to it or not. Of course when the majority is not very large, a few stray voters can ruin the vote for the majority like we see now, but even that may simply be due to the nature of the issue at hand. When lives are at stake, an individual congressman may be more likely to stray from the party line than when the vote is about whether the bluebird will become the next animal of the month or whether the tax rate for the coal industry will be cut from 22% to 21.5%.

So just to make things more clear, how do you interprete the study and what can the GOP learn from it or how can they use it to their advantage?