ryanpowers.net

Ryan Powers is a Visiting Research Associate at the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations at the College of William and Mary. He writes about domestic and foreign policy, international relations, and political science. Previously, he served as a Research Assistant at the Center for American Progress where he blogged for ThinkProgress.org. You can email him at .

The Washington Post has a pretty good story today documenting how one of the greatest impediments to passing strong, progressive health care reform in the House — the Blue Dog coalition — has experienced an upsurge in campaign contributions in recent months, from among others, the health insurance industry:

[T]he [Blue Dogs] set a record pace for fundraising this year through its political action committee, surpassing other congressional leadership PACs in collecting more than $1.1 million through June. More than half the money came from the health-care, insurance and financial services industries, marking a notable surge in donations from those sectors compared with earlier years, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. […]

A look at career contribution patterns also shows that typical Blue Dogs receive significantly more money — about 25 percent — from the health-care and insurance sectors than other Democrats, putting them closer to Republicans in attracting industry support.

Great. Not exactly earth-shattering revelations, but good to see the Post giving the Blue Dogs a hard time. What I wanted to remark upon, though, is the defense offered by founding Blue Dog member and current health care lobbyist Charles Stenholm. He explains:

The idea behind giving to a group like the Blue Dogs is that you believe that they will agree with your positions most of the time. … The same is true for liberals or anyone else. It’s normal in politics.

The business of influence and access peddling in Washington is often thinly veiled in pseudo-respectable claims that industry groups donate to candidates who they believe are predisposed to agree with their public policy priorities. But I think it is more accurate to say that industries donate to individuals who they perceive as predisposed to being bought. Indeed, if the health insurance industry really based its contribution decisions on who they thought would be more likely sympathize with their desire to keep the health care system as it is, they would do well to always direct a majority of their cash to GOP candidates. But they don’t.

Apparently viewing House candidates as commodities to be bought, they appear to invest in the party that they believe will be in a position to most directly affect their industry’s future. The hope it seems is that their contributions will make their industry’s calls to stall reform a bit louder than the public’s calls for significant changes to the health care system in the U.S.

Take a look at this graph of health insurance contributions to members of the House since 1990 that I complied using data from OpenSecrets.org. In every House campaign cycle in the last 20 years the health insurance industry has invested quite literally in the status quo — choosing to funnel a majority of their campaign funds to members of the ruling party in the House:

The swing in contributions is particularly pronounced in the 2008 campaign cycle when promises of health care reform from Democratic House candidates were not in short supply. While the figures are for the Democratic caucus as a whole — not the Blue Dogs in particular — the point remains the same: the health care industry is not investing in agreeable philosophies as Stenholm claims. Rather, they are investing in power, influence, and access.

This is hardly a novel point on my part. But I think it’s important to keep in mind as we watch individuals who campaigned on and for the Obama agenda work to block or water down that agenda in the House. While I have not looked at the data, I expect there would be similar trends in the Senate.

Professor Stephen Walt had an interesting post yesterday over at Foreign Policy pondering the implications of how the debt obligations of the U.S. resulting from the current recession and President Obama’s health care agenda might impact our foreign policy stance. He suggests that perhaps the realities of our debt will necessitate the a reductions in the sacred cow of defense spending :

One of the great triumphs of Reagan-era conservatism was to convince Americans that paying taxes so that the government could spend the money at home was foolish and wrong, but paying taxes so that the government could spend the money defending other people around the world was patriotic. Ever since Reagan, in short, neoconservatives supported paying taxes to promote a U.S.-dominated world order, while denouncing anyone who wanted to spend the money on roads, bridges, schools, parks, and health care for Americans as a “tax and spend liberal.” But if I’m right about the emerging fiscal environment, that situation may be about to change.

I think Walt is correct about this percieved dichotomy, but I think the notion that paying taxes for domestic goods isn’t viewed as patriotic is overplayed. When, for example, Vice President Biden called the rich paying higher taxes ”patriotic” earlier this year, he was castigated in the press. But if you look at the survey data that speaks to the Biden question, it shows two imporant things:

1. The vast majority of Americans – 72 percent – “completely agree” that paying one’s “fair share” of taxes is “every American’s civic duty.” Another 22 percent of Americans “mostly agree” with that statement.

2. The vast majority of Americans – 74 percent – believe the rich ought to be paying more taxes.

Add to this the fact that Biden was calling for a tax increase that would have left taxes on the highest income Americans still lower than those under Ronald Reagan and Biden’s remark seems fairly unremarkable.

This brings me to my second point, which is that despite the outrage provoked by high-profile politicians calling for higher taxes, I think progressives ought to lay the groundwork for such increases. Indeed, Walt is focused on how the revenue pie might be allocated, but what about increasing the size of the revenue pie? The programs that Obama wants to implement are, in my view, necessary. As such, we ought to be willing to pay for them.

At the recommendation of my friend Matt Yglesias, I’ve been reading Robert Caro’s chronicle of Lyndon Johnson’s years in the Senate. A good portion of the beginning of the first volume is dedicated to beating into the reader’s psyche an expectation that the Senate – no matter how pressing a crisis the nation may be facing – can be counted on to ignore the needs of the American people. The significant exception appears to be the first 100 days of FDR’s presidency when he enacted his sweeping economic recovery agenda. And even then, the Senate was only forced into action with a strong Democratic majority and public outrage so strong that armed guards had to be posted on the steps of the Capitol.

As Caro explains, when Johnson pushed as Senate Majority Leader for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Senate had blocked nearly every attempt by reformers in both houses of Congress to implement meaningful federal civil rights legislation since the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870:

If, for eighty-seven years, every attempt to enact federal voting rights legislation had been blocked in Congress, most of the more significant of these bills had been blocked in the Senate, for it was in the Senate that the power of what had come to be called the “Southern Bloc”…was the strongest. … Hundreds of pieces of legislation had been proposed–bills to give black Americans equality in education, in employment, in housing, in transportation, in public accommodations, as well as to protect them against being beaten, burned, and mutilated. … Exactly one of these bills had passed–in 1875–and that lone statute had later been declared unconstitutional.

So, it isn’t surprising that with regard to guaranteeing Americans the right to health care, the Senate has worked equally hard to stem progress. While the issue of health care access has thankfully been one of at least some punctuated equilibrium with LBJ forcing the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, the fact remains that it was nearly 75 years ago that FDR first suggested a national health insurance system would be needed. He apparently never backed any particular piece of legislation to create such a system because – you guessed it – lack of will in the Senate.

But all of this is a long way remarking on the fact that the structure of the Senate – with its self-imposed requirement to have 60 votes to move on virtually anything – seems to be giving Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats just enough rope to hang themselves with. Indeed, Senate Republicans and a handful of moderate Democrats seem exceptionally committed to ensuring that history remembers them as it remembers the Southern Bloc of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: as principled defenders of the injustice of the status quo. Today, as the Senate Health Committee reported out what is perhaps the most progressive health care reform plan, the Senate Republicans rushed to hold a press conference denouncing the plan. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement, saying, “Americans want us to take the time necessary to make health care less expensive and more accessible, while preserving what they like about our system.” For McConnell, 75 years isn’t quite long enough.