Tuesday Open Thread [3.3.15]

“The opening weeks of the 114th Congress have been nothing short of a disaster for Republicans, who declared upon taking control of both chambers last fall that the era of governing by crisis and fiscal cliffs was over,” The Hill reports.

“Since their declaration, House GOP leaders have yanked several high-profile bills from the floor after rebellions from rank-and-file members. Counting an emergency measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) running through Friday, Congress has sent President Obama a total of only four bills, even as Republicans promised to get off to a fast start this session.”

Steven Brill on the sheer fantasy that is the King v. Burwell case currently before the Supreme Court and scheduled for oral argument this week:

“Congress knew exactly what it wanted to do when it passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and contrary to the plaintiffs’ claim, that included wanting subsidies for buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges to be available to all citizens, even those residing in the 36 states that did not set up their own exchanges, instead relying on the exchange set up by the federal government.”

“I’m a reporter. I hate to take sides… But this is one of those issues where reporters err if they write an ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ story that creates patently false equivalency.”

“I know what the legislators intended because in researching my book, I interviewed pretty much everyone involved in the conception and writing of the law. Moreover, I did that long before King v. Burwell had become the Obamacare opponents’ favorite new weapon, which means that those opponents had no reason to spin the fairytale that Congress did not intend for those subsidies to go to the millions of Americans signing up on the federally run exchange. At the time, no one had a dog in a fight over congressional intent, because there was no fight.”

Greg Sargent calls attention to the importance of the upcoming gubernatorial races, which will decide how much power Dems will have to check GOP gerrymandering.

“The 2014 elections left Democrats in a deep state-level hole: Republicans control over 30 governorships and two-thirds of partisan legislative chambers; they are in total control of state government in 24 states, while Democrats can only say that about six states.”

Sargent quotes from his interview with Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, who will soon take over helm of the Democratic Governors Association: “It’s going to take a four year cycle, not a two year cycle, to turn this back. Democrats have to adopt the Republican concept of constant campaigning. Democrats tend to think of elections as cycles. Republicans don’t. It’s ongoing and constant.”

From an AP report on the political fallout of the House votes to cut off Homeland Security funding (then later to restore it for one week) unless President Obama rescinds his executive order protecting millions of immigrants from deportation:

“Bad tactics yield bad outcomes,” GOP Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania told reporters. Republican leaders, he said, have engaged “in tactical malpractice, and at some point we’re going to vote on the negotiated Homeland Security appropriations bill,” a bipartisan plan that most Republicans oppose but cannot kill…””We all know how this is going to turn out,” said an exasperated Republican, Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho. “Politically, it’s devastating.”

From multiple interviews in recent days with party leaders and senior aides, it’s clear the GOP had no real strategy to successfully end the party’s first major standoff with Obama since taking power in January,” Politico reports.

“Republicans had hoped pressure would build on recalcitrant Senate Democrats to ultimately rebel against Obama and force him to capitulate — or at least prompt them to negotiate a compromise. That didn’t happen. They had hoped more public attention to the issue might be spawned by a new outside event, such as more migrant children appearing at the southern border. That didn’t happen. And they had hoped that more time would give their party a fresh opportunity to settle on a coordinated and coherent legislative response to the president. But that certainly didn’t happen.”

Said on GOP senator: “Never go into these things without a plan.”

Planning would require thinking and analytical skills beyond the reach of your average tea party congressman.

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that 62% of voters think it’s important for the President to have a degree, compared to only 31% who think it doesn’t matter.

Interesting: “There’s a large partisan divide on the issue: Democrats by an 81%-14% spread think it’s important while Republicans are evenly divided on the matter at 45%-45%.”