The Great Charade of the Seventeen
The ink isn’t even dry on the roll call and the smell of desperation in the hallways of the Longworth building is thick enough to choke a horse (or at least a lobbyist’s expensive steak dinner). You have to appreciate the sheer audacity of the theater we are witnessing right now because it is a masterclass in political sleight of hand that would make Houdini blush with inadequacy. While the headlines scream about a looming government shutdown and the supposed fiscal hawks are sharpening their talons for a fight over every red cent of discretionary spending, seventeen Republicans just walked across the aisle to hand a massive, three-year lifeline to the very healthcare subsidies they spent a decade promising to tear down limb from limb. It is a stunning display of hypocrisy. They call it a ‘compromise’ but let’s be real for a second because we all know that in DC ‘compromise’ is just the code word for ‘I want to keep my seat in a swing district and the insurance lobby just called my personal cell phone.’ This isn’t about the American patient or the rising cost of premiums that continue to gut the middle class like a fish at a pier market. No, this is about the survival of the political class and the realization that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has become the third rail of American politics that everyone loves to hate in public but everyone is terrified to touch in private. The reality is that these subsidies—those sweet, sweet tax credits that keep the insurance companies afloat while the rest of us drown in deductibles—were set to lapse and the GOP realized they couldn’t handle the optics of millions of voters getting a bill they can’t pay right before an election cycle kicks into high gear (which, let’s face it, is always). So they blinked. They blinked hard. They blinked so hard you could hear the eyelids snapping shut from the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the Supreme Court.
Follow the Money and the Fear
If you want to understand why these seventeen specific Republicans broke ranks, you have to look at the map because the map never lies even when the politicians do. These aren’t the fire-breathers from the deep red pockets of the rural South; these are the folks sitting in districts where the word ‘Obamacare’ used to be a slur but is now a survival mechanism for their own constituents. They are trapped in a cage of their own making. For years they campaigned on ‘Repeal and Replace’ (the most successful marketing slogan since ‘New Coke’ and just as hollow) without ever actually having a replacement that wasn’t just a handful of magic beans and a prayer to the free market gods. Now that the subsidies are baked into the cake of the American economy, removing them is like trying to remove the flour from a loaf of bread after it’s already come out of the oven. It’s impossible. It’s messy. It creates a vacuum that the insurance giants—who are the real shadow governors of this country—refuse to allow. You think it’s a coincidence that the stock prices for the big-name health insurers took a nice little bump the moment the news of this vote hit the wires? Of course not. The ‘Deep State’ isn’t just a bunch of bureaucrats in beige suits; it’s a web of financial interests that ensures the status quo remains profitable no matter who holds the gavel in the House. The House passed a bill that is supposedly ‘doomed’ in the Senate but that’s just more cover. It’s a way for the leadership to say they did something while ensuring that the system stays exactly as broken as it needs to be to keep the donations flowing. It is a carousel of failure. The senators will preen and posture and the President will sign whatever keeps the lights on for another few months because nobody actually wants to govern; they just want to win the next news cycle. We are watching a slow-motion car crash where the drivers are all arguing about who gets to control the radio while the vehicle is already halfway off the cliff. They talk about fiscal responsibility while adding billions to the long-term debt through these extensions because it’s easier to borrow from our grandchildren than it is to tell a voter today that their government-funded discount is disappearing. It’s pathetic. It’s predictable. And it’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from a town that values optics over outcomes every single day of the week.
The Shutdown That Isn’t
Let’s talk about this shutdown nonsense because it’s the ultimate distraction from the actual policy failures happening in the dark. Every time we get close to a funding deadline, the media goes into a frenzy like sharks smelling blood in the water (or at least like interns smelling free pizza in the breakroom). They want you to think the world is ending. They want you to think the national parks will crumble and the military will stop functioning. It’s all a lie designed to make you grateful when they finally pass a 4,000-page bill at 3 AM that nobody has read. By tying the ACA subsidies to the shutdown conversation, the GOP leadership has given themselves an ‘out.’ They can tell their base they fought the good fight on the budget while quietly letting the 17 moderates play the ‘heroes’ who saved the subsidies. It’s a choreographed dance. You can almost see the stage directions in the margins of the legislative text. (Enter Stage Right: The Moderate Republican looking concerned about healthcare costs. Enter Stage Left: The Hardliner screaming about the deficit.) It’s all for show. The reality is that the government never really shuts down. The essential functions keep grinding away, the debt keeps piling up, and the lobbyists keep their lobby passes. The only thing that ‘shuts down’ is the pretense that any of this is for the benefit of the average taxpayer. We are the ones paying for the ticket to a play we didn’t ask to see. Why do we keep falling for it? Because the alternative is admitting that we’ve lost control of the machine. These subsidies are just the latest bandage on a gushing wound. The healthcare system in this country is a Rube Goldberg machine of inefficiency, and instead of fixing the gears, we’re just pouring more expensive oil into the cracks. The 17 Republicans who voted for this extension aren’t ‘mavericks’ and they aren’t ‘traitors’—they are simply the ones who were assigned the role of keeping the machine running this week. Next week it will be someone else. The cycle is relentless. It is exhausting. It is the reason why trust in our institutions is at an all-time low. When you can’t tell the difference between the ‘opposition’ and the ‘establishment,’ you know the game is rigged. They want you to focus on the 17 names. They want you to be angry at those specific individuals so you don’t look at the other 400 who are just as complicit in this stagnation. It’s a shell game. Keep your eye on the pea? Good luck, because there is no pea. There is only the hand moving the shells, and that hand belongs to the same people who have been running this town since before you were born. The subsidy extension is just a way to buy another three years of silence. Three years of not having to solve the problem. Three years of guaranteed profits for the insurers. Three years of us being played for fools. It’s a long time in politics but a short time in the life of a nation. We deserve better but as long as we keep accepting these ‘doomed’ bills and ‘last-minute rescues,’ this is exactly what we are going to get. Prepare for the next ‘crisis’ because it’s already being scripted in a backroom somewhere near K Street. It’s coming. You can count on it.