In 2011, GOP politicians took over both Wisconsin and Ohio as part of a national wave election. The Republican governors and legislatures soon let their newly-gained power go to their heads. Both states quickly enacted laws to destroy the right of public employees to bargain. Both states saw huge public anger at this gross abuse of power. Hundreds of thousands of outraged citizens descended on Madison and Columbus for weeks of protest.
But the way that the people were able to deal with the crisis was very different between Wisconsin and Ohio. In Wisconsin, nine State Senators faced recall elections in 2011. Scott Walker, along with four more State Senators faced recall in 2012. After all of the dust settled, three Republican State Senators had been replaced by Democratic challengers.
The actions taken in Wisconsin required a great deal of activity by people in the state. Signatures were collected and verified. Candidates were recruited. Expensive primary and general elections were conducted.
The political climate in the state was poisoned during this time, and has never fully recovered. Neighbor turned on neighbor. Friend turned on friend. Kin turned on kin. Political witch-hunts took place in which judges, reporters, office holders, and candidates who signed recall petitions were called-out for public shaming. "Wisconsin Nice" died a tragic death.
But after all of that effort and energy, we are still stuck with the unpopular Act 10. Even today, we are burdened with the poorer schools, lower wages, and residual employee resentment that the Republican law forced on us.
By contrast, Ohio was able to handle the same union-destroying power-grab quite differently. Unlike Wisconsinites, Ohio citizens are able to call a referendum on laws that don't reflect the will of the people. Citizens actually have veto power over unpopular legislation.
Ohio's anti-worker bill, SB 5, was signed into law by John Kasich on March 31, 2011. Ohio citizens have 90 days after a law is signed to submit petition signatures to force a veto referendum onto the ballot. Valid signatures totaling 6% of the vote in the state's prior gubernatorial election are required (amounting to 231,149 names in 2011). At the end of June, over five and a half times that many signatures were proudly submitted to the Ohio Secretary of State.
The referendum was placed on the ballot in November. The good guys won. The anti-worker law was defeated by an overwhelming 62-38% vote. The law was "recalled". It was vetoed by the people. But no politicians lost their jobs. This was a much less divisive, and much more effective, way of overturning the GOP's unpopular scheme.
Wisconsin does have referendums, but they are of very weak types. The people approve any changes to the state Constitution through referendums. We can have an advisory referendum on an issue if the state legislature requests one. We are also allowed to initiate non-binding advisory referendums to voice public opinion on an issue (such as all of the recent local referendums on overturning Citizens United).
Twenty three states have the sort of strong veto referendums used so effectively in Ohio in 2011. People in these states can overturn bad laws and counteract partisan power-grabs. They have much more of a voice in the way they are governed than we do.
Twenty four states have a process by which the people can circumvent a do-nothing legislature or obstinate Governor to enact a new law or constitutional amendment. This sort of referendum was successful in Maine just last week , when voters overruled the five vetoes of Medicaid expansion by crazy Governor Paul LePage. Seventy thousand additional Maine residents will now have access to Medicaid coverage.
The people of Wisconsin need to have a more active and democratic participation in our state government. We should have the chance to over-rule bad laws from our gerrymandered legislature. We should have the opportunity to initiate new laws through binding citizen referendums. We should join with half of the states in the country. We should have meaningful referendum provisions in our state Constitution.
I never thought that I would say this, but thank you, Mr. Trump ! Because of your recent actions to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, I will get my health insurance for free in 2018.
My wife and I can be considered an Obamacare success story. We are both retired, but not quite old enough for Medicare. For the last four years, we have purchased insurance through the Federal ACA Exchange. Each year, our retirement income was too high for cost-sharing subsidies, but we kept our IRA income low enough (<4 times the poverty rate) to qualify for tax credits at the end of the year .
Thanks to the ACA, our insurance costs have stayed comparatively low. The available tax credits are based on the Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan (SLCSP) for each county's exchange. In the interest of saving money, we have always bought one of the less-expensive, higher deductible Bronze Plans.
After tax credits, our monthly out-of-pocket costs for insurance for 2014-17 has averaged $400/month. That is substantially less than we paid for similar insurance before implementation of the exchanges. Thank you, President Obama!
Of course, we signed-up again for 2018 coverage. It was fast and easy to re-enroll online at https://www.healthcare.gov/. We did not need help, but telephone operators are available for those who do. But if you also plan to get your 2018 insurance through the Exchanges, please hurry ! Open enrollment ends on December 15 this year.
Several companies, including the carrier we used from 2014 through 2017, dropped out of our exchange for 2018. In Washington County, we went from a choice of 41 plans in 2017 to just 20 plans (offered by three companies) for next year. Both Anthem and Molina cited the "uncertainties" in Washington as their reason for exiting the Exchange. This was a polite way of saying that Trump and his HHS Secretary have been purposely sabotaging the law.
There are certainly fewer choices this year than in the past. Still, the Marketplace is thriving, despite the moronic "Obamacare is dead!" bleating from the Saboteur-in-Chief.
Trump has done everything he can to kill Obamacare. He refused to allow the Government to spend funds allotted for publicizing the Exchanges. He has cut the enrollment window in half. He has berated Obamacare at every opportunity, often confusing many into believing that the program no longer exists. Worst of all, he has played politics with the lives of Americans by reneging on the law's Cost Sharing subsidies (CSR) provision.
CSR helped especially poor people afford insurance. It remitted money directly to the insurance companies in exchange for lower rates on Silver plans they bought on the Exchanges. After Trump welched on the government's payments, the insurance companies were still legally required to provide the lower rates to poorer people. In order to stay out of a Trump-induced bankruptcy, most of the remaining exchange insurance providers drastically raised the prices of their Silver plans.
The huge Trump-caused price increases only affected Silver plans. For examples, the Bronze plan that we selected for 2018 is only 16% more than the similar Bronze plan that we had in 2017. In contrast, the Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan (SLCSP) for 2018 is a whopping 67% higher than the SLCSP for 2017.
With our Bronze plan increasing by just 16%, and the SLCSP, upon which federal tax credits are based, increasing by 67%, we will end-up paying zero dollars for our Bronze plan. That is correct. We will get free health insurance in 2018. Through his ham-handed efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act, Trump has inadvertently made insurance much cheaper, or even free for many of us. Thank you, Mr. Trump !
IQ45 has become increasingly deranged as the FBI investigation of his collusion with Russia closes in. In a desperate attempt at distraction, he resurrected a discredited conspiracy theory accusing Hillary Clinton of handing-over US uranium to the Russians.
On Sunday, he tweeted:
It is unclear who Trump is desperately begging to "DO SOMETHING !" It is equally unclear what he expects them to do. However, I have a suggestion for somebody in Washington who really should do something.
Congress has much that they should deal with before the end of the year. They must do something to allow the Dreamers to remain in America, after Trump ended DACA. They must do something to authorize payment of Affordable Care Act cost-sharing subsidies, after Trump ended those payments. They must do something to reauthorize the expired Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). They must do something to increase the debt limit in December, so that the Government can actually stay open.
But instead of doing something on these four critical tasks, what has the House of Representatives done since the first of October? They voted to criminalize abortion after twenty weeks (Sensenbrenner, Grothman voted for). They named three Post Offices. They jammed through a sham budget in a procedural scheme targeting huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. They passed a bill allowing clear cutting of National Forests with no environmental review or public comment (Grothman for, Sensenbrenner against).
Most importantly, the House passed the South Carolina Peanut Parity Act of 2017. This all-important bill will allow South Carolina to appoint members to the Peanut Standards Board.
With only twelve in-session days remaining in November and nine in December, we should worry about the ability of the House to act on the critical matters waiting for them. However, all we seem to hear from House leaders is the importance of gigantic tax cuts.
The American people are not clamoring for tax cuts. We have been here before. We realize that the unwise move will balloon the deficit in order to give huge tax breaks to profitable corporations and the ultra-rich. These cuts, that Republican politicians are hell-bent on jamming-through by the end of the year, are a callous pay-off to wealthy political contributors.
Failure of Congress to implement a new Dream Act will affect over 700,000 young people. Since Trump killed the DACA program two months ago, the lives of these kids have been a Kafkaesque nightmare. Paul Ryan has not promised any plan of action on the issue.
It has been 33 days since Congress allowed the Children's Health Insurance Plan to expire. The program provides healthcare to 8.9 million children through state-run Medicare and CHIP plans. The House GOP is attempting to attach poison pills to this must-pass bill. States are scraping to keep their programs going, but can't continue emergency funding efforts forever.
It has been 21 days since Trump announced that he was ending cost-sharing subsidies, a provision of the Affordable Care Act. This cost-sharing program helped low-income families afford health insurance. Last year, nearly six million people received assistance. Trump timed his announcement for maximal disruption of the insurance markets. His decision means that millions will be unable to afford insurance, the government will pay billions more, and fewer insurance companies will participate in the exchanges. Neither Paul Ryan nor Mitch McConnell appear to be interested in a bipartisan solution negotiated in the Senate.
The 700,000 Dreamers, and the 6,000,000 poor getting cost-sharing insurance subsidies, and the 8,900,000 children on CHIP do not seem to be a priority with this Congress. Their piece-of-mind does not concern Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump. Calls for Congress to "Do Something!" on these issues fall on deaf ears. The problems of millions of Americans will be addressed, maybe sometime, at a future date, in the not-too-distant future.
No, the number one priority of the Republican Congress is tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. Everybody else will just have to wait their turn. After all, there are only twenty-one Congressional work days left in 2017.
