Budget Fight
- New York 10/01/2013 by CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press NANCY BENAC, Associated Press (WBAI)




Dueling images of the government powering itself down just as Americans for the first time are logging on to Obamacare's new health-insurance exchanges bring into high relief a debate that Americans have been having since the birth of the nation. How much government do we really need? How much is too much?


Now, Republicans have turned Obamacare into a political metaphor for what they hold out as the heavy hand of Washington. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said people in his state are telling him that if shutting things down "is the only way to stop the runaway train called the federal government, then we're willing to try it."

Others question whether it's a fair fight.

"There are no Republicans who talk about Obamacare as anything other than socialized medicine, a government takeover of the health care system," says Calvin Mackenzie, a professor of government at Colby College in Maine. "Anybody who's studied Obamacare would find that a hard conclusion to draw."





Obama put the blame for Washington's paralysis all on "one faction of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government." That was an oversimplification, no doubt, but one that summed up the roiling divisions in the Capitol and within the GOP. It laid bare the sense among Democrats that the tea party is not just an opposing force, but a corrosive one.

There are plenty of Republicans who are fine with a government shutdown. But others in the GOP worry that the party is heading for a repeat of the 2012 elections in which GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and a number of conservative candidates for Congress didn't have enough appeal with moderates to produce GOP victories.




The president accuses GOP critics of Obamacare of trying to keep people uninsured; Republicans say they're waging a principled fight against a mammoth government overreach.


Americans spend nearly 20 cents of every dollar on health care.

What worries economists most is the rate of growth. The nation's health care tab has consistently grown faster than just about everything else, outpacing wages and the gross domestic product. That means it could crowd out other priorities, such as business investment and government spending on education.

Government programs cover more than 100 million Americans — about 1 in 3 people. That share is going to grow as Obama's health care law takes hold.




The Obamacare debate touches on a long-running debate in America about the idea of a "nanny state" — when the government goes too far in protecting people from themselves.

Does the mandate to obtain health insurance just concern the person who is forced to get it? Or does it benefit the health care system and the economy to make sure nearly everyone is covered? That's part of the debate over the health care law.


Hillary Clinton earned plenty of ridicule from the right for asserting that "it takes a village" to raise a child. And in the face of substantial childhood obesity, Michelle Obama has taken some hits for her campaign to get kids to exercise and eat healthy food.

Polling suggests that Americans value personal choice over government involvement when it comes to behavior, but it's not quite that simple. In an Associated Press-NORC Center poll out this year, 8 in 10 favored government policies that make it easier for people to make healthier choices, such as providing nutrition and exercise guidelines, and three-quarters supported government money for farmers markets and bike paths. But most didn't like government mandates on their choices.



Obama came to national attention almost a decade ago on the strength of a keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention that rejected the notion of red states and blue states and declared "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America." Many times since he's played on that theme of a nation not split by those party colors, in what can only be called wishful thinking.


Of today's political divisions, Mackenzie says: "They're about as hard as they can be."

Not because the middle ground has necessarily disappeared but because it is not what counts the most to some ideologues at this time. (Check back on that when the 2014 elections roll around). Republicans who have placed their opposition to the health care law at the center of everything are responding only to a slice of public opinion, Mackenzie says. "They're thinking about the people who elect them and the people who fund them and those people are very supportive of what they're doing."

To be sure, bipartisanship is still a feel-good word in Washington, but it's thrown around loosely. Everyone ideally wants the political cover that can come when hefty chunks of both parties agree on something, and they claim it even when it isn't there.

Several Republican lawmakers did just that after a series of polarizing votes leading to the shutdown, particularly the one on the House resolution that sought to pass a budget only on condition that the health care law be stripped of money. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas claimed a "strong bipartisan majority" in the vote; Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California said: "It was a bipartisan moment because we're all Americans."




This is a political and policy dispute that's also personal.

The tea partyers' disdain for the president is unrestrained, with talk of impeachment all the rage.


Even Boehner, typically known for his even keel, did a mocking impression of Obama on the House floor as the shutdown neared, parroting the president's voice in saying: "I'm not going to negotiate, I'm not going to negotiate. I'm not going to do this."

Newt Gingrich, the House speaker who orchestrated the last government shutdown in the 1990s, chimed in Tuesday to say that Obama "refuses to behave like an American president. He refuses to deal with the Congress as his equal, which it is in the Constitution."

Obama complained that House Republicans were "trying to mess with me" by passing a bill to cut off money for Obamacare.


Obama offered assurances, though, that "we're not demonizing the other side."


Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

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