Cruz control

A barn-burning U.S. senator tempers his tone as protesters line up against Trumpcare.

“Any jackass can kick down a barn,” former U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn once said with his famous Texas bluntness, “but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”

Now, Rayburn wasn’t talking about Ted Cruz specifically, but our state’s junior senator is undergoing a fascinating transformation from barn burner — or kicker — into an aspiring legislative craftsman.

Campaign speeches are no longer filled with red-meat rhetoric about eliminating the IRS. A man who once had his ambitions set on the White House is now talking up his constituent services. We’d guess Cruz is feeling some pressure from U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, who is serving as challenger in the 2018 Senate race.

In fact, while speaking Wednesday at a town hall event run by the Koch-sponsored Concerned Veterans for America in McKinney, north of Dallas, some of the biggest applause Cruz received was after he explained his “compromise” idea for health care, according to Texas Tribune reporter Kirby Wilson.

Ted Cruz talking compromise? And we thought that President Donald Trump was the most unlikely thing about politics in 2017.

There’s no legislative language yet for Cruz’s amendment to the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, also known as Trumpcare. The general proposal is that insurance companies would be allowed to sell plans that don’t meet the federal minimum standard as long as they also offered at least one compliant plan in the same state.

Being a constructive legislator is new to Cruz, so here’s a lesson any good carpenter should know: Measure twice, cut once. This means the Senate should stop its rush to pass a health care bill — any health care bill — just so Trump can go on television and claim that he has a legislative victory. Take your time, hold committee hearings and welcome expert testimony. Texas’ senior senator, John Cornyn, a Republican, has said that Aug. 1 is the drop-dead date to pass a bill. Why the hurry? Health care markets remain stable, according to a June report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The real risk to insurers or individuals comes from White House threats to withhold federal subsidies that make coverage more affordable.

Meanwhile, spending on health care represents nearly 20 percent of the U.S. economy. This is too important to mess up.

It is also too politically risky. There were twice as many protesters as attendees at a town hall event that Cruz held in Austin on Thursday. Even at the McKinney town hall, the protesters almost matched the modest crowd inside.

That McKinney event was supposed to be a friendly audience for Cruz, but he was hit coming and going on health care. One Cruz supporter didn’t like the Republican health care bills because they don’t lower premiums. A detractor argued that cutting costs by lowering insurance standards would open the door to “junk” and “subprime insurance.”

Politicians all across Texas are facing similarly frustrated constituents. There is admittedly little to admire in Republican-crafted bills that cut coverage for the working-class and middle-class Americans and give tax handouts to the rich. Cruz and Cornyn face weekly protests outside their offices. Groups advocating Medicare-for-all are holding their own town hall events this weekend. And there’s a health care protest planned at Houston City Hall on Monday.

If Cruz is serious about seeking a quick compromise, he should look at the Market Stability and Premium Reduction Act, which has been proposed by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. That plan adopts parts of the House bill, such as separate subsidies for high-cost patients, without totally gutting the core of Obamacare. It would be an uncontroversial update to the Obamacare status quo — not exactly the repeal that Cruz once promised.

Any plan has to build on a national health care system assembled from different parts that don’t necessarily fit together. The elderly and poor are covered by single-payer Medicare and Medicaid. Veterans have a British-style nationalized health care system. Everyone else relies on a uniquely American system of for-profit insurance companies, which most people receive through their employers.

It would take a master craftsman to lend our current American health care system any sense of elegance. As a good carpenter knows, sanding down the rough edges is easier than building a whole new barn. Cruz and his Republican co-workers should consider a bipartisan sandpaper job to be victory enough.