Is it possible to craft a bipartisan solution?
WASHINGTON — When Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper made the rounds of cable TV talk shows last week, they were something of a novelty.
Here were a Republican and a Democrat — both wearing matching baby blue ties, almost as if they had a team dress code — amiably agreeing that the 2010 health-care bill known as Obamacare needed fixing, and that the Senate bill was far from the best way to proceed.
Kasich urged Democrats to “stand and challenge” Republicans to negotiate with them. Both parties, he said, should have input on a solution. Hickenlooper called the issue a “moral” one.
“Governor Kasich and I won’t agree on everything, but agree we’ve got to control the rise in health-care costs on all levels,” Democrat Hickenlooper said.
Meanwhile, that same day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R–Ky. — forced to pull the Senate bill because of a handful of Republican defections — was asked whether he thought of including Democrats in negotiations on the bill.
“They’re not interested in this,” he said.
So much for Kumbaya. With Republicans taking their July 4 recess and having failed to reach an agreement on what was the key promise of the 2016 presidential election, centrist governors such as Kasich and Hickenlooper are urging comity and compromise.
The reality, however, is trickier. The GOP itself is deeply divided over the health-care bill, with moderates concerned about expansive cuts to Medicaid and conservatives saying the bill falls far short of repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
And Democrats, said Larry Sabato, director for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, have little incentive to enter the fray while the GOP wars with itself.
“The Democrats really have no particular reason to rescue the Republicans,” said Sabato. “And really, the Republicans lose either way….the advantage of being in the minority is you don’t have any real power, but you can enjoy the ride while the pilots are running the ship aground.”
“I find it hard to believe the Democrats in the Senate are going to want to bail out the Republicans on this,” said John Feehery, a Republican political strategist and onetime aide to former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. “When Mitch McConnell says the worst-case scenario is us having to work with (Senate Minority Leader Chuck) Schumer, that’s a warning that conservatives better get their act together and get onboard, because if they don’t the deal is not going to be good for conservatives.”
Feehery said governors such as Kasich and Hickenlooper have good reason to want to work for a bipartisan solution – both expanded Medicaid under Obamacare and would see coverage rolled back dramatically under the most recent Senate bill – but that reality does not jibe with Congress.
Bipartisanship, he said, “sounds good in theory,” but both parties are diametrically opposed on health care. Democrats, he said, are more inclined to a government solution, possibly with a single-payer system, and Republicans want a market-based approach. “It’s kind of hard to find common ground on that.”
Democrats, meanwhile, insist that they do want to work with Republicans. Every statement that Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio has sent out has referred to bipartisanship. And privately, Democrats say that though it’s tempting to watch the GOP struggle, they don’t want to see people lose health coverage.
And for his part, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who opposed the Senate draft because of his concerns about Medicaid cuts, has seemed — at least during this debate — to have more common ground with moderate Democrats than the far right in his Republican Party.
On Friday, he seemed open to some kind of bipartisan deal.
“I think it’s better for the country if it could be bipartisan,” Portman said. “What you don’t want is (health policy) going back and forth every few years, depending on who is in office. But in the meantime, we have some real problems here in Ohio.”
Brown said he, too, is for bipartisanship. But he couldn’t have disagreed more with the bill that is now stalled in the Senate.
“It’s a huge tax cut for the drug companies and the insurance companies — and for the richest 400 families, they will get a $7 million tax cut for each of the next 10 years,” Brown said. “And to pay for that tax cut and make up for the lost money, they cut Medicaid. They cut opioid treatment.”
Kasich’s praise of bipartisanship has been a common theme in his public appearances, both during the 2016 presidential campaign and the months that followed. But skeptics say that even as Kasich hits the road with Hickenlooper espousing the value of bipartisanship, his struggles statewide mirror what’s being seen at the federal level. He faces challenges from his own party on Medicaid and from both parties on the budget.
“The ironic thing is Kasich is in Washington talking about bipartisanship, but what has he done in Ohio on bipartisanship?” said one Ohio Republican who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly. “What has he done with this budget? From what I know from the legislation, there’s no bipartisanship on this.”
Even if something were to pass the Senate, it would have to then pass the House, which is even more sharply divided. “Paul Ryan is not going to negotiate with Democrats,” said the University of Virginia’s Sabato, referring to House Speaker Paul Ryan. “Because then he’d be ousted as speaker.”
And Sabato said though people say they want bipartisanship, typically that means they want everyone to agree with the plan that they prefer. “This is not an era that thirsts for compromise,” he said. ‘We are very dug in. There is no middle ground.”
“Hope springs eternal,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “But I see less than zero chance of negotiations being conducted on a bipartisan basis at this point in time.”