The great unanswered question is not about ‘court packing’
It’s vexing, I admit, that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his surrogates have been dodging the question of whether they plan to try to expand the size of the U.S. Supreme Court if Biden wins the election and his party takes control of both houses of Congress.
“I’m not going to answer the question,” Biden said during the Sept. 29 debate with President Donald Trump. “You will know my opinion on court packing when the election is over,” he added on Oct. 8 when reporters tried to press him on the issue. Monday he cleaned things up a bit when he told a Cincinnati radio station that he’s “not a fan of court packing” but didn’t want to “get off on that whole issue.”
I wish three things for the Democrats:
1. I wish they would use the term “court balancing”
to describe the prospect of installing a few liberal justices on a high court that’s about to be dominated 6-3 by conservatives. A court majority consisting largely of justices nominated by presidents who didn’t win the popular vote and confirmed by senators who represent less than half the population will lack legitimacy and is likely to thwart the public will and further destabilize society.
2. I wish they would remember that there is no longer a political price for lying.
The savvy response to questions about expanding the court is, “No, absolutely not, we won’t do it,” and then, later, after the election, “Circumstances have changed, and now we will do it.” Look at how the Republicans insisted when a Democrat was president in 2016 that Supreme Court appointments should not be made in a presidential election year, and now that a Republican is president they’re shamelessly rushing nominee Amy Coney Barrett onto the bench just weeks before a presidential election.
3. I wish that, whenever the subject of dodging the question about court balancing comes up, they’d respond with a demand to know how exactly Trump plans to protect those who have medical conditions that would otherwise make them extremely expensive to insure.
Early Tuesday, Trump tweeted, “Republicans will be providing far better Healthcare than the Democrats, at a far lower cost … And will always protect people with Pre-existing conditions!!!!”
It was just the latest in a string of similarly windy promises that date back to the early days of his campaign more than four years ago. His “fantastic plan” to replace the popular Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“Obamacare”) that will offer “great health care at a lesser price,” even for those who are already sick was always just in the offing.
“We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks,” he said on July 19. He described it as “a full and complete health care plan.”
More than two months later, he released his “America-First Healthcare Plan,” which was little more than a series of aspirational statements not accompanied by companion legislation.
“Access to health insurance despite underlying health conditions should be maintained,” said a key passage of the not-a-plan. “No American should have to risk going without health insurance based on a health history that he or she cannot change.”
Yes. And that’s the animating idea behind Obamacare, which the Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out in a case to be heard next month. If the high court rules for Trump, coverage stands to become unaffordable for the more than 50 million Americans the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates would be uninsurable in the individual market without the law’s protections.
Republicans up and down the ballot are promising, as Trump promises, that such people will continue to be able to buy “affordable health care.”
But how? And what will it cover?
Caring for sick people costs a lot, and paying for that care requires shifting the financial burden somehow onto younger, healthier and often wealthier people or placing limits on services.
Obamacare offers one imperfect solution that relies on cost shifting and government subsidies, and, fine, if you don’t like that solution, what, exactly, is your solution? Homina-homina-homina …
Trump danced around the question during his debate with Biden. When moderator Chris Wallace asked him point blank “What about preexisting conditions?” Trump pirouetted into an answer about his efforts to lower prescription drug prices. When Vice President Mike Pence faced a similar challenge during his Oct. 7 debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, he coughed up a quick banality about having “a plan” before changing the subject to fracking.
But the political media remains somehow obsessed with Biden’s evasions about a hypothetical power move he might make should he and his party win control in Washington, and blase about Trump’s evasions on the very real threat his administration is posing right now to the health security of tens of millions of Americans.
Talk about vexing.