Party vs. Promises
Greg Walden helped elect Republican congressmen who risk killing the Republican Party and who will remove health care access to tens of thousands of his constituents. Oops.
Greg Walden presents in public as a moderate, compassionate GOP congressman. Phrases like "kinder, gentler" come to mind.
There is a point of style that Republicans choose between: calm vs. angry. They use soothing words of moderation ("balance", "bipartisan", "worked with", "President Obama") or they use words from an angry palette ("insane", "confiscate", "tyranny", "Socialist", "corrupt", "appeaser", "utter disaster, "Barrack Hussain Obama".)
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| Greg Walden Website: Concerned, cooperative, a listener. |
Some of political communication is pure tone and inflection. Some GOP leaders, including Greg Walden, address opponents respectfully, as if they may disagree on things but with an underlying assumption that they both want a better, more prosperous, safe nation. Others, frequent on Fox and nearly universal among presidential candidates (all except John Kaisich) express contempt for their opponents, sharing the underlying belief that the opponents want to destroy freedom by taking away guns, commit foul murder of the innocent with abortions, destroy the economy with confiscatory taxation, divide the country racially with preferences and unearned largess to black and brown criminals, and make America vulnerable to attack by foreign enemies by destroying our military. Newt Gingrich, Steven King, Louis Gomert, Ted Cruz, and the people on Fox and Friends on weekday mornings are the clearest and most pure practitioners of this style.
Walden is in the first group. He projects respect and compassion and earnest desire to meet the needs of his audiences and the public.
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| Walden's dilemma. Click here for the article. |
He has a problem. It is fellow Republicans, the ones he helped get elected.
His Freedom Caucus members of his GOP majority strongly oppose expansion of Medicaid, which increases the number of people eligible for free or low cost health care. It makes healthcare available to the working poor: the guy who works full time on a ranch making $12 an hour, the employees at Walmart who work there and at a car wash 48 hours a week at minimum wage, the employees at assisted living locations. It is a matter of principle: it is income re-distribution from richer people to poorer people, which is unfair confiscation. It takes from the worthy and gives to the unworthy. These people are a political problem for Walden. On the one hand his Republican voters share the view that there should not be government giveaways to the unworthy but Walden's district has a great many people who are beneficiaries of that. Eastern and southern Oregon is among the most rural part of the state. Wages are lower here. Big institutions with a full package of health benefits are less frequent here. His voters oppose giveaways on principle but they like them for themselves. Walden is attempting to thread this needle by securing extra money for Oregon and its own Medicaid expansion plan, the Oregon Health Plan, In any case, if the working poor lose health care he can blame it somewhat on the state, not himself. The blame will be muddled.
Worse for him is the pre-existing condition problem. Smart consumers will not pay for insurance until they actually need service if in fact they are eligible for insurance as a walk-in. Insurance on demand is not insurance. Walden's problem is that the pre-existing condition problem affects people who he can relate to personally and who are a key part of the Republican constituency. Prosperous middle and upper middle class politically conservative, church-going small business people are affected by this problem. An owner of a dry cleaning business or a busy tax preparer or anyone whose business carries a plaque on the wall that says they are a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Small Business Owners could be caught by the problem. If that good, worthy Republican activist and donor has a medical problem then they cannot get insurance at any reasonable price. No insurance company would willingly take on a client for a reasonable price, $500/month for example, if their is a good chance their cancer will reappear or that their Type 2 diabetes will require expensive treatments and amputations. Good Republicans fall into that category.
Unfortunately for Walden this means that there needs to be some funding mechanism to make those people eligible for insurance at the price of "insurance", not the price of "immediate hospitalization."
Walden promised he wants to protect pre-existing conditions. He said it repeatedly. He undoubtably actually means it. The new health care bill under consideration in his committee will substantially lower that access. But Walden is trapped. He is a member of the House leadership. He cannot oppose a bill being drafted in his own committee. He has no choice but to support the bill. He can support it and then complain about it. He can vote for it and say it isn't what he wanted. He can vote for it and say he will try to fix it.
But he will be stuck. He will have voted for a bill that will be easy to criticize as leaving tens of thousands of people in his district in the lurch and Walden will be exposed as either helpless to keep his promises or as a hypocrite.
The irony here for Walden is that his House Leadership position came from his extraordinary success in getting Republicans elected by having them condemn Obamacare and two of its provisions--Medicaid expansion and access to insurance by people with pre-existing conditions--are very valuable to his constituents.
Walden is adept. He may be able to vote for something and then condemn it, while hoping it fails in the Senate. He may get through this, especially if nothing happens The ideal situation for Walden is helplessness and futility. He and his constituents get to keep Obamacare--which serves the poor, the working poor, Republican small businesspeople, and the hospitals in his district--while complaining about it.
He needs the Senate to do its work and fail.
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