“Blame game” hides fault for government shutdown

In Washington, it’s called “the blame game.”

Its purpose is to assign fault when things go wrong, so that voters will know who to support and who to oppose at election time.

It quickly gets down to simple name calling without much reference to facts.  But fault does exist, and voters should at least know who is responsible for what in Washington.

The crisis leading to the federal government shutdown lets us compare blame claims with real responsibility.  Here are some questions and answers.

Why did the government shut down?

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – passed the Congress, totally dependent on Democratic votes in both the House and Senate.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the new law is constitutional.

But the Republicans don’t like it and would like it to be repealed. With a Democratic president and Senate, they stand no chance of repealing this existing law.

Tea Party House Republicans decided the best strategy to undermine the law would be to tie Obamacare changes, designed in a somewhat disguised way to halt the law, to some piece of essential legislation.

Nothing is more essential than funding federal government operations or ensuring that the government pays interest on the federal debt and takes on debt needed to fund already approved activities.

These House Republicans convinced most other GOP members of the House to support a strategy tying passage of these essential measures to changes in the health care law that would more or less gut it.

This strategy has probably never been used before in American history.  The Democrats were committed to preventing it this time, but the House majority refused to back down. The government shut down.

Who’s to blame?

You can decide for yourself who is to blame for what.

But you should be aware that this bill would only keep the government operating until mid-November at its already reduced spending levels.  There are no new spending programs in it.

You should also know that, despite claims by some opponents that the Affordable Care Act represents an unconstitutional invasion of personal rights, because everybody must participate or pay a penalty (just like the income tax), the only body authorized to say whether a law is constitutional has said that it is.

Nothing in this discussion says there’s anything wrong with preferring a private insurance system with the uninsured using emergency rooms, the way it was before Obamacare. But the normal way to go back to that is by passing a new law, perhaps after new elections.

Recent polling finds a strong majority of people do not approve of the House GOP strategy.  That does not mean they all like the health care law, where the poll now shows about an equal split.

Do the Democrats bear any responsibility? 

Sure, but not for the back-and-forth battle between the Senate Democratic majority and the House Republican majority.

Congressional Democrats are upholding the normal way of doing business, an approach that follows the law and keeps the government functioning.  

But President Obama has helped the GOP come to the conclusion that the American people dislike the health care law enough to support closing down the government to stop it.

Until recently, the president had not been aggressively promoting his signature legislation, which may encourage some people to believe misinformation about it is correct.

Once the law was passed, he should have led a massive public campaign to explain it.  It is possible that much opposition to it simply results from a lack of information or misinformation from its opponents.

And his administration failed to get organized and has had to defer some parts of the program, increasing its vulnerability to partisan attack.

What about the media’s role?

Its version of being objective is to give equal time to both sides without covering the facts.  Reporters may worry that the facts favor the Democrats, leaving them open to charges of bias if they say that.  But the media’s balancing act, leading some to assign equal responsibility to each side, is a poor substitute for good reporting.

What did the Maine congressional delegation do?

Both Democratic House members and independent Sen. Angus King opposed making Obamacare concessions to avoid a shutdown. 

Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who dislikes both the House approach and Obamacare, voted loyally with all Senate Republicans against a “clean bill”, in effect supporting the House GOP strategy.  In contrast, a few courageous House Republicans voted against the Tea Party strategy.

Next year in Maine and across the country, will voters decide who’s to blame?