So Baucus and Conrad have caved to douche nozzle extraordinaire, Joe "You Lie" Wilson, and are now going to take another look at language in the bill that pertains to illegal immigrants. Are you angry? Me, too. It encourages Representative Wilson's town hall style behavior. It puts the Democrats on a defensive posture in negotiations by showing, once again, that we'll cave to any Republican demand, however dishonest or downright crazy. And it suggests that Joe Wilson was correct, when we all know that none of the bills that have passed committee extended coverage to illegals.
So why did they do it? What is the calculus?
I know I've become rather cynical in the last month or so. Watching some Democrats throwing away health reform with both fists has been frustrating. But I've seen this play before. Conservatives want proof of citizenship requirements in health reform for the same reason they want voter ID laws.
Because it chills participation.
The more difficult they can make it to participate; the more administrative requirements they can add; the more time consuming they can make the process; the fewer number of people will participate. Especially among those who most need to access public benefits -- these folks can't afford to take a day off work to go to some government office in their state's capital. Then another day off work to spend 8 hours on the phone getting a copy of their birth certificate. And another day off work while a friend or relative helps them fill out a stack of papers.
I live this story myself. I have two disabled children, and am entitled to benefits from the Division of Developmental Disabilities. They sent me the roughly 40 page application, along with the list of dozens of documents I have to produce. The paperwork has been sitting in my dining room for two years.
Remember welfare reform? Almost immediately upon enactment, Clinton's "reforms" cut millions of people from the welfare rolls. Some say it was because of the great economy -- all those single moms finally got good jobs! Not so. We simply dropped the half of enrollees who weren't up to battling the new bureaucracy. These are eligible families, not receiving benefits:
Why would eligible families forgo benefits? Several factors
have likely contributed to lower participation, including new
welfare program rules, greater perceived stigma among aid
recipients, wider variation in eligibility rules across public safety
net programs, and new eligibility rules for immigrants.
This is the secret of the "success" of welfare reform: Adding enough red tape that busy single moms are forced to give up. Have you ever known anyone on welfare? It's a full time job. Hours a day on the phone, almost daily appointments for meetings, trainings, and service requirements, and full days spent on buses to get back and forth between them because you don't have a car.
It's the same story with voter ID laws. The more administrative requirements you add, the less people will partcipate, period. It's one of the oldest and most trusted tactics in the effort to neuter public programs: Make. It. Hard.
Let's see how this would work with health reform. You're a busy single mom who would like to participate in the new insurance exchange, maybe even try the public option. There's a citizenship requirement. You don't have a driver's license, of course, because you've lived in the city all your life and don't have a car (as if you could even afford one). They take birth certificates, though. Great! But you have no idea where that is. So you call your mom. She hasn't seen it since you were 12 years old, and thinks it's probably lost. Ok, so you have to call someone to get another one. Who? City Hall? The Dept of Health and Human Services? What about the hospital? You call out sick from work, get out the Blue Pages, and get busy. You spend all day on the phone. You get disconnected at least a dozen times, get transferred to fax machines by a few receptionists, and manage to leave voice mails with a few other people (you're not sure who). You're hoping someone will call you back tomorrow, just to tell you who to call next. At the end of the day, you've gotten nowhere. How many days can you call out sick? What if you have to go somewhere in person? Can you get a sitter? So you decide to put this off until you have more time to deal with it. That time may never come.
As long as Blue Dogs have as their goal the weakening and/or delay of true health reform in this country, going back to "drill down again" into a made up issue that will allow them to add more administrative requirements for participants is AWESOME for them. They love it. And how nice that Joe Wilson gave them cover. It's not an attempt to screw around with the bill, you see. They're just responding to the concerns that are out there. They're being bipartisan.
And the worst part is they are guaranteed to win this. Can anyone actually stand up on the House floor and demand that stricter requirements not be included to exclude illegals? Does anyone have those kind of balls? Maybe, but don't hold your breath.