obamacare

A theory of Presidential lying (part 1)

First of all, fuck PolitiFact. Facts are binary. Politics are manifold.

All politicians lie. And usually, when politicians lie, what they lie about is the necessity, rationale or purpose of some public policy that they support. Particularly when a President lies, the only citizens who get angry are those who disagree with the policy—the policy whose actual necessity, rationale or purpose the lies are intended to keep hidden. Citizens, and especially political elites, who agree with the policy implicitly endorse the President’s lies as necessary to convince an unsophisticated, insufficiently farsighted, or selfish public.

Two examples:

  • Bush: “Saddam Hussein has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.”
  • Obama: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

Elite supporters of the Iraq invasion and Obamacare, respectively, knew that the President was lying, but cared more about getting the policy enacted than they cared about the truth. This was because the necessity, rationale or purpose of the policy, from the elite supporters’ perspective, was fundamentally not a necessity, rationale or purpose that could be sold to the American public. Citizens, by and large, were uninterested in sending our troops to the Middle East to eliminate a potentially threatening (but for the moment purely local) tyrant, just as they were uninterested in sacrificing their own privileges in order to provide all Americans with universal health insurance coverage. In both cases, the President’s elite supporters had a more “enlightened” view, but one that dared not speak its name.

A President tells whoppers because political elites want him to tell whoppers, as a means of enacting a policy they support. And this drives opponents of the President’s policy crazy, not least because the lies do the job of convincing the public and, instead of the President being punished for lying, the lies only make him appear more successful. The President’s policy may ultimately fail, but usually not because the President lied about its necessity, rationale or purpose. More often, it’s because the policy’s actual, hidden necessity, rationale or purpose—the perspective of the President’s elite supporters—itself turns out to be wrong or unachievable in practice.

The Iraq invasion failed because we were not, in fact, greeted as liberators. It didn’t matter that Saddam wasn’t really trying to produce nuclear weapons. If Obamacare fails, it will be because large numbers of disadvantaged Americans continue to have inadequate health insurance coverage. It won’t matter that those insured prior to Obamacare really weren’t able to keep their plan of choice.

My conclusion: political lying—at least at the Presidential level—is not only costless, but greatly enhances a President’s rhetorical and persuasive powers in a deeply divided country. It also works to the manifest advantage of political elites. But then again, what doesn’t?

Good textualism vs. bad textualism

Around here, the reaction to President Obama’s speech at the Catholic Health Association conference a couple of days ago, where the President called out the “cynicism” underlying the petitioners’ claims in King v. Burwell – being the second attempt by die-hard Obamacare opponents to recruit five willing executioners on the Supreme Court – was nothing short of hysterical.  In addition to the usual attacks on the President’s disrespect for the rule of law and Nietzschean impulses, there was renewed finger-wagging to the effect that the language in dispute is not a “a drafting error or a typo” but rather stands on its own as wholly dispositive of the matter at hand.

So, while we wait for the ruling to come down, let’s read the amicus curiae brief filed by Eskridge, et al., and see statutory interpretation done as God and Oliver Wendell Holmes intended.  The introduction and summary of argument:

The court of appeals held that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not prohibit the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from providing tax credits to individuals who purchase health insurance on exchanges created by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Petitioners challenge that conclusion on the sole ground that seven words in 26 U.S.C. § 36B – “established by the State under section 1311” – foreclose tax credits on HHS-created exchanges. The text, they say, is clear, so by holding otherwise, the court below elevated statutory purpose over statutory text.

But this is not, as Petitioners suggest, a case about textualism vs. purposivism. It is a case about good textual analysis vs. bad textual analysis. Textualism does not require courts to read statutory provisions in a vacuum. To the contrary, it is a “fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.” FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 133 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). By focusing exclusively on Section 36B’s seven words in isolation, Petitioners violate textualism’s core tenets and adopt an interpretation that would nullify the Act as a whole.

Modern textualism developed as a response to purposivism, which held that the letter of the law must yield to legislative “intent.” A search for legislative intent, textualists have explained, violates the constitutionally prescribed process of bicameralism and presentment: The only “law” to interpret is the text of a statute passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president. By combing the legislative history for indicia of legislative intent, moreover, purposivist analysis risks substituting judicial judgment for the judgment of Congress. Thus, by focusing on the text of a statute – rather than on ethereal notions of legislative “intent” – textualism cabins judicial discretion, respects legislative supremacy in the policymaking process, and renders the interpretive process more predictable.

But textualism is not hyperliteralism, and textualists do not read the words of a statute in a vacuum. To the contrary, “reasonable statutory interpretation must account for both ‘the specific context in which … language is used’ and ‘the broader context of the statute as a whole.’” Utility Air Regulatory Grp. v. EPA, 134 S. Ct. 2427, 2442 (2014) (quoting Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 341 (1997)). Thus, a statutory phrase that has one apparent meaning when read in isolation may have a different meaning when read in the context of the statute as a whole.

See more…

King v. Burwell – place bets gentlemen

Before oral arguments even begin this morning, I’m going to go way the hell out on a limb and predict the final outcome.

It will be 5-4 in favor of the government.   Either (i) Roberts will write the opinion of the Court, joined by Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor, or (ii) there will be no majority opinion, with Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas on one side, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor on the other, and Roberts siding with the government but writing only for himself.  There is a slight possibility that Kennedy would join a majority opinion, leaving Roberts free to hang with the boys, but I’m counting on him to flake out with a literalist approach to the statutory language.

I take it as a given that Chevron deference to agency interpretation is a dead letter with the Court’s right wing, at least when the agency is the IRS and a Democrat is in the White House.  But the more interesting discussion – which I expect to dominate today’s argument – is around Constitutional federalism and the Pennhurst doctrine, basically the idea that if Congress is going to place conditions on States’ entitlement to federal funding, it had better do so clearly and unambiguously, sort of like an “actual notice” requirement.  Whatever else those four words in 26 U.S.C. § 36B may mean to a committed textualist, no one can seriously claim that Section 36B put States on Pennhurst-worthy notice that they would lose Obamacare subsidies if they didn’t set up their own exchanges.  But since Alito, Scalia and Thomas have given up on being serious, that is probably what they will in fact claim.

Again assuming that Kennedy joins the nihilists, I think Roberts will use Pennhurst to thread the needle, prevent a humanitarian disaster and, once again, be the lonely steward of the Court’s reputation.  His one-man opinion will uphold the IRS regulations, essentially by saying that if the IRS had instead withheld Obamacare subsidies from states that didn’t set up their own exchanges, it would have violated principles of Constitutional federalism under Pennhurst.  The four liberal Justices may join Roberts’ opinion (making it an opinion of the Court), but I think it’s at least as likely that they will write their own opinion, basically on Chevron or general “don’t waste my time with this nonsense” grounds.  The main reason I think that may happen is because Roberts will go a little too far with his Pennhurst logic in an attempt to snatch a conservative victory from the jaws of Obamacare defeat, and try to sneak in a brand new way for States to challenge federal mandates.  (That federalism stuff is dangerous, I tell you.)  So Roberts will be on his own, much as he was with his taxing power argument in NFIB v. Sebelius.

Well.  Now I’m feeling exposed.  Still, I hope I’m right.  All this nifty argumentation aside, if the challengers win this one, with full knowledge of how many people will die as a direct result, they’re not just vandals – they’re terrorists.