Is the Ice Melting On Our Resistance To A Healthier, More Equitable Society?

 

I will reveal a secret. I frequently don’t have a vision of what will be in these notes until I can decide on the picture in the header for the post. The picture often helps me pull the idea together. If a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps a good picture does more than orient me, I hope that it can add value for the reader. Often the pictures I chose are obviously associated with the words in the text. Less often, as is true today, I hope the picture will be a metaphor for what lies below it. I want the picture to add a deeper “feel” for the subject. This week is an extreme example of the points that I will be trying to make about the remarkably powerful social and financial bills that President Biden is producing for Congress to consider.

 

Our government has been virtually frozen for at least the last two years since the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. Many would argue that the legislative function of the government has been frozen since Newt Gingrich became the speaker of the House in 1994 running on his “Contract For Ameirca.”

 

The core Republican strategy since Gingrich reclaimed the House for Republicans after they had been in the minority for over 40 years has been to implement Ronald Reagan’s concept that the best government is the least possible government. Reagan summed up this philosophy that has been at the core of the Republican strategy when he dramatically told the nation, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” 

 

In the wake of Gingrich and Reagan, the “Tea Party” movement and the performance of Senate Republicans under Mitch McConnell with his use of the filibuster have made bills that improve the environment, reduce discrimination, restore voting rights, and improve the social safety net almost impossible to pass. To be fair, once the Democrats regained control of the House in 2016 they used the same powers to thwart President Trump’s initiatives to further unwind the existing social programs that still existed. 

 

Almost all proposals for social legislation, except the ACA which was passed using the “budget reconciliation option,” that might allow the government to address inequities, lift people out of poverty with improvements in the social determinants of health, and address the many issues that are associated with the various forms of oppression tolerated by minorities have gone down to defeat. Closely tied to this conservative strategy of limiting government and deconstructing existing federal programs have been efforts to disenfranchise many voters by gerrymandering congressional districts, and districts for representation in the legislative bodies within the states. The result has been that for almost forty years we have made negligible investments in people or in infrastructure. 

 

But, I should return to my “metaphor.” The picture is of Little Lake Sunapee and the northern sky as seen from my backyard yesterday evening around 6 PM. It was a chilly evening. The temperature had been in the high forties for most of the day and there had been a brisk wind out of the Northeast for most of the afternoon that made it feel colder than it was. 

 

Over the last two weeks, the lake has been slowly melting. It is a very dynamic process when you consider that about three weeks ago the ice was probably more than twenty inches thick and I expect, based on the forecast for the week, that we will be completely free of ice by the weekend. The melt is not one continuous process but a two steps forward one step back sort of thing with unexpected surprises in between as the inevitable outcome is approached. 

 

Let me state the obvious. Congress has been frozen for a long time. I hope that the elections of 2016 and 2020 have been the beginning of a “thaw,” But the fast melt that many hoped would be achieved with decisive victories in the House and Senate did not occur. Things in our frozen government have “thawed” a little but there is still a lot of ice in Washington. 

 

All day Easter Sunday, I could hear the ice “moaning.” I had no appreciation for the symphony of sounds that come from the ice on a lake until I lived by one. I hope you click on the link and read the short explanation for what I call the ice’s song. 

 

The lake usually melts from the shore out. The melt is a back and forth process. There is melting along the shoreline when the temp is in the fifties during the day, but as was true this week when the nighttime temp drops into the high teens or low twenties a thin transparent film of ice reforms between the shoreline and the thicker ice further out from shore. 

 

Nothing speeds the process like warm rain. Any rain creates an intense cloud of fog over the lake. Early Monday morning our temp was in the low twenties and there was a thin sheet of ice connecting the shoreline to the thicker ice further out. By eleven AM, I could see about 75 yards of clear water from my shore to the edge of the ice. It is easy to see in the picture that during the afternoon the wind out of the northeast had pushed “islands” of ice back into my shore. Looking at the forecast for the rest of the week I think all of the ice will be gone by the end of the week which is fine with me because April 15 is the beginning of the trout fishing season. 

 

You might reject my metaphor because the ice does finally melt every year. I would counter with two observations. First, the picture showing ice and water interacting is a good metaphor for the current moment in Congress. Second, I am hopeful that it will not be long before all of the ice in Washington will be gone. Remember the vision of the arc of history, it bends toward justice. Ronald Reagan sent us off down a dead-end road with his defiant proclamation that, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” I believe that government does have the ability to improve the lives of people and totally agree with the concept that Hubert Humphrey espoused when he said, 

 

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

 

Our government has flunked that test or at best gotten a C- over the last forty years. I am forever stamped by my mother’s admonition that, “You can’t do wrong and get by!” I think that applies to societies as well as to individuals. For the last half-century, we have gradually intensified our efforts to mistreat vulnerable populations based on the lie that private charity and a tide that would lift all boats was coming from the private sector. I would argue that the pandemic has removed the last shred of possibility that that self-serving idea was correct. We face a future on an endangered planet that is populated more than ever by people living in a bimodal economic environment that shows more and more wealth going to fewer and fewer people. It is time to complete the thaw. We all know that in time my lake will freeze again and there is an oscillation in history that suggests that in time our political processes will also freeze again. I plan to make the most of the warmth that I expect this summer and I hope that collectively we will make the most of the thaw that may be coming in Washington.

 

There has been a little bit of a thaw in Washington since I began working on this piece yesterday.  When I began writing I did not know that Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough had ruled that the Democrats could use “reconciliation” more than once in a fiscal year. Prior to that ruling, I could not imagine how Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden could get anything like the “American Jobs Act” through the Senate. Schumer had used the reconciliation process to get all of the 1.9 trillion American Recovery Act, but the $15 minimum wage, passed with the narrowest margin possible. In last Friday’s post, I had argued that without the reconciliation process this new 2.3 trillion dollar infrastructure bill was in trouble unless the Democrats took the enormous step of greatly modifying or canceling the filibuster. 

 

In that same post, I tried to convince you that these bills would be substantial advancements in our efforts to improve the social determinants of health. Since then the American Hospital Association has joined the analysis to extend the concept of “infrastructure” to hospitals. There is some historical rationalization that can be used to call hospitals and healthcare necessary infrastructure. The Hill-Burton Act built thousands of community hospitals across the country almost simultaneously with the building of the Interstate Highway system. The president has launched a vigorous process to “sell” his redefinition of infrastructure. Republicans have already attached the idea as a perversion of the definition of infrastructure which they would limit to not much more than roads and bridges. They would certainly not consider improving in-home nursing care as “infrastructure.” It is a relief to know that because of the newly found ability to use “reconciliation” ten Republican votes may not be necessary to pass this bill. I would still suggest that you spend some time trying to understand this remarkable proposal. I would direct you to the paper released by The White House. The American Hospital Association may want a more explicit description of healthcare as infrastructure and I agree, but I see healthcare and the reduction of healthcare disparities in almost every section of the White House paper. 

 

Before we get too excited let me dampen my own hopes a little. It may be true that not every item in the American Jobs Act will qualify for reconciliation. Remember how the $15 dollar minimum wage was left out of the “Rescue” Act.  Republicans will try to argue that the bulk of this bill does not qualify for reconciliation. It is also true that every Democratic senator must stay in line. That gives tremendous power to Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, or to any other Democrat who wants leverage for some pet issue. The narrow margins make President Biden’s continuing efforts to gain public support for the bill crucial 

 

I am still in favor of modifying or doing away with the filibuster. In my mind, the two most important bills before Congress are HR1, The “For The People Act” and The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, and neither bill could survive a Republican filibuster. The John Lewis bill would reverse the damage that the Supreme Court did in 2013 to the original voter rights act, and HR1, the For the People Act, establishes equities in voting that would level the playing field for every voter in Ameirca. HR1 would curtail gerrymandering and assure access to the ballot for every voter. Both of these bills are vigorously opposed by Republicans because they would eliminate the ability to harm the voting rights of minorities as the recently passed election bill in Georgia has done.  Without fair elections, a short summer of progress and an early return to winter-like “frozen” Congress is likely to occur soon. It seems pretty obvious that Republicans are convinced that their future is compromised for a long time if they allow fair elections. 

 

I have been surprised to see TV ads in my state asking voters to contact both of our senators to register an objection to HR1. There is no question that we are engaged in a long-term struggle between those whose views would curtail the ability of minorities to vote, and those who would ameliorate the injustices in this country that perpetuate healthcare disparities and simultaneously believe that every person is entitled to the support they need to be healthy and live a productive life.

 

I am not an advocate for a “welfare state” that undermines personal initiative. I don’t want a “nanny state” or thinly veiled communism, but I am an advocate for equal opportunity for every American. We are still a long way from the justice that would create the dream that Martin Luther King, Jr. described so long ago. I urge you not to be complacent, there will be a tighter arc toward justice if we all join our voices in calling for it. Without your involvement “the ice” will form again before much can be accomplished.