Looks like George and Yogi were right

It’s unlikely that philosopher George Santayana and the great Yankee catcher Yogi Berra ever knew one another. But they shared an understanding of human nature. Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and Yogi said, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”

The unnecessary, futile and poisonous battle in Washington over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling has begun in earnest. It will play out over the next month and will be eerily reminiscent of what occurred in 1995-96.

Shortly after his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton began his effort to enact comprehensive health care reform. He asked the first lady, Hillary Clinton, to lead the effort. She headed the task force that developed the legislation that promised universal health care.

The health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry were adamantly opposed to the legislation and destroyed it with a nationwide campaign of television ads featuring Harry and Louise, who dramatized the complexity of the plan and the dominant role of the federal government. By September 1994, the plan was dead. Its demise was assured by its stupefying complexity and red tape. The Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress, never brought the legislation to a vote.

Not only had the Clintons failed in their effort to enact health care reform, they had also sewn the seeds of a Republican renaissance on Capitol Hill. Exploiting the unpopularity of the Clinton’s failed health care reform proposal, the Republicans captured the House for the first time in 40 years and also regained control of the Senate. It was a Republican revolution, and it was led by the GOP’s firebrand from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, with his Contract with America. President Clinton was humbled and famously and inaccurately announced that “the era of big government is over.”

It didn’t take long for the battle lines to be drawn between the White House and the House Republicans. And they were drawn around federal spending and the debt ceiling. In late 1995, Clinton vetoed a spending bill that the Republican-controlled Congress had passed with spending cuts in Medicare, the environment and education.

In addition, the developing crisis also threatened to risk a default by the government as Congress threatened to refuse to raise the debt limit unless Clinton agreed to its proposed cuts to the federal budget. The impasse resulted in two government shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996 totaling 28 days.

The Republicans overplayed their hand by not recognizing the severity of the public’s opposition to the shutdown and the risk of default’s effect to the economy. Clinton exploited the House Republicans’ overreach to regain his standing with the public and to use that popularity in his successful effort to win a second term against Sen. Bob Dole later in 1996. Gingrich’s Republican revolution sputtered and died.

Most of the political class did not expect Barack Obama to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. But once he did, there was no doubt he would be elected in November. President George W. Bush’s dismal performance for the previous eight years guaranteed that, just as it had guaranteed the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006.

As Obama took the oath of office, the nation’s economy was in free fall. The failure of Lehman Brothers the previous September had made clear that something really scary, really bad had infected the economy.

But rather than reaching out to Congress on a bipartisan basis to address the failing economy, President Obama chose to make the enactment of health care reform his top priority. Having made that strategic, unforced error, he then made the matter far worse. He turned the job of writing the bill over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

We know what happened. The nation was torn in half as the debate over Obamacare became ever more bitter. The public did not and still does not understand Obamacare. No Republican voted for the bill. Obamacare and the way it was handled on the Hill poisoned the well for all ensuing legislation.

Opposition to the bill helped give birth to a political force that has haunted Obama and his legacy ever since the 2010 election — the tea party. The tea party has become Obama’s nemesis, and he is its father! It now controls the House Republican Caucus. Speaker John Boehner is its puppet.

Tea Partyers loathe Obama. They will stop at nothing to repeal Obamacare, and they are willing to shut down the government and/or refuse to raise the debt ceiling and incur default in order to get their way.

Those leading the charge, including especially Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, refuse to recognize the futility of their doomed effort. The lessons of 1995-96 are lost on them. It is always thus for zealots.

All of this has significance for the 2016 presidential contest. Don’t be surprised if the Republican contest for the nomination turns into a death struggle among Cruz, Libertarian Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. The one thing they have in common is that none of them will stand a chance against the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

In her inaugural address in 2017, she will announce that first husband Bill Clinton will head a task force to fix Obamacare! It’s deja vu all over again.

The Shadow welcomes comments.  Please contact me at:  EmailMe

A ‘new beginning'? Not quite

Note:   Second of a two-part series. Part one was published in the Sept. 8 edition and can be found at: Blue Ridge Now.

As Libya descended into chaos in 2011, the United States vacillated with respect to its role in removing Libya's strongman, Moammar Gadhafi. By October of that year, the Arab Spring revolt in Libya was victorious and Gadhafi was dead.

A year later, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered by terrorists at our consulate in Benghazi. The event created a firestorm of criticism directed at the State Department, then-Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House concerning what they did and did not do and say as this tragedy unfolded in the midst of the 2012 presidential election campaign.

On Jan. 23, 2013, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, Clinton failed to put the issue to rest. Instead, she shouted, "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?"

Pakistan

Pakistan is the world's sixth most populous nation. It is a catastrophe in the making. Its central government is notoriously weak. Its rogue intelligence service, the ISI, acts independently and has been allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan for decades. Radical Muslim clerics in Pakistan continue their efforts to subvert the central government, which has a nuclear arsenal of 50-100 warheads. Osama bin Laden took refuge in Pakistan until he was killed in 2011 by the United States.

Does anyone believe the ISI didn't know bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad less than one mile from the Pakistan's version of our West Point? Since bin Laden's death, America's relations with Pakistan have gone from bad to horrendous.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the United States is unable to project a coherent foreign policy in the Middle East because of the paralytic shadow that is cast upon the region and the American government by our ill-fated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Americans believe former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have little or nothing in common. History will prove that belief wrong in one critically important way, the monumental blunders of those two wars.

After 9/11, Bush took America to war in Afghanistan in order to deny al-Qaida the training ground it had used to attack America. No credible analyst doubted the prudence or necessity of that decision. By 2003, we were on the verge of victory in Afghanistan.

But instead of finishing the job, Bush embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq, even though there was clear evidence that Iraq had not been involved in the 9/11 attack. Having decided to attack Iraq, the Bush administration needed a rationale that could be sold to Congress and the American people. It chose to assert that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

It was an argument that carried the day politically but was false. But by then it was too late. America was locked in a no-win ground war in Iraq that cost hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars and thousands of needless deaths and injuries. When the war sputtered to a stalemated conclusion years later, the United States' blunder was obvious, and the victory that was within reach in Afghanistan in 2003 had vanished.

The fundamental purpose of war is to achieve clear and essential political objectives and outcomes, not simply to seize territory and win battles. From that perspective, the Iraq war, unnecessary from the outset, was a failure.

On Dec. 1, 2009, after seemingly endless meetings with his National Security Team, Obama addressed the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He announced the fateful decision he had made to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to say in advance when it would end. He said, "As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home."

Like Bush's pre-emptive war in Iraq, Obama's escalation in Afghanistan was a military and foreign policy blunder that undercut the effective projection of our vital interests throughout the Middle East. Just like it did in Iraq, this nation has invested hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars in a military adventure in a country that was not in 2009 a central training ground for al-Qaida and international terrorism. By then, al-Qaida had migrated to the Arabian Peninsula, Africa and Pakistan.

A recent study at Harvard by Linda Blimes now puts the costs of these two wars, including medical and disability costs, at $4 trillion to $6 trillion.

The Middle East is a seething and uncontrolled cauldron of ferment and antipathy toward this nation. The United States has less influence and less respect in the region that at any time in our history. That is the enduring legacy of Bush and Obama's combined arrogance and incompetence.

With regard to the president's proposal of a possible military strike against Syria, he miscalculated the mood of the American people, Congress and our allies. His behavior reminds us of the mayor of Doodyville, Phineas T. Bluster, a marionette dangling at the end of strings now being pulled by the Kremlin.

The "new beginning" Obama promised at Cairo University in 2009 is stillborn, its death shroud two lost wars. Obama will leave office just like his predecessor, resembling the philosophic Cheshire Cat in "Alice in Wonderland" — with nothing but a grin.

The Shadow's in the Kremlin watching Putin orchestrate Obama's volte-face, but Goldman can be reached at:  EmailMe.

Obama is trapped by his own red line

Obama is trapped by his own red line

Note:  Part one of a two-part series. Part two will be published Sept. 15.

Words matter, but they matter less when they are not accompanied by deeds that make them authentic.

Less than five months after taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama delivered a major address at Cairo University titled, "A New Beginning." It fulfilled a campaign promise that he had made to speak to Muslims. The speech was lengthy, eloquent, hopeful, and was closely followed not only by Muslims but throughout the world.

In it, the president said, "I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world ... [based on] principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."

As Congress now prepares to debate whether to support Obama's decision to launch a military strike to degrade Syria's capacity to use chemical weapons of mass destruction, it's time to take stock of the president's rhetoric at Cairo in 2009 and the standing of the U.S. in the Middle East today.

Syria

The civil war in Syria has been raging for two years. More than 100,000 Syrians have been killed, and more than 2 million Syrians have fled their homeland and are now in refugee camps in neighboring nations. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a physician, is a brutal dictator willing to use whatever force is necessary to maintain his control of the Syrian government and to subjugate its people.

A week ago, Obama stunned the world by delaying his military strike on Syria's capacity to make further use of poison gas against its own people. The delay is intended to give the administration time to seek approval of that strike from Congress, approval which Obama maintains is unnecessary.

But Obama's hand has been forced because he is cornered politically. The American people do not support the strike, nor do the United Nations, the Arab League or our most dependable ally, Great Britain. There is no assurance that such a military strike will be successful. More importantly, there is no clarity about whether such a strike will make the situation on the ground better or worse, and whether it might lead to a further escalation of American military involvement in Syria.

Obama is now trapped by the red line he unwisely drew two years ago. On Aug. 20, 2012, he stated, "We have been very clear to the Assad regime ... that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized." It is that inelegant statement that now has come back to haunt Obama.

The president now feels compelled to strike militarily given our intelligence assessment that Assad has used sarin gas on his own people. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the president has stated that such a strike is not intended to bring about regime change in Syria and that he believes such a change will be effected through diplomacy. That belief is a flight of fancy.

Regime change isn't going to happen as long as Assad has the strong support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, a dominant Islamic political and militant force in Lebanon, funded by Iran. Hezbollah fighters are in Syria assisting Assad's military.

It's obvious that the only way to effect regime change is to remove Assad, who Secretary of State John Kerry has called a murderer and a thug. Obama has authorized the use of drones for this type of "kill" operation in the Arabian Peninsula, in Africa and along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. It's past time to put Assad's name on a Hellfire missile, something the president has not been willing to do.

Israel

The United States has been the principal ally of the Jewish state since its founding in 1948. The American people will have it no other way. Yet, under the Obama administration, our relationship with Israel is at its nadir.

Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do not like and may not trust each other. Efforts at the creation of the two-state peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians have been deadlocked since Obama took office. If the United States cannot deter Iran from its obsession to acquire nuclear weapons, Israel will not hesitate to take military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Iran

The United States and Iran have been at each other's throat since the Iran hostage crisis in the late 1970s. The current crisis is driven by Iran's clear intention and long-standing program to acquire nuclear weapons. Topping the list of Iran's enemies is the Jewish state of Israel.

The United States has led the effort to impose sanctions on Iran in the hope that such sanctions will deter Iran from its effort to acquire nuclear weapons. The sanctions have exacted a punishing toll on Iran and its people. However, they have not caused Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons capability.

Egypt

The Egypt that existed under Hosni Mubarak when Obama delivered his speech at Cairo University in 2009 is no more. Since then, the United States has stood helplessly on the sidelines as Egypt installed a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has now been deposed in a coup led by the Egyptian military.

Our relationship with Egypt has disintegrated. America can't even determine whether we should continue to provide Egypt's military with $1.5 billion in military assistance annually.

The Shadow's in Libya preparing next Sunday's column, but Goldman can be reached at: EmailMe.

There's an IPAB in your future

There's an IPAB in your future

For all of the years that I was privileged to serve as the staff director of the Senate Health Subcommittee, our No. 1 legislative priority was the enactment of Chairman Edward Kennedy's national health insurance bill. Back in those days, health care reform was known as national health insurance (NHI).

We never were able to get the bill passed. We were trapped, like all the other senators who had competing NHI bills, in that we all had enough political strength to block any competing bill but not enough political support to pass our bill. This, of course, was the political impasse that hamstrung the enactment of any such bill until Obamacare became law on March 23, 2010.

For the record, I have been a tireless and unwavering advocate for genuine health care reform since 1971. During the lengthy, bitter and divisive consideration of Obamacare, I advocated that health care reform could best be achieved by extending the 50-year old Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to all Americans on a pay-as-you-go basis.

It is the nation's largest health insurance program. It is funded and administered by the federal government, but the insurance coverage is provided by private commercial insurers or HMOs. All of its participants get to choose their own insurer, doctor and hospital. Thus, it is a successful public/private partnership. Good luck trying to find any one of its millions of participants who is dissatisfied with it.

But President Barack Obama and his Democrat allies on the Hill unwisely chose a different path. It was a path that divided Washington and the nation. It was a path that forced them to sell out to the powerful health care industry in order to get the votes to pass Obamacare. It's a path that loads an additional 30 million uninsured Americans on the USS Health Care Titanic with no additional life preservers or life boats. Maybe you call that health care reform. It's not.

But whether you love Obamacare or hate it, there's something buried deep within it you need to know about: IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which, when created, will cut Medicare spending. This new, 15-member government agency was authorized by sections 3403 and 10320 of Obamacare. Its principal job is to cut Medicare expenditures without affecting quality, coverage or the use of rationing. Are you kidding me?

Medicare currently serves about 50 million Americans, and the number is growing rapidly. The baby boomers began to reach age 65 two years ago. By 2029, all 77 million of them will have reached age 65 and be eligible for Medicare. Current Medicare spending is about $600 billion annually. It is projected to rise to $1 trillion by 2022, and the Medicare trustees, in their annual report in the spring, stated that the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will become insolvent by 2026. According to the U.S. Debt Clock, Medicare's liability is currently estimated to be more than $86 trillion — that's trillion.

Somehow the IPAB is supposed to fix all of this. It can't be done painlessly, if at all. But even if it could, there are other aspects of the IPAB that raise monumental problems. A thoughtful and thought-provoking column in The Wall Street Journal on June 19 by David Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley makes the argument that the IPAB threatens not just Medicare but also the Constitution's doctrine of separation of powers and due process.

The provisions of Obamacare that create the IPAB ensure that the board will not be subject to administrative or judicial review. In addition, once the IPAB's members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they will be insulated. They can only be removed for "neglect of duty or malfeasance in office."

In addition, Rivkin and Foley point out that once the board acts, Congress' ability to overrule its actions is extremely limited and requires supermajority votes. If the board were to fail to make the required Medicare reductions, the law provides a fail-safe mechanism. Under those circumstances, all of the board's power would revert to the secretary of Health and Human Services.

Rivkin and Foley wrote, "This wholesale transfer of power is at odds with the Constitution's separation-of-powers architecture that protects individual liberty by preventing an undue aggregation of government power in a single entity."

The authors also point out that the IPAB is also "encouraged to make rules ‘related' to Medicare." "Related to Medicare" is a loophole through which an 18-wheeler could be driven.

For example, Rivkin and Foley suggest the board could require providers to make available certain services without payment, or it could require insurers and/or providers to make abortion services available, or any other requirement the board deems necessary.

Finally, they conclude that "the Independent Payment Advisory Board isn't a typical executive agency. It's a new beast that exercises both executive and legislative power but can't be controlled by either branch. Seniors and providers hit hardest by the board's decisions will have nowhere to turn for relief — not Congress, not the president, not the courts."

By the way, why is there no IPAB for Medicaid? Like Medicare, its costs are enormous and out of control, and Obamacare will expand it significantly. Perhaps the answer is driven by political correctness — IPAB-ing Medicaid would have made Obama and the Democrats vulnerable to a bogus charge of discrimination.

The Shadow's sweating none of this, he's ageless and has never been sick, but Goldman can be reached at:  EmailMe.