Why we can't give any ground to the Koch brothers on health care, argues E. J. Dionne Jr.

Ideology is as much about understanding the past as shaping the future. And conservatives tell themselves a story, a fairy tale really, about the past, about the way the world was and can be again under Republican policies. This story is about the way people were able to insure themselves against the risks inherent in modern life. Back before the Great Society, before the New Deal, and even before the Progressive Era, things were better. Before government took on the role of providing social insurance, individuals and private charity did everything needed to insure people against the hardships of life; given the chance, they could do it again. . . .

But this conservative vision of social insurance is wrong. It’s incorrect as a matter of history; it ignores the complex interaction between public and private social insurance that has always existed in the United States. It completely misses why the old system collapsed and why a new one was put in its place. It fails to understand how the Great Recession displayed the welfare state at its most necessary and that a voluntary system would have failed under the same circumstances. Most importantly, it points us in the wrong direction. . . .

[F]uture endeavors will require a greater, not lesser, role for the public. . . .

-- Mike Konczak, from "The Voluntarism Fantasy," in
the Spring 2014 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas

"Say what you will about the Koch brothers: They fully understand the long-term importance of the health-care battle. Supporters of indispensable government programs must be as shrewd and as committed as they are."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr. in his Washington Post column
today, "The next-health-care debate"

by Ken

It's a good guess that the Koch brothers, and in particular Charles K, by all accounts the brains of the operation, aren't too happy about the extent to which they have become part of the story of the health-care battle, among others. Of course, as anyone who has gotten the messsage about their political operations knows, the story is only beginning to catch up with the reality.

It's also a good guess, then, that Charles was especially unthrilled by the recent New York Times piece by Carl Hulse and Ashley Parker, "Koch Group, Spending Freely, Hones Attack on Government." Not least because that piece is actually getting some attention. Oh, it's only a drop in the bucket compared with the ritual right-wing rah-rah-ing of the bulk of the Infotainment Noozemedia, which continues to insist that Americans don't know or care who these Koch brothers are; all they care about is the evil of Obamacare -- and, oh yes, all other government programs.

As Greg Sargent put it the other day in a "Morning Plum" post, "The real goal of all those anti-Obamacare ads," drawing on the NYT team's look at the spending of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch's chief propaganda arm, "Previously, AFP’s stated aim had been nothing more than repealing Obamacare. But the Times notes that these ads are really about turning people against government as a positive agent of change for ordinary Americans."

For the Kochs, remember, extreme right-wing ideology translates pretty directly into gazillions of smackeroos. Because the more they can persuade gullible Americans that government is their enemy, the more their enterprises can suck more and more billions and trillions of dollars out of the U.S. economy. Is it any wonder that LA Sen. David Vitter, the living embodiment of human degradation and corruption, hails the brothers as "two of the most patriotic Americans in the history of the earth" -- an encomium that doesn't become a lot less problematic even if we assume that he's referring to the mere 6000-year biblical history of the earth.

It's impossible to begin to count how much -- in purely dollar terms -- it could mean to the Koch brothers if they can hornswoggle Americans into thinking that it's they who represent Americans' interests. It has been suggested, for example, that the brothers have their eyes on any future debates about climate change, or any other aspect of energy policy that might stand in the way of the stupendous profits they're reaping from their massive energy-industry holdings.

Of course it's not all that difficult to make the case that the government doesn't, but government can at least be made to take ordinary Americans' interests into consideration. And Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. took up the argument today ("The next health-care debate"), arguing:

The ACA is worthy of defense on its merits because it begins solving problems that Americans have always wanted solved. These include outlawing discrimination against those with preexisting conditions and doing away with the fears of those who could never afford coverage or temporarily lost it during hard times.

But a larger principle is at stake, too.

And here he evokes the NYT piece.

The Koch effort, Hulse and Parker wrote, is "not confined to hammering away" at the ACA. "They are also trying to present the law as a case study in government ineptitude to change the way voters think about the role of government for years to come."

The underlying fight is thus over social insurance approaches that have been part of the fabric of American life since the progressive era and the New Deal. If opponents of the ACA can discredit it, they can move on to demonize other necessary public programs -- and undercut arguments for further government efforts to ease inequalities and injustices.

The right-wing agenda here, E.J. notes, "This agenda is rooted in the idea that the United States was better off in pre-progressive days when it relied on private and community charity to deal with social problems and economic upheavals," and he cites, as "one of the best summaries of this thinking," "a speech last fall by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) at the Heritage Foundation."

Highlighting the work of "voluntary civil society," Lee claimed that progressives who favor government programs "do not trust individuals to join together voluntarily and organically to improve each other's lives and meet common challenges."

"BUT HISTORY IS NOT ON THE SIDE OF THIS VIEW"

No kidding, E.J.! History is not on the side of this view. This is, it seems to me, a favorite tactic of fake-revisionist right-wing "history," which is sort of history without the, you know, history.

If, for example, you manage to forget, or better still never learn, the incredibly difficult -- and, yes, violent -- struggle of the labor movement to achieve a modicum of workers' due from the skyrocketing profits being pocketed by the people who controlled the economic levers, then it's possible for you to believe the utter delusion that those people yielded up that share out of the goodness of their hearts, or in response to "market forces," rather than in response to compulsion from organized labor.

If you've never experienced the situation where workers are at the mercy of management backed up by the entire power structure including the owned (or rented) government, and you've been brainwashed to view the present situation with blinders on, you can imagine that the plutocrats are the "earners" and the people who do the work are "takers." It's a belief that should land you in a loony bin, and in a sense that's where you are: the loony bin of American political discourse.

Similarly, when it comes to health care and all our other social progams, if you have no experience of what life was like without them -- not even reading Dickens novels -- then it's possible for you to imagine that a bunch of loafers want to get sumpin' for nuttin' and take it out of the pockets of hard-working American citizens.

Anyway, it's at this point that E.J. turns to the piece from Democracy, "The Voluntarism Fantasy," which -- thanks to his tip-off -- I've quoted from at the top of this post. E.J.'s take:

[H]istory is not on the side of this view, argues Mike Konczal, a fellow with the Roosevelt Institute. Even on its own terms, the argument ignores how government programs in fact strengthen civil society. They enable private charity "to respond with targeted and nimble aid for individuals and communities, rather than shouldering the huge, cumbersome burden of alleviating the income insecurities of a modern age."

In a new article in the journal Democracy (I chair its editorial committee), Konczal notes that our social insurance and welfare programs arose precisely because private charity utterly failed during the Great Depression. It's no criticism of their good work to note that charities run into trouble when help is most needed. This happened again during the Great Recession. Charitable giving, Konczal notes, fell 7 percent in 2008 and another 6.2 percent in 2009, even as state and local governments were also cutting back.

And most charitable giving simply isn't directed to our society's less fortunate. Konczal cites the finding of Indiana University's Center for Philanthropy that "only one-third of charitable giving actually goes to the poor." National initiatives for economic security fill the gaps and keep the economy going when incomes lag.

A just society, Konczal concludes, demands an energetic government response to "the Four Horsemen of accident, illness, old age and joblessness."

Which leads to E.J.'s concluding "tribute" to the Kochs, the call to battle that I also quoted up top:

Say what you will about the Koch brothers: They fully understand the long-term importance of the health-care battle. Supporters of indispensable government programs must be as shrewd and as committed as they are.

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