Last week, President Barack Obama tried to change the message on the healthcare debate. As the American public has grown more skeptical of the President’s agenda, Obama’s team has tried to retake the initiative in the media and part of that was Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. However, during Obama’s speech when he said that illegal immigrants would not receive coverage in his healthcare plan he was interrupted with a shout of “You lie!” by Joe Wilson, a Republican representative from South Carolina. For anyone who has not seen the video, it is worth a look just to see Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s facial expression after the incident.
Wilson’s remarks started a political firestorm. Some have argued that his actions demonstrate everything that is wrong with the Republican Party. Others have argued that there must be something bad in the water in South Carolina, where Republican Governor Mark Sanford is trying to fight off impeachment by January. Then there are those who believe Wilson did the right thing in standing up to Obama and calling him to task for a lack of enforcement mechanisms in healthcare legislation to keep illegal immigrants from getting coverage.
Considering that healthcare is a central tenet of Barack Obama’s domestic agenda and that the Republican Party is hoping to regain control of the House in 2010, it is important that we look at the Joe Wilson incident this week. To do so, this brief will break down the incident in two ways. First, we will look at the issue that raised Wilson’s ire: the coverage of illegal immigrants in the healthcare legislation before Congress. And second, we will look at the political fallout from Wilson’s outburst and if it works more in favor of Democrats or Republicans.
Coverage for Illegals
Although the issue does not receive as much attention as 2005 or 2006, illegal immigration is still a concern among conservative and independent Americans. These concerns still attract significant attention from voters in the American Southwest. A poll taken by the Mesa Independent Examiner in Arizona found that 51% of voters there were more concerned about illegal immigration than they were about healthcare. The issue of comprehensive immigration reform, which may include another amnesty component that was present in 1986, will likely emerge next year because Obama has told Mexican President Felipe Calderon that is when he plans to make a push for that legislation before Congress.
Wilson’s outburst, which widely criticized for violating the rules of the House where members are never supposed to accuse each other of lieing, has distracted from the Obama administration’s push on healthcare reform. Instead of being able to discuss the entire issue of reform, many commentators are centering on the proposals and how well they keep illegal immigrants from joining a national insurance scheme. Conservatives allege that you cannot demand that everyone in the United States has health insurance and yet leave illegal immigrants out of the system. They argue that this will lead to additional taxpayer funded benefits for illegal immigrants.
According to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly ten million of the uninsured population are not citizens of the United States. The problem with this figure, though, is that not all of these people are illegal immigrants. Students from other countries and workers here on a temporary basis are also included in that statistic. In 2007 the Census Bureau estimated that 6.1 million illegal immigrants lack healthcare and that they were three times more likely to be uninsured than the average American. Economists point out that this is not a surprise since illegal immigrants tend to work in service professions that pay low wages and that do not carry healthcare benefits.
Republicans have demanded that the language in any healthcare legislation contain enforcement mechanisms that will prevent illegal immigrants from receiving government healthcare benefits. Some Democrats have expressed a willingness to tighten current rules, such as Senator Chuck Schumer of New York who favors making legal immigrants wait five years before receiving healthcare benefits. The big problem is that there is current no official version of Obama’s healthcare plan and there are five conflicting bills, one in the House and four in the Senate.
Since the House is where we have one official version of a healthcare bill, and since it will have to be reconciled with whatever comes out of the Senate in committee, it can be looked at specifically on the illegal immigration issue. Although Democrats have argued that the legislation does not allow illegal immigrants to get benefits, Republican point to two amendments they tried to insert into the legislation that were rejected by Democratic leaders that would have made people provide some form of citizenship verification to receive benefits. For example, this verification could be done with Social Security numbers. Democrats have traditionally argued that they oppose such mechanisms because they prevent Americans, notably those who are poor, from accessing benefits and worry that it will be used to deny them coverage. The defeat of two amendments on the House healthcare bill is likely what prompted Wilson’s outburst towards Obama.
In the Senate, politicians seem to be more responsive to concerns about illegal immigration. The Senate Finance Committee of Max Baucus (D-Montana) is said to be favoring language that would require people to provide Social Security identification to receive benefits. Due to the Senate being more conservative than their House counterparts, it is possible that they could have legislation that is tougher on illegals, but keep in mind that during a conference to settle the two bills the Senate could have its enforcement mechanisms stripped out.
Political Fallout
Long-time observers of Congress note that Wilson’s outburst was inappropriate and was the wrong forum to express his negative views about the President’s plan. Liberal commentators likened it to the nasty town halls that occurred across the country while conservatives, but not all, rejected his behavior while still saying that his opposition to Obama’s ideas is completely justified. Republicans have liked to point to some of President Bush’s addresses to Congress during his term where he was booed by some members over his justifications for the Patriot Act and techniques in the war on terrorism. However, it needs to be noted that no Democrat interrupted Bush’s speech by calling him a liar.
Of most immediate consequence is Joe Wilson himself. Shortly after the speech, Wilson phoned President Obama and offered his apology, although as of the writing of this topic brief he refuses to apologize again on the House floor. As a result of this he may be criticized in a House resolution courtesy of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland). This would do little than continue to call attention to Wilson’s actions and keep the story in the media for a few days, though. Wilson won his House seat with 54% of the vote in 2008 and is a five-term House member. His challenger in the 2010 midterms, Rob Miller, is the same person he defeated for his House seat in 2008. After Wilson’s outburst, Miller claims to have raised over $1 million. Wilson has now claimed that he has raised roughly the same amount from supporters and has hired a new media team. Democratic activists would love nothing more than to punish Wilson by costing him his House seat, but whether that will happen or not is unknown. While people in Wilson’s district likely disapprove of his actions, South Carolina is arguably one of the most conservative states in the country and is always a prime conservative battleground in the Republican presidential nomination process. Also, Wilson’s behavior fits in line with other South Carolinians who have been bullish in their behavior with the federal government. In 1832, the state said it had the right to nullify federal laws. In 1856, Representative Preston Brooks famously attacked Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane over the issue of slavery. In 1861, it fired the shots on Ft. Sumter that began the Civil War. In 1957, then-Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond gave the longest filibuster in Senate history against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, lasting over 24 hours. As you can see, South Carolina representatives have always been a different breed of politician and it is uncertain whether Wilson’s constituents will see his actions as deplorable or if he will be seen as a hero of conservative causes.
The Democrats also may not want to charge too aggressively against Wilson because it may reflect poorly on their party and agenda. One of the major hurdles with the healthcare legislation is that there is no defined healthcare bill. Political pundits, while complimenting Obama on his speech last week, have consistently indicated that there is not one healthcare bill to evaluate. This vagueness has been part of the problem with the Obama team selling its agenda to the American people. Wilson’s comments may have caused Americans to zone in specifically on the illegal immigration issue and that is an issue that does not favor Democrats in test polls. Therefore, continued focus on Wilson may make American’s look more suspiciously at the overall healthcare bill, which does not help the reform effort.
Also, focusing on Wilson’s behavior might cause renewed attention on some of the Democrats own internal ills. For example, Charlie Rangel of New York, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is engulfed in a tax evasion scandal. Despite this, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have been loathe to criticize Rangel or ask him to step down from his chairmanship, which House Minority Leader John Boehner had asked him to do in a letter last week. Rangel’s power is due to his millions of dollars in campaign contributions to other Democrats. However, moralizing in politics is always dangerous and for Democrats they may be playing with fire against Wilson.
The larger issue Wilson’s behavior brings into focus is political hostility on Capitol Hill. Partisanship has increased over the last several decades, but attention to it by commentators is likely due to our 24/7 media cycle where more Americans can see how partisan their members of Congress act. Due to gerrymandered districts, politicians worry less and less about re-election if they can win their party’s primary and that tends to let the extreme liberal and conservative bases dominate the discussion in Washington despite more Americans leaning towards pragmatism and more independent stances. Therefore, Wilson’s outburst may serve as the rallying cry or looked to in the future as a moment when people realized more political reform is needed in Washington D.C. Unfortunately, though, strong electoral reform to decrease partisanship in Washington D.C. is nothing but a pipedream right now.