D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April 2010
The Teague Plague
Rep. Harry Teague is bad for our health.
Unlike Will Rogers, who never met a man he didn't like, the equally folksy Second District Rep. Harry Teague never met a health-reform bill he did like. Failing to heed former President Bill Clinton's dictum not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, Teague can find some reason to vote against every attempt to nudge America's broken health-care system into the repair shop. The health-care bill passed by Congress last month, despite the legislative sausage-making, nonetheless was good enough to win the endorsement of the American Medical Association, the AARP and the Catholic Health Association.
But not our Harry Teague. Somehow, in-between issuing innumerable press releases, robo-calling constituents and printing slick fliers patting himself on the back, the first-time congressman with only a high-school diploma managed to become an expert on health policy. In a statement announcing that he would once again vote against his own party's health-reform plan, Teague explained, "I had hoped to have a chance to vote on a bill that provided affordable health care options to all American families, but after reviewing the final health care reform proposal, I do not believe that the bill does enough to contain costs and it definitely does not do enough to rein in the out of control insurance companies that are driving up healthcare costs in this country."
Sliding from hypocrisy into sheer lunacy, Teague went on to make the crazy claim that "I believe we are doing more for the insurance companies than we are for the people who need this coverage." That would of course explain why the nation's insurance companies have been spending millions on TV ads to defeat the measure.
Of course, Teague's complaints about the legislation are simply smokescreen for the hard political truth that all he cares about is staying in Washington. When running for Congress in 2008, Teague stated he supported "allowing Americans to buy healthcare coverage through the same plan that members of Congress enjoy." His TV ads told how his father had gotten sick when young Harry was 17 and the family lacked insurance. But Democrats and independents gulled into voting for Teague believing he'd support health reform now know the bitter truth:
Harry Teague doesn't care about health reform or the New Mexicans who can't get insurance. Harry Teague cares only about getting re-elected.
We believe his callow vote against the final health-reform legislation will in fact have the opposite effect. In what was already going to be a tough race against former Rep. Steve Pearce, Teague has alienated his base. Republicans have their own reasons for wanting to replace Teague with a more reliable conservative who'll have an (R) after his name. Now Democrats have little motivation to knock on doors or turn out for a representative who won't represent them.
Tellingly, in the online message-board chatter the day after Teague announced he'd vote "no," those who supported his decision tended to refer to Democrats as "Dumb as Craps" and to the president of the United States as "Maobama." These are not the voters who put Teague into office, nor are they likely to prefer him to Pearce this fall. Rather, he's aligned himself with the protestors who spat at his fellow Democratic congressmen and shouted racial and homophobic slurs.
But before mulling Teague's political fortunes further — and, if he's reading this, we hope he'll bear with us because we know that's all the congressman cares about — let's consider the supposedly fatally flawed bill he opposed.
Teague claims to be concerned about the budget deficit, but voted against what his colleague, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), called "the biggest deficit-reduction bill that members will have the opportunity to vote on." According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill will reduce the deficit by $138 billion in the first 10 years and by $1.2 trillion over the second 10 years.
As for the bill's effects on health coverage, here are some of the things Harry Teague didn't deem worthy of his support:
* Over 30 million more Americans will be able to get health insurance.
* Subsidies and a new insurance exchange will make it easier to buy health insurance.
* People with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied insurance.
* Insurers can no longer drop people because they get sick.
* The government can block exorbitant rate hikes like the recent 24.6% boost in premiums for 40,000 Blue Cross/Blue Shield customers in New Mexico.
* Medicaid coverage for the poor will be expanded.
* Seniors will no longer have to pay for the Medicare Part D coverage gap known as the "doughnut hole."
And, despite the cries of "socialism" from opponents (the same charge that was levied against Medicare), the measure won't significantly change coverage for Americans who already have health insurance from their employers.
You could, nonetheless, simply have a philosophical difference with the legislation. Some people (including some who enjoy such government benefits as Medicare) don't believe the federal government should play this kind of role in the nation's health-insurance system. We're sure this is the argument we'll hear this fall from Steve Pearce. We believe he's wrong, but at least he's probably sincere.
Not Harry Teague, who promised voters one thing and delivered another — a political bait-and-switch. As regular readers know, we believe strongly in the representative part of "representative democracy." A congressman can do constituent service until he's blue in the face, but what counts is how he votes on those constituents' behalf. Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans who sent Teague to Washington in November 2008 thought they were getting a Democrat who would support his party's core positions — even when under political pressure.
They were wrong. They were hoodwinked by a folksy-talking huckster who should be sent packing back to Hobbs.
But what's a progressive voter to do, faced with the Hobbs-ian (sorry) choice between Teague and the relentlessly right-wing Pearce?
We've also been critical of "symbolic" votes, such as those for third-party candidates. But Harry Teague leaves his betrayed former supporters little choice. Progressive voters should write in another name (Bill McCamley, who lost to Teague in the 2008 primary and is now a candidate for the PRC, springs to mind) in the June primary. In November, if there's no third-party alternative on the ballot, they should skip the Second District race.
In short, we need to take a lesson from Teague himself. He's said he'd rather sacrifice the good for the perfect. It's time for him to get a dose of his own medicine.
Harry Teague needs to be cleansed from the body politic, even at the cost of two years of Steve Pearce. In 2012, at least voters might be offered a real choice between a Republican and a Democrat, instead of between a Republican and a candidate who represents only his own self-interest.
Deficit Chickenhawks
A tax-time look at budget hypocrites, the federal deficit, and stimulus spending.
Americans have seldom been so worked up about taxes and government spending as they are this April 15, with a nearly $1.3 trillion proposed federal deficit looming for fiscal year 2011 despite the seemingly insatiable demands of the IRS on ordinary taxpayers. As this time of year sharply reminds us, nobody likes paying taxes — especially when we don't feel like we're getting what we pay for in Washington.
Few of us, thankfully, hate the IRS as fervently as Andrew Joseph Stack III, who crashed a plane into an Austin, Texas, office building housing IRS employees in February. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich commented, however, Stack's kamikaze mission was "a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen." Given the loose talk of some activists and politicians, Stack's actions could be seen as not only inevitable but predictable. Only a day later, Tim Pawlenty, the formerly mild-mannered and sensible governor of Minnesota who's thrown caution and common sense to the wind in a lust to be president, was urging Americans to emulate Tiger Woods' wife: "Take a nine iron and smash the windows out of big government."