So the government’s Affordable Care Act web site doesn’t work. Does that surprise anyone? It’s a big, honking, outsourced engineering project that has had the budget axe swinging over it for the past three years. It’s been under constant threat of being defunded or declared unconstitutional, subjected to incessant political attack in Washington and around the country by a party dedicated to disabling it anyway that they can.
The fact is, the most dysfunctional part of the Affordable Care Act is Medicaid expansion, not because it doesn’t work but because half of the states in the union have refused to participate, even with 100% funding from the federal government. We hear so much about the Web site being a piece of shit (and rightfully so), and yet I don’t see anyone on the right wringing their hands over the fact that something like 7 million people, the vast 
majority of whom are working poor, will have no access to health coverage simply because the governors and legislatures in their state capitals are intent on making a political point. Throw needy (working!) families under the bus, and that’s fine. But build a buggy Web site? Unforgiveable!
It’s pretty clear, in fact, why Republicans are pulling the rug out from under their needy constituents. Chris Hayes interviewed an Ohio state representative on Wednesday night, and while the fellow tried his best to conceal his objection to Medicaid behind some blather about legislative process, he eventually got around to saying that Medicaid was a program people would get “locked into” because they would enjoy the benefit so much, it would be a disincentive for them to raise their standard of living to the point where they wouldn’t receive it anymore. Health coverage makes you lazy. The same old G.O.P. and conservative Democrat trope about welfare, still with us after all these years. They don’t like owning up to it, but it’s still there.
I have to say that this nationwide refusal by Republicans to sign on to Medicaid expansion is certainly one of the most craven domestic policy decisions I have witnessed in my adult life. Hearing them complain about a Web site would be laughable … if this were a laughting matter.
Once again – they’re the reason our kids are ugly.
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The fact is, the minority of House Republicans that make up the “tea party” caucus, led by their Senate mentor Ted Cruz, caused about $20-25 billion in losses to the U.S. economy. Much of this is irretrievable, as it represents lost contract fees, lost purchases by government employees (i.e. lunches, cups of coffee, etc.), and so on. And it was done pointlessly: nothing was accomplished, for good or ill. We could have had the final deal on the first day, but it was never brought to a vote.
IRS Targeting of Tea Party groups. Indefensible action on the part of the IRS. Though for all of those whose hair is on fire over this, it should be noted that all of the groups who applied, I believe, were ultimately given tax exempt status. Recall, too, that the IRS harassed anti war groups during W. Bush’s administration, but that wasn’t the end of it. There was domestic surveillance and infiltration of political organizations on the left. There were mass arrests and beatings. For chrissake, they even had the Defense Intelligence Agency spy on the Thomas Merton Center! Given the degree of governmental dysfunction that’s attributable to the tea party, it is a bit hard for me to get overly worked up. Wrong, yes … but on the scale of wrongs, this is kind of puny.