OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JULY 31, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
GOP health care
approach a model
of ineptitude
or all of its flaws, the process of drafting the Affordable
Care Act — also now known as Obamacare — was a
paradigm of openness and transparency compared to so
far failed efforts to replace or repeal it. Last week’s slow-motion
fiasco in the U.S. Senate was a stark illustration of how much
American politics have deteriorated.
To anyone who paid attention to the 2010 drafting of the
ACA, the nickname Obamacare remains somewhat jarring. If
anything, President Barack Obama remained too aloof from
drafting the law, instead leaving it up to the messy process of
compromise and dealmaking in Congress with little proac-
tive steering by the White House. In addition to some ques-
tionable giveaways in return for individual votes, this outcome
gave the nation a cobbled-together concoction borrowed from
Massachusetts, where Gov. Mitt Romney had helped craft a plan
acceptable to large corporations and other powerful interests.
Attaching blame for ACA on Obama, congressional
Republicans spent the past seven years promising to repeal the
entire act and replace it with some unspecified improvement.
Lately, the GOP narrowed its aspirations to eliminating the act’s
unpopular mandates that individuals get insurance and compa-
nies with 50 or more employees provide insurance. These issues,
along with rising costs and decreasing policy options in the pri-
vate marketplace, continue to be well-deserving of additional
attention.
But the approach taken in Washington, D.C., this year
has been a model of ineptitude. Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, who rightly chastised Democrats for a
less-than-democratic process when drafting the ACA, has taken
those legislative sins and magnified them. Among other short-
comings, the legislation was drafted behind closed doors by a
small subset of male GOP senators, had no public outreach, little
input until the very end from Democrats, and labored under the
weight of contradictory statements by the president.
In voting against a so-called “skinny repeal” of ACA last
Thursday night, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona made the
correct and courageous stand that the Senate must return to its
normal order of business. This will consist of assigning com-
mittees to hold open hearings and negotiate compromises that a
working majority of Congress is willing to support.
As U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon remarked, “It is now
time to work on a bipartisan basis to improve health care for
every American.” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said,
“We need to find bipartisan solutions, particularly in the indi-
vidual health insurance market, to drive down costs, increase
access and innovate in
the health care delivery
system.”
Repairing
Polling shows ACA
has become more pop-
existing
ular with Americans
problems and
as more have become
then trying to
used to its quirks and
the coverage it provides.
find sustainable
Conversely, the dras-
ways to afford
tic cutbacks in Medicaid
planned in future years
medical care will
under the GOP plan
require much
would have caused
more intelligent
avoidable suffering
and death. If anything,
politics than
months of GOP efforts
those on display
to curb health care costs
and mandates have clari-
in recent weeks.
fied the national consen-
sus in favor of a funda-
mental level of health care.
Failure of repeal efforts combined with President Donald
Trump’s threat to undercut the ACA means the national health
care system is more wobbly than ever. It’s imperative that
Republicans and Democrats now work together to shore up
insurance marketplaces so that American families don’t face
crippling premiums, curtailed services and other worries.
Beyond a need for immediate triage for the wounded ACA,
a really functional Congress would start looking for ways to
improve it and to get a better handle on crippling levels of
spending. Republicans are not wrong to worry about the costs of
Medicaid and other entitlement programs. Both political parties
have, to one extent or another, viewed health care as a cash cow
for private industry rather than as an essential service to be deliv-
ered as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Repairing existing problems and then trying to find sustain-
able ways to afford medical care will require much more intel-
ligent politics than those on display in recent weeks. It’s time to
reexamine old assumptions, put away old grudges, and get on
with fixing this vital part of America’s economy and society.
F
Smith covered Congress when
it accomplished big things
By STEVE FORRESTER
The Daily Astorian
n a hallway at The Daily
Astorian there is a front page
from the Anchorage Daily News
which proclaims
in headline type
10 inches high:
“WE’RE IN!”
Beneath the
headline is a story
on the congres-
sional passage
of Alaskan statehood. The story
was written by A. Robert Smith, a
Washington, D.C., correspondent.
For some 30 years, Smith covered
Capitol Hill for newspapers in
Oregon, Washington state , Idaho
and Alaska.
Smith was the Astorian’s cor-
respondent for some 20 years until
I succeeded him in 1978. I was
saddened to learn that Bob died last
November. At the age of 91, he had
enjoyed a full life of journalism. In
2012, he wrote his last book, “God
Gave Me a Mulligan,” in which he
described his World War II service
in the U.S. Navy at the battles for
Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
In this era of gridlock and
deep enmity between the polar
ends of the political spectrum, it
is a distant memory that it wasn’t
always this way. There was a time
when congressional Democrats and
Republicans had social relationships
and reached compromise. Most of
all, it’s hard to remember an era
when Congress accomplished big
things.
That immediate postwar era
had great meaning for the Pacific
Northwest. Washington state par-
ticularly enjoyed enormous clout
with senators Warren Magnuson and
Henry Jackson. That led to the era
of dam building on the Columbia
River, large reclamation projects
and construction of the interstate
freeways. That federal investment
allowed a region that was largely
agrarian to become industrial. The
fruits of that were a cluster of alu-
minum plants, the Boeing Co. and
an array of military installations.
Tangentially, it began the rise of the
University of Washington.
As a recently discharged Navy
veteran, Smith searched for a region
that was not represented in the
Washington press corps. The answer
to his question was the Pacific
Northwest. Smith came out here and
went from newspaper to newspaper,
seeking clients. His early newspa-
pers included the Register-Guard of
Eugene, the Medford Mail Tribune
and the East Oregonian, sister news-
paper of the Astorian.
I owe Bob an enormous grati-
tude. He gave me the opportunity
to cover congressional politics.
Admittedly, I bought his business.
But he could have picked another
suitor to purchase that enterprise.
Bob prospered during a time
when print was the dominant media
on Capitol Hill. He witnessed
television news’ infancy. The digital
revolution was about to break when
he left. The great innovation of my
period as correspondent (1978-
1987) was the fax machine as well
as a crude sort of digital transmis-
sion of news copy.
The legendary H.L. Mencken
said he admired newspapermen with
literary ambitions. Bob was one
of those. His first book was “The
Tiger in the Senate,” the biography
of Oregon U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse
(Doubleday, 1962). Smith’s book
was disparaged by the Morse faith-
ful. In fact, Morse banned Smith
I
Sandra Eisert/The Washington Post for The Register-Guard
A. Robert Smith was the Washington, D.C., correspondent for Pacific
Northwest newspapers from 1951 to 1978.
Sandra Eisert/The Washington Post for The Register-Guard
Smith wrote books on history and politics.
Sandra Eisert/The Washington Post for The Register-Guard
During Smith’s time in Washington, D.C., Democrats and Republi-
cans often had social relationships and reached compromise.
The Daily Astorian
Smith covered the Alaskan state-
hood vote.
from his office.
Years later, Sen. Morse sued
my father, the East Oregonian and
the Christian Science Monitor. I
remember my dad coming into my
room, where I was doing home-
work. “Sen. Morse sued us today,”
he said. The lawsuit went nowhere.
And the next time he faced Oregon
voters, Morse came to Pendleton for
the Round-Up. At a Round-Up party
at the home of Jim Hill (father of
Astoria’s Tim Hill), Morse sought a
private audience with my dad.
At the heart of American gov-
ernment is an understanding that the
Bob
appreciated
the human
comedy,
which lies at
the heart of
politics.
men and women we elect to office
are mortals. While they eventually
believe their own myths, their sto-
ries seldom sustain those myths.
Bob appreciated the human
comedy, which lies at the heart of
politics. He knew the senators and
congressmen of this region in an era
when they were not television per-
sonalities. And occasionally Smith
covered a blockbuster — such as
Alaskan statehood.
Steve Forrester, the former edi-
tor and publisher of The Daily Asto-
rian, is the president and CEO of
EO Media Group.