The Wonk Room

Steve King: Obama ‘Threw the First Punch’ Against Joe Wilson

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) announced last night that President Obama “threw the first punch” at the “honorable” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) who had no choice but to fight back by calling the president a liar. King’s comments were made at a reception featuring Lou Dobbs and hosted by the nativist hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), as part of their “Hold Their Feet To The Fire” annual anti-immigration lobbying campaign:

A lot of us said this health care bill is going to fund illegals. And the President said “prominent politicians are lying to you”…Well, it turns out that the Senate is going to fix the language in the health care bill to require proof of citizenship.

And a real good sign is, Luis Gutierrez — the number-one amnesty leader in the United States Congress is really ticked off at his friend and neighbor President Obama because his hope for amnesty in the health care bill is going down because of who? Joe Wilson. God bless Joe. He said what we were thinking and I don’t think there’s ever been a President who comes to the House of Representatives as a guest of the members of the House and made a declaration like he did. I mean, the President threw the first punch…Joe’s a man of honor. He’s an officer and a gentleman and he’s a patriot. And he loves and respects the Constitution and this country.

Watch it:

The President actually said:

“Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost…There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

Undocumented immigrants were and still are excluded from both the House and Senate health care bills. Obama didn’t name names, but Wilson, King, and other Joe-Wilson-apologists have made it abundantly clear what side of the aisle the bogus claims are coming from. In a press call today, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) indicated that he “accept[ed] legislation that prohibited access to taxpayer-subsidized health insurance for undocumented immigrants” weeks before Obama’s speech. However, he is upset with the president not because he blocked amnesty, but rather, because the White House has proposed denying undocumented immigrants “non-government access to health care that they can use their own dollars to purchase.”

The Smithsonian Institution later acknowledged that it “made in error” in letting a hate group rent its facilities at the National Postal Museum to host the event that King spoke at.

Rep. Steve King Defends Joe Wilson And The Confederate Flag

Rep. Steve King (R-TXIA) isn’t just defending Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) “you lie” outburst, he’s also standing behind Wilson’s decision to vote in favor of keeping the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol. In an interview this morning on Fox News, King praised Wilson’s moral character and brushed off concerns about the racist connotations that many believe the Confederate flag imparts:

“He is an officer and a gentleman and everyone who knows him knows that…being a son of the South puts you in a different position when it comes to the Confederate flag. It means something entirely different to the people who have ancestors who fought in the Civil War on the south side of the Mason-Dixon line. So I think Maureen Dowd is trying to whip this up and I also know she’s trying to put race into it. I didn’t know what race she was talking about when I first read her line on that.”

Watch it:

It seems that King has forgotten that for many Americans, the Confederate flag represents a lot more than the “War of Northern Agression.” In fact, the decision to fly the Confederate flag over South Carolina’s Capitol was also infused with meaning. While other Southern states took down their rebel flags, an all-white South Carolina legislature fought and won to keep theirs waving above their statehouse as the Civil Rights movement picked up steam in 1962. In 2000, Wilson was one of the seven Republicans who voted to keep it there. During the 2000 fight, one of his fellow legislators — state senator Arthur Ravenel — referred to the NAACP as “the National Association of Retarded People” and later apologized to “retarded people” for associating them with the NAACP. The Confederate flag has since been moved to the Capitol lawn.

Wilson has also been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, identified as a “source of increasingly virulent pro-Confederate, radical right propaganda.” Maureen Dowd cynically described Wilson as being part of a “loco fringe” that “clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president.”

Conrad And Baucus Appease Joe Wilson’s Lie

Most right-wingers and health care reform haters have at least conceded that there’s language in the House health care bill that explicitly excludes undocumented immigrants, but none of them are willing to swallow their pride and admit that Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) blow-up was also factually incorrect. Republicans incessantly continue citing “loopholes” that they suggest actually do render President Obama a liar, or at the very least, misinformed.

Wilson has accused “liberals who want to give health care to illegals” of using his opposition to distract from the debate at hand. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) and House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC) Chairman, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) have both suggested that President Obama was either lying or talking about “some other bill.” Former Gov. George Pataki (R-NY) says Obama’s comments raise “questions” and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has also come out of the woodwork to say “Joe is right, Obama is a liar.” Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) said that he was outright insulted by Obama’s myth-breaking, and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and many others have defended Wilson’s position by slamming Democrats for voting down stringent verification mechanisms. Watch it:

Democrats have made it pretty clear that they’re not interested in providing “illegals” health care. Their decision to vote against verification amendments had more to do with the fact that one would’ve given private insurance providers unprecedented access to the sensitive income and identity information and another would have blocked several categories of legal immigrants from receiving benefits. Nonetheless, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) have expressed that they’re willing to back down.

Baucus and Conrad should tread carefully. Not only would such a move validate the lies and fears that right-wingers have stoked in both the immigration and health care debates, it could also seriously hurt all Americans. When Colorado passed a series of stringent measures requiring applicants for most state benefits to prove their immigration status, it cost the state $2 million in its first year alone and — despite having promised to eliminate 50,000 undocumented immigrants from the state’s public benefit rolls — state officials could not prove that any undocumented immigrants were being denied public services. The Government Accountability Office further found that documentation requirements used to prove Medicaid eligibility caused thousands of eligible U.S. citizens to lose Medicaid coverage without saving taxpayers any money: for every $100 spent by taxpayers to implement documentation requirements in six states, only 14 cents were saved. Yesterday, Bilbray announced on CNN that the E-Verify program should be used to check eligibility. However, the Immigration Policy Center points out that the web-based program has a “high probability for database errors.” A human resources association claims that E-Verify has a 4.1% error rate — one that could grow if implemented on a larger scale and deny or dely health care coverage for a sizable percentage of the American population.

It would be one thing if such mechanisms were necessary to block undocumented immigrants from getting health care, but there’s several barriers already in place. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act prohibited undocumented immigrants from being eligible for most public benefits and codified procedures for verifying eligibility. There’s nothing in the bill that changes that or the stringent verification mechanisms in Medicaid discussed above. Tax policy experts have further pointed out that it would be difficult for undocumented immigrants to even apply for subsidies, because tax returns are required to determine a person’s eligibility and the few undocumented immigrants who do file taxes using phony Social Security numbers almost always use “personal identification numbers” from the IRS, which immediately flag their immigration status.

Health-care reform proponents claim that few undocumented immigrants enrolled in Medicaid even before proof of citizenship was required. If that’s true, Republicans are essentially belly-aching over a non-issue. Ultimately, a flawless verification mechanism simply doesn’t exist and it’s probably worse to deny hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of eligible citizens and legal immigrants health care coverage than to let a small handful of ineligible immigrants get health insurance that they need just as much as anyone else. After all, an effective health care system covers as many people as possible and as Matt Yglesias points out, it’s too bad the President and Democrats are getting pounded for doing something that they’re not, despite the fact that it’s actually not a bad idea if you care more about what makes economic and moral sense and less about what makes sense politically.

The Nativists Behind The Man Who Called Obama A Liar

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) has received a lot of attention for calling President Obama a liar last night when he asserted that undocumented immigrants will not benefit from health care reform. Most commentators and politicians have denounced Wilson’s unruly behavior, though not enough have bothered to highlight the inherent fallacy of his accusations. Undocumented immigrants are in fact explicitly barred from receiving any health care benefits under both the House and Senate bills and a closer look at all those who restlessly suggest otherwise sheds some light on the radical nativist underpinnings of their anti-health care reform crusade.

To begin with, Wilson is a member of the Southern heritage group, Sons of Confederate Veterans, which favors secession and defends slavery is stock full of white supremecists and right-wing extremists. Crooks and Liars further reports that, as a state legislator, Wilson went against his own party and voted with seven lone right-wingers to keep the Dixie Rebel flag flying over the South Carolina state capitol building.

As a federal lawmaker, Wilson became a member of the House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC), a group of (mostly Republican) representatives founded by former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) with the mission of stopping “the explosive growth in illegal immigration,” “reversing the growth in legal immigration,” and halting “amnesties.” Other notoriously anti-immigrant members of HIRC include Steve King (R-IA), who described immigration as a “slow-motion Holocaust,” and Lamar Smith (R-TX), who equates undocumented immigrants with “terrorist weapons.” HIRC members Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), and King all proclaimed that undocumented immigrants would receive health care benefits long before Wilson’s outburst. The two Republican representatives, Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) and Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), who proposed amendments to the House health care bill that would’ve added stringent citizenship verification mechanisms are active members of the HIRC as well. Heller and Deal also lead the fight to overturn the 14th Amendment and end the policy of automatically granting anyone who is born in the country US citizenship.

Wilson’s reaction last night was certainly out of line, but his indefensible fit of temper was illustrative of a larger discussion taking place amongst HIRC members and anti-immigrant groups who see the health care debate as yet another opportunity to promote their nativist agenda by advancing illogical fears, misplaced anger, and calculated misinformation. HIRC is now headed by Brian Bilbray (R-CA) — a former lobbyist for the anti-immigrant hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Center for New Community reports that FAIR paid him almost $300,000 for work on its behalf between May 2002 and July 2005. Since then, Bilbray has announced his intentions to “work closely” with groups such as FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), another “FAIR spin-off group” that has been identified as part of the “nativist lobby.” It comes as no surprise that HIRC’s health care reform haters have regularly relied on the shoddy “expertise” of FAIR, CIS, and their sister-group, NumbersUSA, to promote the myth that undocumented immigrants will be covered under the bill. Another anti-immigrant group, Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), has gone as far to call Wilson a “brave Congressmen” for calling Obama out on his “lie” and have advised their membership to personally thank him.

Wilson has co-sponsored several pieces of English-only legislation and supported efforts to report undocumented immigrants who seek emergency medical care. In 2006, he declared “it is time to curtail the invasion of illegal aliens.”

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