Conservatives split on mandate and business fees
As he signed the state's healthcare bill yesterday, Governor Mitt Romney called it a big ''leap forward" for Massachusetts. Some pundits see it offering a big leap for his potential presidential campaign, too.
But, overshadowed by the rhetoric, Romney's veto of a $295-per-worker surcharge on businesses with 11 or more employees that don't provide insurance seemed to be aimed at a political debate among conservatives.
The plan that the Wall Street Journal dubbed ''Romney Care" yesterday has caused divisions among conservatives, including some who are uncomfortable with the measure's requirement that individuals buy insurance and that businesses that don't provide it face the surcharges. The editorial page of the Journal said the plan ''is a recipe for higher taxes and more government intervention down the road."
Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies for the Cato Institute, suggested that the legislation invites government interference. ''We think the individual mandate itself is an unprecedented level of interference with individual choice and decision-making," Tanner said.
The issue has split the conservative movement, Tanner said. ''There's a group of big-government conservatives who believe you can use government power to achieve conservative ends. This puts Governor Romney squarely in that camp. And the traditional small-government conservatives, I think, are going to be much more critical of this proposal. There's no doubt that that split is going to be the key debate that takes place with the presidential contest and in the Republican party over the next couple of years."
Romney spoke to the debate directly Tuesday, when in his own Journal op-ed article, he said that libertarians were off-base in their criticism of the individual mandate. He also revealed for the first time that he would veto the surcharge on businesses that do not insure their employees.
Grover Norquist, the influential president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Romney's move was a topic of much discussion at a weekly meeting of conservatives in Washington. Norquist, who had urged Romney to veto the surcharge in an interview with the Globe last month, applauded Romney's move yesterday and softened his criticism.
''There is the sense that what Massachusetts has done here is the beginning of a very, very important national debate and that other states will take the framework of what the governor put together, take out the bits the Massachusetts Legislature thought were cute, and that you'll see this in" other states, Norquist said.
As such, he thinks the effort can only help Romney in a presidential bid. ''It would certainly give the governor a very interesting talking point on an issue that is going to be central to any upcoming election," he said. ''You always have the out that 'I had a really good idea, and the Democratic Legislature messed it up.' "
Tom Rath, Republican National committeeman from New Hampshire, echoed that view. ''Quite apart from the substance of what he's done . . . there is a desire in the electorate, certainly up here, to see somebody somewhere do something," Rath said.
The Legislature is likely to override Romney's veto of the charge on businesses that don't provide insurance, the most controversial feature of the bill.
But few voters would be attentive to such maneuvering.
''It's symbolic politics on both sides," said Edmund Haislmaier, the Heritage Foundation senior fellow who provided the Romney administration with the template for a healthcare bill that did not include a surcharge on employers.
Still more symbolism came at the signing ceremony: a representative of the Heritage Foundation, one of the best known conservative think tanks in Washington, spoke in favor of the health plan from the Faneuil Hall stage. 