Washington is a lot like the broken ballot scanner I encountered when I tried to vote today—jammed-up, non-functional and essentially useless. And it will only get worse after the Democrats are driven into political oblivion in the midterm elections
For today's New York primary election, I cast my ballot electronically for the first time using a new scanner system that replaced the old-fashioned (but totally reliable) steel lever voting booth.
It was a disaster. The scanner kept jamming, and the dozens of folks running the polling station were clueless about how to fix it. A second scanner could not be activated for some unexplained reason. There was no other backup unit on the premises, so I ended up casting an "emergency ballot" on paper that I am skeptical will ever be counted.
Luckily, this was just a relatively minor primary election. Let's hope the poll workers get their act together in time for the critical midterms in November.
But no matter what system we use to vote, the outcome is fairly certain—the Democrats, much like the old voting booths, are going to be discarded.
Despite passing overhauls of health care and financial services, as well as a massive stimulus package, the fact that the economy is still languishing puts President Barack Obama and his backers in Congress on the wrong side of history, as the cyclical "Throw the bums out!" mentality takes hold.
It appears likely that Republicans will seize control of one if not both houses of Congress, or at least erode the Democrats' majority to the point where they will effectively be unable to dictate the agenda on Capitol Hill. But even if the Republicans sweep both the House and Senate, a political stalemate is almost certain.
That is both good and bad news for the insurance industry.
If Republicans do gain control in November, they will no doubt try to fulfill their campaign promise to repeal the health care reform law—most aspects of which has yet to take effect. Health insurers and agents who sell the coverage would love that.
However, any hope for immediate repeal is a pipe dream. With no shot of securing a 60-vote Senate super-majority in this election, the Republicans will face the same procedural hurdles that stalled or tripped up Democrats time after time these past two years. And even if Republicans do somehow pass repeal, President Obama will certainly employ his veto pen.
Taxes are a different issue. Will Congress allow the Bush era tax cuts to expire for everyone at year's end, no matter who wins in November? It's hard to imagine, especially with a number of Democrats opposed to President Obama's pitch for a limited repeal, raising taxes only on those in the highest brackets.
It's more likely that Congress will extend the cuts, probably for two more years, leaving the issue on the back burner until it is reheated during the next presidential election season. That's good news for some independent agency owners, who might have been left out of a more limited repeal.
However, unless Washington can work together to get this economy growing again, the insurance industry is going to be left in the doldrums, with a shrinking exposure base and perpetual soft market.
What worries me is that neither Democrats nor Republicans seem to have any new ideas about how to jump-start the economy. That's probably why they are more concerned with blaming one another for the lingering economic mess we're in rather than working together to solve our problems.
It's easy to blame Congress and the White House, yet our government is a reflection of both our hopes and fears. On so many issues–from how to revive the economy, to immigration, to foreign affairs–we are a divided nation. Until we come to some consensus on how to solve our problems, we're doomed to be trapped in a policy wrestling match without resolution. A sour electorate will keep lurching from Democrat to Republican and back again, hoping for a better outcome.
What do you folks think?
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