Posts by Ben Armbruster

Benjamin J. Armbruster is a Research Associate for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.

CBO: Repubs' "Alternative" Health-Care Plan Would Leave 52 Million Uninsured in 2019
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on November 5, 2009 at 7:22 AM.

Last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the House Republican alternative health care bill. While the CBO determined the GOP bill’s 10 year price tag to be $61 billion — far less that the Democrats’ proposal — the score also found that the their bill would have little effect on nearly 46 million uninsured Americans:

By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the amendment’s insurance coverage provisions would increase deficits by $8 billion over the 2010–2019 period.

The CBO found that the Democrats’ bill, however, would cover 36 million more Americans and “reduce the number of nonelderly Americans without coverage to around 18 million over the next decade.” Yet, just before the CBO scored the GOP bill, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) falsely claimed their alternative “will cover millions more Americans” than the Democrats’ bill.

Last night on Fox News Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) dodged a question about how many uninsured the GOP plan would cover and instead railed at the Democrats for “trying to get at this business of universal coverage”:

PENCE: We believe you get at the coverage issue by lowering the cost of health insurance. … So Republicans by focusing on the cost of health insurance believe that we are going to take our country in a direction where we also deal with the tens of millions of people and employers that struggle with providing insurance.

Forbes Bows to Beck After He Complains About Being Named One Of Magazine's 'Scariest People'
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 29, 2009 at 4:31 PM.

To commemorate Halloween, Forbes magazine announced its picks “for the scariest people of 2009” and included caricatured masks of the honorees, which included Rod Blagojevich, Bernie Madoff, Michael Moore, Kanye West, Roman Polanki and radical Fox News’ host Glenn Beck. “This cable-news demagogue commands big ratings, an army of fans and crocodile tears on demand,” Forbes magazine said of Beck.

Beck hosted the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief — and one-time GOP presidential candidate — Steve Forbes on his radio show Wednesday and complained about the award. “[You're] making me the number one scariest man in America?” Beck asked. “People always want to be at the top of our list,” Forbes replied. “Not this one,” Beck bemoaned. Forbes then started sucking up to Beck:

FORBES: It was a mis — it was a miscommunication. We were going to put you on the most admired, most beloved, most reasonable, most enlightened list.

BECK: Right, right.

FORBES: But we figured if we did that, it would yeah, we wanted to put a mask on you so you wouldn’t get killed by the liberals.

BECK: I mean, here’s the competition: Rod Blagojevich, Bernie Madoff, Michael Jackson, David Letterman, Michael Moore, Roman Polanski. You’ve got a rapist who is nine slots lower than I am ….

FORBES: We normally would put you on the 400 list but we respect your privacy.

In fact, after the show, Forbes went back and amended the original article to be more flattering of Beck:

By Steve Forbes
I hereby amend Halloween Masks — The Scariest People Of 2009

“Glenn Beck is the scariest person to big tax; big government; big spend; and weak defense liberals.”

Salon’s Alex Koppelman observes, “The idea that your outlet’s owner could decide he disagreed with something you wrote — something that had already been published — and then just blithely go in and change it is pretty scary. There’s an ethical problem involved, certainly.”

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Even Pat Buchanan Thinks Obama/Nixon Comparisons Are Idiotic
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 22, 2009 at 9:00 AM.

Taking cues from their communications shop over at Fox News, GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) yesterday attacked the White House’s campaign against Fox’s unethical journalistic practices by comparing President Obama to President Nixon. “Let’s not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list,” Alexander said, touting his days as a junior staffer in the Nixon White House as credentials for his charge. Gregg said he was “fascinated” by Alexander’s criticism and wondered if Obama is “Nixon-fying” the White House. But yesterday on MSNBC, top Nixon aide Pat Buchanan dismissed out-of-hand any comparison of Obama to Nixon:

BUCHANAN: It is the most idiotic comparison I’ve ever seen. Barack Obama won 95 percent of Washington DC, he comes in with both houses Congress behind him, the media love him, the country loves him. Nixon came in with both houses of Congress against him, he probably got 8 percent of the vote in Washington DC, the media loathed him. … I don’t see any comparison between Obama and Nixon whatsoever. … [T]here’s no comparison. Barack Obama’s got enormous press support, he’s got problems with Fox News but for heaven’s sakes there is no comparison here.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Newt Gingrich Calls on Republicans to "Repeal" Health Reform if It Passes
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 20, 2009 at 11:14 AM.

Last night on Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined some of his colleagues on the fringe right and urged the GOP to make repealing health reform the “number one” campaign issue in 2010 and 2012:

GINGRICH: Let me make a straightforward promise. These bills can’t be implemented before 2013. If they pass a bill which is a disaster the number one campaign issue in 2010 and 2012 is going to be repeal the bill.

We repealed the catastrophic health legislation that was a disaster. We can repeal this monstrosity. If they’re determined to put something bad in the country, the country can rise up, defeat the people who do it and repeal it.

Watch it:

Gingrich is referring to the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 which was repealed a year after it passed because it raised seniors’ Medicare premiums disproportionately to pay for benefit expansions.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Mitt Romney Pushes Hysterical Scare Tactic About Public Option
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 15, 2009 at 2:43 PM.

Last night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney propagated a fearmongering claim that a public health insurance option would bring death to the country:

ROMNEY: The right way to have proceeded was to let each state create their own plan, to learn from the laboratories that the states were meant to be, and then adopted the very best in the federal system. But that hasn’t been done. And as a result, you’re seeing Democrats fighting Democrats. And the idea that we’d have — the government get into a — if you will, the public or government option is absolutely death, I think, across this country.

Watch it:

Romney’s hysterical scare tactic has sadly become the norm in the health care debate. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin issued the absurd statement that the House health reform bill would create “death panels” for the nation’s elderly — a claim conservatives advanced with glee despite the fact that it had been thoroughly debunked. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) similarly claimed that reform would “pull the plug on grandma.”

During last night’s segment, Romney touted Massachusetts’ health care system that he helped enact as governor (despite downplaying the plan during his 2008 presidential bid). Romney boasted that the Massachusetts plan is “on budget,” but what he omitted is the fact that when approving the plan, he “deferr[ed] until another day any serious effort to control the state’s runaway health costs” and now “the plan will not be sustainable over the next 5 to 10 years if they do not take significant steps to arrest the growth of health spending.”

The public option of course won’t cause “death” across the country, as Romney claimed, but rather, it would be a key component of bringing down the cost of health care.

Black NFL Players ‘Wouldn’t Play’ For Limbaugh’s Team: ‘He’s A Jerk’
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 9, 2009 at 3:13 PM.

Earlier this week, the media reported that hate radio host Rush Limbaugh is involved in a bid to purchase the National Football League’s St. Louis Rams franchise. Many sports media figures lambasted the idea of Limbaugh owning an NFL team, with one writer saying it “would definitely hurt” the Rams while another said his “head exploded after hearing this Limbaugh news” because he is “a pungent bowl of stark raving bigoted lunacy.”

Now, the players themselves are piling on. Specifically, many African-American players have explicitly stated that they would never play for a team that Rush Limbaugh owns. “All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama’s America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting ‘right on,’” New York Giants defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka told the New York Daily News, adding, “I don’t want anything to do with a team that he has any part of.” Other black players expressed similar sentiments:

[New York Jets linebacker Bart] Scott says players remember what Limbaugh said [about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donavan McNabb], and adds that the NFL would be wise not to allow the nationally syndicated host into the league.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Steele Agrees That Boehner And GOP Leadership Are 'An Absolute Freakin' Joke'
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on August 24, 2009 at 12:30 PM.

Earlier this year, RNC chair Michael Steele dismissed Rush Limbaugh as an "entertainer" whose "thing" is "incendiary" and "ugly." Steele later apologized to Limbaugh after enormous conservative backlash. (But soon after, Steele said the dust-up with Limbaugh was part of his grand strategy).

Last week, local Missouri conservative radio host Vincent Jericho asked Steele about the confrontation with Limbaugh. "Did you get sucked into that?" Jericho asked. "Absolutely," Steele replied. "In my job as national chairman, I'm trying to heal the party, not create divisions." Yet later in the interview, Steele appeared to create more divisions within GOP. Steele told Jericho he agreed "1,000%" with his assertion that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and other Republican congressional leaders are "an abosolute freakin' joke":

VINCENT JERICHO: For god's sake's the Republican Party is supposed to stand for something why don't they stand up and lead? Because some of the leadership, with Boehner and some of these other guys, they're a joke. You can't say anything. But they're an absolute freaking joke.

STEELE: I'm with you. I'm 1,000% with you. I agree with you. I absolutely agree with you.

Listen here:

Sam Stein reports that spokespeople from both Boehner's office and the RNC "insisted that Steele's comments were directed at the broad direction of the GOP and not the minority leader himself."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Fox Guest Compares 'Cash for Clunkers' Program to Katrina
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on August 5, 2009 at 8:46 AM.

Last night, Fox News a clip aired of a woman at a Philadelphia town hall meeting over the weekend berating Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) about health care reform. “What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. … And you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a Cash for Clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy,” the woman complained. “I think that there is anger out there, real anger,” said NPR’s Mara Liasson, responding to the clip. She then called the woman’s concern “legitimate” and compared the Cash for Clunkers program to Hurricane Katrina:

LIASSON: I thought that woman actually asked a pretty legitimate question — especially Cash for Clunkers is like a mini- Katrina here. I mean it’s not good to start a program and not be able to execute it.

Watch it:

Nearly 2,000 people died and thousands more were injured or displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the Bush administration’s incompetent response. However, “Cash for Clunkers” — the government program giving people a $4,500 voucher to trade in an old vehicle for a newer, more fuel efficient one — has been so successful that Congress is considering appropriating more money for it to continue.

Even After North Korea Frees American Journalists, Bolton Insists Clinton Trip Was A Mistake
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on August 4, 2009 at 2:40 PM.

Reports emerged yesterday that President Clinton — along with Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta — was traveling to North Korea to negotiate the release of two imprisoned American journalists. In an interview with AFP today, super-hawk John Bolton attacked Clinton for “negotiating with terrorists” and “rewarding bad behavior“:

“It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists,” Bolton told AFP when asked about Bill Clinton’s trip to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. [...]

“I think this is a very bad signal because it does exactly what we always try and avoid doing with terrorists, or with rogue states in general, and that’s encouraging their bad behavior,” Bolton said.

However it seems Clinton’s trip has paid off. Reuters reported this afternoon that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il granted “a special pardon” and, according to Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin, both would be traveling back to the U.S. with Clinton and his team. Bolton appeared on Fox just after Griffin’s report and despite Clinton’s successes, he still couldn’t bring himself to offer any praise and instead again attacked the move:

BOLTON: But I worry that the outcome is a lot better for North Korea than for the United States. I mean this is a classic case of rewarding bad behavior, the seizure of these two basically innocent Americans. Obviously all of us want to get them out but we want it done in a way that doesn’t increase the risks in the future for other Americans seized by North Korea, seized by Iran, seized by other despotic regimes and then turned into pawns to get senior officials like former presidents to come and legitimize the regime in order to get them out.

Watch it:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Amendment Withdrawn Due to White House 'Pressure'
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 30, 2009 at 9:15 AM.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) said yesterday that he withdrew an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would have weakened the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy because of “pressure” from the White House and some “congressional colleagues.” Hastings’ amendment would have prohibited “spending money to investigate or discharge members of the military who reveal they are homosexual or bisexual.” Saying he didn’t want “to get into names,” Hastings added, “I didn’t talk to Barack Obama.” During an appearance with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night, Hastings expressed his agitation:

HASTINGS: If something is bigoted and if your intent is to see to it that it does not continue, then I did not understand the leadership of Congress or the White House in saying that the time is not right. My position is: The president has said he wishes that this matter be repealed. My colleague, Patrick Murphy, now has more than 170 co-sponsors on a measure to repeal it. Secretary Gates has said, I`m glad he is now saying when we change our policy. Last year, he would have been saying “if.” But my view is, that the time is now to eliminate this bigoted law once and for all.

Watch it:

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that, until the law is repealed, he is looking at ways to make the application of it more “humane.”

Joe the Plumber Responds to Meghan McCain's "Dumbass" Remark
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 20, 2009 at 10:15 AM.

Last week, Meghan McCain responded to Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher’s claim that he doesn’t want "queers…anywhere around my children." "Joe the Plumber -- you can quote me -- is a dumbass," she said. "He should stick to plumbing." Not taking her advice to "stick to plumbing," Wurzelbacher showed up at an "Average Joes, Powerful Voices" event in Greenville, WI yesterday to speak to those protesting "taxes and government spending." But it appeared that he agreed, at least in part, with Meghan McCain’s criticism:

Wurzelbacher described himself as a "dumb plumber" who nevertheless could understand the Constitution. His themes and complaints in a 13-minute speech were similar to those voiced by speakers before and after him in the two-hour-plus event. He criticized wasteful government spending, lack of accountability, the disconnect between Christian values and politics, and political correctness.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Brainwash: Conservatives in Texas Want More Jesus, Less Lincoln in Textbooks
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 16, 2009 at 3:44 PM.

The Dallas Morning News reported last week that conservative “experts” advising the state of Texas on school curriculum are arguing that the state’s social studies and history textbooks are giving “too much attention” to some of U.S. history’s most prominent civil rights leaders. David Barton, one of the so-called “experts,” claimed Hispanic labor leader César Chávez “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others.” A colleague on the panel agreed, also singling out Thurgood Marshall for exclusion:

“To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin” – as in the current standards – “is ludicrous,” wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. [...]

Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is “not a strong enough example” of such a figure.

According to a draft of the proposed new textbook standards, “biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen F. Austin have been removed from the early grades.” At the same time, Peter Marshall wants more teaching of Christianity’s role “in America’s past“:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

McConnell Declines to Offer Support for Ensign's Re-election Campaign
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 15, 2009 at 5:01 AM.

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) told the Las Vegas Sun yesterday that, despite admitting an extramarital affair with a staffer and that his parents paid the woman and her family nearly $100,000 in hush money, he would not be resigning his seat and will be running for re-election in 2012. According to the Sun, Ensign said “his support is coming from his fellow senators as well as those ‘on both sides’ of Senate leadership.” However, it appears that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is not part of that group. Today during a press conference on Capitol Hill, he declined to offer his public support for Ensign:

QUESTION: Senator McConnell, Senator Ensign has said that he will remain in office (inaudible) reelection. Do you support him in (inaudible)?

MCCONNELL: Well, I think Senator Ensign will have to speak to those issues himself. And you can ask him about it.

Karl Rove: It's Dangerous to Give Congress Information
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 14, 2009 at 10:48 AM.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the secret CIA program that Vice President Cheney allegedly ordered hidden from Congressional oversight involved plans to kill or capture al-Qaeda operatives. Last night on Fox News, top Bush adviser Karl Rove refused to comment when asked by host Bill O’Reilly if he knew anything about the program. “I want to limit my comments to what I’ve read in the newspapers and observations,” he said. Rove then appeared to make the argument that executive branch should not inform Congress of what it is doing:

ROVE: Look, it’s interesting. The CIA briefed Congress to this, I guess, in June. And the Congress immediately leaks it. That, itself is, a violation, I think, of several statutes and indicative of why it is so dangerous to give Congress information.

Watch it:

To clarify, Congress did not “leak” details of the secret program. The Wall Street Journal cited “former intelligence officials familiar with the matter” in its report. But Rove’s comment seems to confirm the Bush administration’s motives for routinely attempting to hide information from Congress.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

'Paranoid' Netanyahu Calls David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel 'Self-Hating Jews'
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 9, 2009 at 9:23 AM.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today on the “atmosphere of permanent crisis” surrounding the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the report, a handful of Netanyahu’s top aides “dislike each other: They are constantly badmouthing each other and blaming each other for leaks.” One aide even revealed that Netanyahu attacked President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior advisor David Axelrod as “self-hating Jews”:

Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communicat[e] normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama’s senior aides: as “self-hating Jews.”

An aide also said that Netanyahu thought that his recent speech tacitly endorsing a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict (an endorsement that came with enormous caveats) “would become mandatory reading at schools in the United States, and when he realized that Obama gave no such order, he went back to being frustrated.” Matt Yglesias notes that Emanuel, who has taken a leading role in the Obama administration in pushing the two-state solution, has frustrated many in the right-wing American Jewish community for being too “tough” on the Israelis.