Posts by Steve Benen

Steve Benen is "blogger in chief" of the popular Washington Monthly online blog, Political Animal. His background includes publishing The Carpetbagger Report, and writing for a variety of publications, including Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He has also appeared on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," Air America Radio's "Sam Seder Show," and XM Radio's "POTUS '08."

After 5 Weeks, 3 GOP Filibusters and 200,000 Americans Running Out of Bennies, Obama to Sign Unemployment Extension
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 6, 2009 at 12:07 PM.

The good news is, President Obama will sign a measure today to extend unemployment benefits for at least 14 weeks for people out of work. It's money well spent -- it helps struggling people, and the investment tends to be stimulative -- and with new, discouraging job numbers, the timing is right.

"Given the employment situation and the general bang for the buck you get from unemployment insurance, that's probably the most sensible of the stimulative policies to extend," Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said.

The bad news is, it took far too long to get the common-sense bill through Congress. The measure stalled in the Senate for weeks, and while GOP lawmakers dithered, about 200,000 people who are looking for work lost their benefits.

We talked a couple of weeks ago about why Republicans were forcing delays, and Kevin Drum summarized what transpired on the Senate floor yesterday.

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Olympia Snowe's Strange Definition of 'Mainstream'
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 5, 2009 at 5:01 PM.

Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) opinions on health care policy have taken on quite a bit of significance in recent months. That's a shame.

Today, for example, she was asked for her opinion on the House reform bill, which may get a vote in just 48 hours. "I do not know what world they live in," Snowe said, apparently in reference to House Democrats. "But all I know is it is totally detached from the average person, the average business owner who is struggling to keep their doors open and to have that level of taxation is breathtaking in its dimensions. I just think it is so out of proportion with reality and with mainstream America that it is hard to believe, frankly."

Perhaps Snowe went into more substantive detail -- explaining, for example, what she considers "mainstream" -- but I haven't seen additional reporting. She just seems to think the House bill is some kind of outrageous disaster.

It's possible Snowe just doesn't know what's in the House bill, because her assessment is wrong.

The health-care reform bills emerging from the House and Senate, when melded and enacted, will constitute an epochal achievement: the near-universal provision of medical care to the American people. But the House version is clearly the more epochal, as the health coverage it provides is more universal, chiefly because it's more affordable.

For families who buy their insurance on the exchanges that both bills establish, for instance, the House bill includes more generous subsidies -- on average, $1,000 more, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The House bill also offers a lot more assistance to Medicare recipients by reducing the cost of their prescriptions. While the bill that emerged from the Senate Finance Committee renews the Bush administration's mega-bucks gift to the drug companies by continuing to prohibit Medicare from negotiating drug prices with them, the House bill authorizes those negotiations. The Senate bill reduces by half the payments that Medicare recipients must make for prescription drugs that fall into the "doughnut hole" (annual drug expenses are covered up to $2,700, and coverage kicks in again at $6,100, but for all purchases in between, Medicarians are on their own). The House bill would cover all prescription purchases by 2019.

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Conservatives Still Think You're Over-Insured
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 5, 2009 at 9:01 AM.

This comes up from time to time, but it's good to see former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), a new ringleader for right-wing activists, state it plainly.

"The largest empirical problem we have in health care today is too many people are too overinsured," he said.

There it is, the right's philosophy on American health care in 17 words. Most of us think the problem with the existing system is that we pay too much, get too little, and leave too many behind. Dick Armey sees the existing system and thinks we'd all be better off with less coverage. Lest anyone think this is unique to Armey, the opposite is true. A few years ago, during Bush's pitch in support of health saving accounts, the LA Times' Peter Gosselin explained, "Most conservatives -- including those in the [Bush] administration -- believe that the root cause of most problems with the nation's healthcare system is that most Americans are over-insured."

Just two months ago, Reps. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) and Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal making the same case. "When was the last time you asked your doctor how much it would cost for a necessary test or procedure?" they asked, making the case that consumers need more "control ... over their care."

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Absurd: Joe "You Lie!" Wilson Claims Obama is "Solely Responsible" For Swine Flu
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 3, 2009 at 1:41 PM.

WILSON'S H1N1 ATTACK.... Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) -- you know, the "you lie" heckler -- has some interesting thoughts on the public health emergency posed by the H1N1 flu virus. Naturally, he blames President Obama, not for the virus, but for the scarcity of the vaccine.

"The current administration is solely responsible. They can't blame this on any prior administration," Wilson said. "This is the responsibility of the current administration. They've put the lives of Americans at risk."

Putting aside the fact that no one has tried to blame Bush/Cheney for a flu virus, Wilson was a little vague as to how the president and his team put American lives at risk. He can't point to anything in particular -- probably because the administration has done everything it could to this point -- but Wilson still insists the White House is "solely responsible" for the problem. Just because.

Of course, the criticism does offer Dems an opportunity to take a closer look at Wilson's record on the same subject.

In a release issued on Thursday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee claimed that any criticism of H1N1 policy by the GOP would amount to hypocrisy.

The DCCC pointed to a June vote on a supplementary appropriations bill as evidence. Wilson joined 95% of Republicans and voted against the bill, which contained special funding to combat H1N1 both domestically and internationally. But the bill also contained other much more money for other plans and programs Republicans at the time viewed as wasteful, including the Cash-For-Clunkers car purchase incentive program.

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Republicans Have Drafted a Health Bill, and It Sucks
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 3, 2009 at 6:47 AM.

FALLING SHORT OF LOW EXPECTATIONS.... The goading and taunts appear to have been effective: House Republicans will have a health care reform bill. It's been sent to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring, and will, if all goes according to plan, be ready to go 72 hours before a possible floor vote on the Democratic proposal.

So, what's in it? We won't know for sure until it's formally unveiled, but House GOP leaders started offering some details yesterday. At this point, their proposal may be even worse than expected.

Republicans are preparing to unveil their own health bill in the next few days. Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Monday that the plan wouldn't seek to prevent health-insurance companies from denying sick people insurance -- a key plank of the Democrats' legislation.

It seemed for a while that there was one thing everyone could agree on -- private insurers shouldn't be able to discriminate against consumers based on pre-existing conditions. But barring any changes to the Republican plan, GOP lawmakers aren't even prepared to inconvenience private insurance companies with popular, common sense provision.

A Wall Street Journal report added yesterday, "Republicans also wouldn't prevent insurers from ending policies once an individual becomes seriously ill."

There would also be no individual mandate, no employer mandate, no exchange, and no tax credits or subsidies to help purchase coverage.

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The Great GOP Purge
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 2, 2009 at 5:00 AM.

THE GREAT PURGE.... In a district represented by a Republican lawmaker in every election since the Civil War, the national Republican Party not only endorsed the consensus choice of local GOP leaders in the special election in New York's 23rd, they also invested $1 million last month. Yesterday, on the verge of an embarrassing third-place defeat, she quit.

The right-wing inmates have decided it's their asylum now, and they're just getting started.

Republican Dede Scozzafava's decision Saturday to drop out of the New York special congressional election gave conservatives a big win, but may present a challenge for Republicans heading into next year's mid-term elections. [...]

The message from national and New York conservatives is unambiguous, though: This was an angry, energized base telling the national party that an anything-for-a-majority approach by GOP leaders is unacceptable. They are serious and deeply concerned about what's going on in Washington.

While the Empire State's unique ballot rules and a Republican candidate to the left of the GOP mainstream helped open the door for Hoffman's unlikely run, the national effect of this race may be to embolden more conservatives to take on party establishment-approved candidates who don't toe the ideological line.

And so the new phase of The Great Purge begins.

"I think it will empower tea party activists to look for moderate scalps in other districts," fretted one senior GOP strategist with national campaign experience. "The question is, Will we go through a period in the party where a great purge begins?" this strategist asked.

Hasn't it already? Scozzafava was a respected local Republican, with a record slightly to the right of most GOP state lawmakers in New York, but she was deemed insufficiently conservative. Sen. Arlen Specter was a Republican senator for nearly three decades, but he was deemed insufficiently conservative. Gov. Charlie Crist is supposed to be a rising GOP star from the nation's largest swing state, but his future is in doubt because he's been deemed insufficiently conservative. Eight House Republicans supported energy reform in July, and the base has targeted them for retribution. Newt Gingrich, for reasons I've never understood, is considered one of the GOP's great idea men. But the Tea Party/wingnut crowd has turned on him, too.

When Newt Gingrich is too moderate, and trying to pull the Republican Party closer to the American mainstream, it's safe to say there's something deeply wrong.

It's also safe to say the national Republican Party, which has suffered consecutive electoral failures and has seen its brand deteriorate further this year, has a problem for which there is no obvious solution.

Frank Rich reflected today on the right's Jacobins:

The right's embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P. On Saturday, the battered Scozzafava suspended her campaign, further scrambling the race. It's still conceivable that the Democratic candidate could capture a seat the Republicans should own. But it's even better for Democrats if Hoffman wins. Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure. That's bad news for even a Republican as conservative as Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose primary opponent in the Texas governor's race, the incumbent Rick Perry, floated the possibility of secession at a teabagger rally in April and hastily endorsed Hoffman on Thursday.

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats' prospects next year.... Though [Beck, Palin and their acolytes] constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to "melt Snowe" (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.

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Reid Blasts Unprecedented GOP Obstructionism
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 29, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

Maybe this will help bring some much-needed attention to the story.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) excoriated Republicans on Thursday for stalling more than 200 executive and judicial nominees that in some cases have been lingering on the executive calendar for months.

"Senate Republicans are simply so opposed to everything, absolutely everything, that they even oppose putting people in some of the most important positions in our government," Reid said in a floor statement.

In the midst of the H1N1 flu outbreak, Republicans put a hold on President Obama's surgeon general nominee. The federal courts are backlogged, but Republicans are blocking votes on President Obama's judicial nominees. The White House has sent qualified people to the Hill to lead the Office of Legal Counsel, head the General Services Administration, and a variety of diplomatic posts, but Republicans have put holds on all of them, too.

This just isn't normal. Indeed, the Senate isn't supposed to function this way -- and it never has functioned this way. It's obstructionism on a scale without precedent.

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Falling Short of Robust Public Option
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 29, 2009 at 9:00 AM.

SETTLING FOR GOOD ENOUGH.... You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you can pass in a House caucus with 51 Blue Dogs.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi will unveil a bill Thursday that falls short of the liberal vision of a public option -- and the liberals, so far and somewhat surprisingly, are going along with that.

After months of public hand-wringing and strident proclamations in support of the strongest possible government-run health coverage, liberal Democrats are bowing to the reality that party leaders don't have the votes.

So Pelosi will unveil a bill that creates a public option but one that would allow doctors and hospitals to negotiate rates with the government. Liberals wanted a bill tethered to Medicare rates.

House progressives put up a good fight. Indeed, it was their diligence on this specific provision that helped keep the public option alive when much of the establishment thought it was dead. But it became apparent this week that the votes weren't there for a robust public option, so House liberals are doing the right thing -- fight like hell, for as long as possible, and then go with the best bill you can pass.

This is not to say there's unanimity on the point. Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, one of the leaders of the Progressive Caucus, will continue to pursue a Medicare+5 amendment, but in general, most of those who worked for the robust public option are prepared to go with the bill as presented this morning by Speaker Pelosi. As Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) put it, "I would have preferred the other way, but we're looking at this bill holistically."

Part of this is fueled by the recognition that the Speaker's office did everything it could. "They did everything possible," said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.). "There's no sense pushing back for something that can't be done."

Also keep in mind, though, that the compromise to a public option with negotiated rates was reportedly made easier by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to include a public option in the Senate reform bill. It signaled to House progressives that a final bill with public-private competition is more likely.

And what happens if the Senate has to scuttle the provision in light of Republican obstructionism and opposition from center-right members of the Democratic caucus? Time will tell.

Joe Lieberman's B.S. Justifications for Opposing the Public Option
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 27, 2009 at 5:00 PM.

OK, so Joe Lieberman would rather see health care reform fail than allow some consumers to have a choice between public and private coverage. But one of the key clues to an unprincipled mind is an evolving explanation for opposition.

In June, Lieberman said, "I don't favor a public option because I think there's plenty of competition in the private insurance market." That didn't make sense, and it was quickly dropped from his talking points.

In July, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because "the public is going to end up paying for it." No one knew what that meant.

In August, he said we'd have to wait "until the economy's out of recession," which is incoherent, since a public option, even if passed this year, still wouldn't kick in for quite a while.

In September, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because "the public doesn't support it." A wide variety of credible polling proved otherwise.

Which brings us to October, and the latest in a series of weak explanations.

"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. "To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don't think we need it now." [...]

Lieberman said that he'd vote against a public option plan "even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."

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Where's the Long-Sought GOP Alternative Health Plan?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 27, 2009 at 10:39 AM.

When pressed on why Democrats are moving forward with a health care reform plan, while Republicans haven't offered a proposal of their own, GOP leaders will routinely say there are a handful of Republican-backed bills. It's a fairly shallow cop-out -- none of the various GOP plans have been embraced by the caucus and/or its leadership.

Nevertheless, Republicans did promise, not too terribly long ago, that the caucus would offer an alternative reform plan. It would prove that the GOP is not only steering clear of the "Party of No" label, but also that the minority was serious about governing. Voters would have an opportunity to see two clear approaches to the issue -- one from each party -- and could evaluate which side offered the better solutions.

That commitment came 132 days ago. Republicans are still debating the point.

Some House Republicans are growing frustrated that their leaders have not yet introduced a healthcare reform alternative.

For months, the message from House GOP leaders on a healthcare bill has been similar to ads for yet-to-be-released movies: Coming soon.

According to several GOP lawmakers, the leadership is split over how to proceed in terms of unveiling an alternative to the final Democratic bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) intends to unveil as soon as this week.

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Insane Neocon to Ron Reagan: Your Father Would Be Ashamed
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 23, 2009 at 9:46 AM.

Right-wing pundit Frank Gaffney was on MSNBC's "Hardball" yesterday, debating U.S. policy in Afghanistan with Ron Reagan. It didn't go well, but the heated exchange was really only part of the problem. (thanks to reader W.B. for the tip)

After Reagan rejected the neocon approach to the conflict, Gaffney made things personal. "Your father would be ashamed of you," Gaffney told Reagan. The former president's son replied, "You better watch your mouth about that, Frank."

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Gibbs Sets Cheney Straight on Afghanistan
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 22, 2009 at 5:26 PM.

Following up on an earlier item, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked this afternoon about Dick Cheney's criticism of President Obama on U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

"What Vice President Cheney calls 'dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and the American public,'" Gibbs said. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."

That's a pretty good response, actually.

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John Kerry Delivers in Afghanistan
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 22, 2009 at 8:10 AM.

It's nice to John Kerry get some well-deserved credit.

Sen. John Kerry's successful mission to Kabul -- in which he convinced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to hold a second-round runoff to August's fraud-soaked election -- suggests that the Obama administration is putting the squeeze on Karzai to clean up his act as a precondition to getting more U.S. troops to help fight his war.

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What Mainstream Media Don't Get About Obama and Fox News
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 20, 2009 at 10:15 AM.

MARCUS MUST HAVE MISSED IT.... Now that the White House is describing the Republican cable news network as a Republican cable news network, the media establishment is starting to register its disapproval. The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus seemed especially disgusted that the obviously-partisan Fox News was being called out for making a mockery of American journalism, calling the White House's recent remarks "dumb," "childish," "petty," "Nixonian," and "self defeating."

But this was the part of Marcus' criticism that stood out:

Where the White House has gone way overboard is in its decision to treat Fox as an outright enemy and to go public with the assault. Imagine the outcry if the Bush administration had pulled a similar hissy fit with MSNBC.

It's funny she should put it that way. Marcus may have missed it, but the Bush administration did go after NBC News quite a bit.

Marcus must have forgotten, for example, when a top White House advisor to President Bush targeted NBC in May 2008, accusing the network of deceptive editing and blurring the lines between "news" and "opinion." Officials from the Bush team, around that time, began treating NBC and MSNBC as political opponents.

The president's press secretary at the time proceeded to complain about NBC from behind the White House podium, saying that staffers had grown "fed up" with the network's coverage, and that frustration among the president's aides "reached a boiling point" and "boiled over." Dana Perino's remarks, ironically enough, came in response to a pointed question from a Fox News correspondent.

Two things to remember here. One, the complaints about NBC News were baseless, especially as compared to Fox News literally reading Republican Party talking points on the air and passing them off as legitimate political journalism.

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Has Grassley Totally Lost It?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 15, 2009 at 4:24 PM.

GRASSLEY, GOING AROUND THE BEND.... Two months ago, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) first endorsed the notion that health care reform might include "a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma," it was pretty obvious the conservative Iowan was a lost cause.

At the time, Joe Klein called Grassley's comments "sheer idiocy," adding that the senator "either (a) hasn't the vaguest notion of what's in the bill or (b) he is so intimidated by the ditto-head-brown-shirts that he is trying to fudge a response to keep them happy. Either way, he should be ashamed."

Except, Grassley wasn't embarrassed in the slightest. Despite being the leading GOP negotiator on a "bipartisan" approach to reform, the Republican senator proceeded to lash out wildly against the effort. This included trashing specific policy proposals he'd already endorsed.

This week, Grassley appears to have completely lost it, offering at least tacit support for radical "Tenther" theories that insist that health care reform may be unconstitutional.

"I'm not a lawyer, but let me tell you, I've listened to some lawyers speak on this. And you know, it's a relatively new issue. I don't think we've ever had this issue before of having to buy something. And a lot of constitutional lawyers, saying it is unconstitutional or at least in violation of the 10th Amendment. Now maybe states can do this, but can the federal government? So, I have my doubts."

This was specifically responding to a question about individual mandates -- a measure he's already endorsed as a good idea that he supports.

Obvious inconsistencies notwithstanding, the notion that health care reform is "in violation of the 10th Amendment" is demonstrably ridiculous. The idea that "a lot of constitutional lawyers" see health care reform as unconstitutional is absurd.

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