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Posts by Mike Lux
Dems Have No Excuse for Failing on Health Care
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on November 24, 2009 at 9:45 AM.
The single biggest complaint I hear by non-DC insiders is the sheer dysfunction of Washington. Whether it's Jon Stewart's very funny interview with Joe Biden the other day, or bloggers attacking Harry Reid for not just wrapping the health care issue up by going to reconciliation, people not involved in the day to day DC maneuvering and negotiating don't understand why all this is so hard and takes so long. Insiders get very grumpy about this attitude, because they have to deal every day with the complications of the Senate procedural rules, the egos and turf battles of the powerful committee chairs, and the traditions and clubbiness of the Senate.
I have a lot of sympathy for people on both sides of the divide. Having served in the White House, and been in DC for 17 years now, I know how hard it is to get things done in this town. And having read my share of history books, I know how hard it is to get big things done in general - it just doesn't happen very often, and it is never ever easy or painless. But I also know this: if Democrats don't deliver now, there will be no excuses. They have to find a way to deliver the goods. History, the media, activists, and voters will offer them no mercy if they can't get health reform done this time around.
So if failure is not an option, and there are four holdout Democrats in the Senate blocking the way to getting a reform bill the rest of the Democratic Party can live with, what is to be done?
A lot of people, including me, have been saying for a while that those four Senators would probably eventually force Reid to use the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes, and in the end they still might because there might be no other option. But a lot of the more liberal Democrats in the Senate (including Harkin, Rockefeller, and Schumer) have started arguing against that option. Their reasons include that the bill would have to be dramatically scaled back to fit within the reconciliation rule, the process would likely be slowed down making pending legislation tougher to pass, and that the bill would have to be referred to Kent Conrad's rather conservative budget committee where all kinds of bad things might happen to it. There are also an undetermined number of otherwise more progressive Senators such as Robert Byrd and Russ Feingold who believe putting health care in reconciliation violates the spirit of reconciliation rules, and would vote against the bill on principle.
These are pretty compelling arguments, so my view is that progressives should not be demanding that Harry Reid put this bill through the reconciliation process. In the end, he may have no other choice, but to demand that before he has had the chance to pursue every other option makes no sense to me. To say Harry Reid - or the President or anyone else - can just force the bill through no matter what is simply not true. The American government, just doesn't work that way. Not even LBJ, the greatest leg-breaker the Senate and Presidency have ever seen, could government by fiat - even with huge Democratic majorities he had to compromise on a range of issues to get things done.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
In Order to Succeed, Obama Must Forge Progressive Alliances and Deliver on Them
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on October 20, 2009 at 1:16 PM.
One thing that every major policy initiative the Obama administration has taken/has been forced to take on (most of them are in the latter category given the stakes) early in their term have in common is their overwhelming complexity. I am glad we have a President with real brains and a mind that can understand complexity, because when I think about the problems we have, and what it will take to solve them, the idea of George W. Bush, John McCain, or Sarah Palin being in charge gives me a bad case of the shivers. Think about what is on this President's plate: solving the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, dealing with the mess in Afghanistan, finding a long term international solution to climate change, finally reforming health care in a comprehensive way, dealing with an utterly out of control and corrupt financial sector, finally finding a fair and comprehensive solution to immigration reform. I know I'm missing some big things, but you get my point. There's not a single issue on this list that is simple to resolve, either substantively or politically. This level of major issues and crises to handle really does rival only a few other Presidents- Washington, Adams, and Jefferson in our nation's earliest days, Lincoln in the Civil War years, FDR. So thank goodness he's smart, and thank goodness he has surrounded himself with a lot of really bright advisers, because to make progress- let alone resolve- these issues is going to take a huge amount of brain power.
Brain power is not enough, though...
History has numerous examples of smart Presidents whose presidencies were not especially successful- John and John Quincy Adams, James Buchanan, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon all come to mind. John Adams was just as smart as Jefferson, Buchanan had as much brain power as Lincoln, Hoover was considered by his peers a genius while FDR was considered an intellectual lightweight. Yet all three of the former lost the confidence of the American people and essentially failed as Presidents, while all three of the latter not only succeeded as Presidents but became known in history as three of our greatest. They kept the American's people's confidence in spite of the hard times they were leading the country through.
In spite of the incredibly complex and dangerous challenges and crises those great Presidents faced, in spite of setbacks they had and mistakes they made, the public ultimately stuck with them through all the tough times. My belief is that the reason that happened was not because of the results these Presidents achieved but because the people felt confident that those Presidents shared their values and were really fighting on their behalf. Jefferson barely made it into office after the massive electoral college meltdown in the 1800 election, did hugely controversial things such as the Louisiana Purchase, and was attacked as viciously as any President in history, but his faith in regular people and in democracy itself (still a very contentious idea in the early American political debate) bonded him to Americans as they were trying to forge their identity as a new kind of nation. Lincoln suffered setback after setback in the Civil War, but his noble spirit, steadfast values to his vision of America, and his unyielding determination made the country love him in spite of the horrors of the war. And FDR was able to forge a lasting and passionate bond with his countrymen and women even with times so tough, and later with that awful war against tough odds we had to fight. In every case, the country knew their Presidents were fighting for them, knew their Presidents shared their values, and even in the toughest of times remained loyal to them as leaders.
We face another juncture in history where the challenges are incredibly tough, the problems devastatingly complicated. The test of this President through all these tough times is whether regular Americans trust that he is fighting for them. Through all the complicated policy debates, and all the complicated politics, does he make choices that show he is on their side? Will he step up and fight for a public option that will give genuine competition to the private insurers that people know do not have their best interests at heart? Will he really take on the "Too Big To Fail" banks and rein in their power and corruption of our political and economic system? Will he really fight like crazy to squeeze out every new job in this economy, not just tell people that "jobs are a lagging indicator" and say that they will get here eventually?
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
The Number One Goal: Less Power for the Big Banks
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on October 15, 2009 at 8:00 AM.
At a retreat this last weekend sponsored by the Roosevelt Institute on financial reform issues (I have to take a break from health care every once in a while to keep my sanity), I met a very impressive guy named Bill Black, who as a regulator was a major reason why the Savings and Loan fraud of the 1980s got discovered and prosecuted. When I got home, I discovered this incredibly smart piece Bill just posted, along with another terrific piece, this one by Bob Creamer, posted earlier that day. Everybody who wants to know how important the battle for financial reform is should real these posts.
The bottom line for me of these articles is that there should be one central goal that drives all policy and legal initiatives for progressives in the coming fights over financial policy- that the biggest banks on Wall Street should have less economic and political power. These companies are already responsible for wrecking our economy, not just in the big economic collapse of last year but in all the ways Black describes regarding the impact on the real economy. If left unchecked, they will continue to drain jobs and income from the rest of the economy, and they will--sooner rather than later, within a few years not a generation or two--cause another major economic collapse, this one almost certainly worse than 2009 because our economy has already been so weakened.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
The Real Battle for Health Reform Begins
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on October 14, 2009 at 10:15 AM.
The preliminaries are finally over in the battle to finally, finally, finally -- 97 years after Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it -- pass comprehensive health care reform. I think the right sports analogy to use is the extended, exhausting, NBA playoffs: after 82 regular season games, 16 playoff teams play in a best-of-7 series to get to the second round, and then the remaining eight teams play best-of-seven to get into the conference finals for another exhausting best of-7 series. I think that's about where we're at, the conference finals, where the coming days will seem like a long tiring 7-game series that is only the preparation for the even more intense final championship round.
I am excited, though, because this is a whole lot further than we got to when I was in the White House health care war room in 1994. We got the bill out of some of the committees, but never out of Senate Finance, and never had a realistic chance to have a floor fight.
So now come the machinations and maneuvering to figure out how to merge the two bills in the Senate and three in the House. The strategy now looks to be to get through on the Senate side with the 60 Democrats and maybe Snowe, but to continue to hold reconciliation (where you only need 51 votes) out as an option if needed once the conference committee comes back.
As I had predicted awhile back, Baucus' initial bill in Senate Finance was an ugly mutt of compromises and decisions, but it got a little better in the committee process, as he gave the progressives on the committee a few solid improvements here and there. Reid will now merge the two bills, and I am convinced that he will work to create a better bill in the process, and then we have the floor fight and finally conference committee. At every stage, I think progressives have the ability, if they stick together and negotiate well, to make progress.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
U.S. Still Fighting the Same Old Battles Over Race, Identity
Posted by Mike Lux, Huffington Post on September 25, 2009 at 10:30 AM.
Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the South (and let's face it, most of the rest of America) was still segregated in spite of Brown v. Board of Education and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, and when South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were still governed by apartheid, a small group of young Africans started coming to this country to go to college. Barack Obama's father was part of that wave, but it wasn't just exotic cosmopolitan places like Hawaii that received African students. The modest sized (150,000 population at the time), virtually all-white city I grew up in, Lincoln, Nebraska, had some come our way as well, and the arrival of a couple of these families was a central part of my childhood.
My dad and mom were the host family of two different African students from Rhodesia, who were brought to Lincoln with the support of our church. The first arrived around 1961 and the second around 1968. Both of the young men brought their wives with them, and one of them had a couple of children while here, while the second family came with two young ones.
It was an intense time in terms of racial politics in this country and around the world. Lincoln was a white enough city that I don't think my folks had ever been friends with a black person, and coming from highly segregated Rhodesia, I know that the Africans who arrived in Lincoln had never been friends with white people before either. The elementary school that I, and the children of those couples, attended had no other black children as far as I can remember. One of the most searing memories from my childhood was walking with the kids of the second family, the Chimonyos, to school. I was maybe10 or 11, the little girl Petonella was in kindergarten and the little boy Prayer was about 7, in 2nd grade I think. We would frequently hear catcalls of "nigger, nigger," and would get regular threats of being hit, or in a couple of cases having rocks thrown at us. I was not much of an athlete, so I didn't try to fight back, but I knew my parents would expect me to stand by those kids' side and hold their hands and comfort them when the bullies finally gave it up.
I am thinking on all this because 20 years ago today, my father died of cancer at the absurdly young age of 60. He would have been amazed at the world we're living in -- Mandela was freed the year after his death, South African apartheid was finally ended, and most amazing of all, we actually have the son of one of the wave of African student who came to this country as president. The immigrants from third world countries who started arriving here in bigger numbers in the 1960s, and their children and grandchildren, have really begun to change this country for the better, and the fact that one of their children is president shows how far we have come. But in spite of all of this progress, we still have the bitter anger that I felt in the elementary school yard, we still have Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan spewing their fear and hatred against immigrants and people of color. A whole lot has changed in the 40 years since I stood in that schoolyard holding the hands of the little ones in my care, and in the 20 years since my father died, but a whole lot of things haven't as well. We still have to fight the same battles: for immigrants and all people of color to be treated with respect; for those who are sick or are dying to be well cared for with dignity, in a manner of their choosing, as my father was lucky enough to do; for the poor of this world to have a change at a decent life and decent education and decent health care, as my dad wanted for all his life.
For my dad, it was his faith that gave him those values. To feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and those in prison. To welcome the stranger. To be our brother's and sister's keeper. To proclaim good news to the poor and let the oppressed go free. To show mercy and love kindness. Those are the values I was raised with, and when I hear Joe Wilson from the buckle of the Bible belt scream "You lie" at this president when he is talking about health care for all, I wonder how those values got so distorted.
So, Dad, wherever you are, thank you for raising me with those values and not the bitter angry ugliness of the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and Joe Wilsons of this world. A lot has changed since you left this good earth, but we're still fighting the ugliness. But I honor you and all those famous and unsung pioneers for human justice who have gone before us. I am thankful that there were people like you and my mom who welcomed the stranger, people who welcomed Barack Obama, Sr and so many other immigrants who have contributed to the quality of this country, and still are. The next time I write, I hope I'll be telling you that we finally have decent health care for all, and that we live in a country where immigrants are finally welcome.
The Bad News? The Senate Finance Bill is Horrendous. The Good News? It's Not Even Close to Final
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on September 16, 2009 at 8:19 AM.
It's not even close to the final bill.
I have written several times of the media's fixation with the bill that comes out of the Senate Finance Committee on health care. It's finally starting to move now, creaking its way up the track like a half-dead carcass. Traditional media will act like whatever is in the Senate Finance bill will be the bill, that the deal is done. Not even close, folks.
Here's why the Senate Finance markup that will come out next week is nowhere close to what will be in the final legislation:
1. Finance chair Max Baucus has already messed up by not consulting with a half-dozen of the more progressive members of the committee. I am hearing numerous reports, some of which have surfaced publicly, that some of them are rebelling at the awful piece of mangled legislation being thrust in front of them. Given that Snowe is the only Republican that there is even a ghost of a chance of voting for the bill, Baucus has to get all or at least most of the Democrats on board, and I believe if the committee progressives work together, they can force some changes for the better.
2. The bill that makes it out of Finance will be so convoluted, contradictory, distorted, held-together-with-duct-tape because of all the compromises Baucus is making that Democrats will have to remake it in later stages even if they don't want to- and a great many of them want to.
3. Harry Reid still needs to marry the Finance bill and the HELP committee bill. Tom Harkin, who took over the chairmanship of the HELP Committee after Ted Kennedy passed away, is from what I hear bound and determined to make a major push to have the language of the HELP bill be a major part of the package that goes to the floor, including on the big issues like the public option and affordability for the middle class. He is being supported not only by the Democratic members of his committee but by outside progressive forces.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Senate Breakdown: Real Numbers on the Public Option
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on September 8, 2009 at 10:13 AM.
One of the truisms of life in DC is that whenever one party controls the Presidency, the House, and the Senate, it is virtually certain that the last of those three institutions will be the toughest nut to crack in terms of actually getting anything done. Between the filibuster, a variety of other arcane procedural rules, the clubby atmosphere of the chamber, and the six-year term making Senators less concerned about the year-to-year swings of their constituents, the Senate is inherently slower and more resistant to change.
That well-known fact to political insiders has congealed into a hardened nugget of conventional wisdom about the health care fight, which is that there is no way a strong health care reform package, including a public option, can make it out of that body. However, if you really look at reality, at what we actually know, that piece of conventional wisdom is mythology.
The Baucus mark-up only adds to this conventional wisdom, of course. But keep in mind that Senate Finance is almost without question the most conservative committee in either house of Congress right now. Its chair, Max Baucus, is in the top five Democrats in terms of conservatism, and has been historically very close to big business and the ranking Republican on the committee (Grassley). He was happy to cut the deal with Grassley in 2001, against the wishes of the vast majority of the Democratic caucus, for the massive Bush tax cut for the rich that was the main cause of our massive federal deficit over the last few years. Other key committee Democrats like Conrad and Bingaman, of the Gang of Six fame, aren't exactly liberally stalwarts either.
But in a soon-to-be-60-Democrats chamber (when Kennedy is replaced), the most conservative committee does not determine things for the rest of the Senate.
Let's look at the actual facts in terms of passing a bill acceptable to most Democrats:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
The Myths of the Battle of Health Care Reform
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on September 3, 2009 at 5:02 AM.
| The relentlessly cynical and negative traditional media has talked itself into believing certain things about the fight over health care reform, whether there is any serious evidence beyond their own self-reinforcing stories or not. Unfortunately, what happens when these kind of stories are written, everyone - Congresspeople, unnamed lobbyists, unnamed administration, other journalists, progressive activists, and bloggers - then reacts to these stories, usually to reinforce their own point of view or their client's interest.
The problem is that so many of these assumptions are unproven/unknown at best, or downright mythological at worst. Having been deeply immersed in both the lasting health care fight in 1993-94 and this one today, I feel fairly confident in pointing out some of these things that most traditional media reporters seem to believe as gospel that in fact are not all certain. Let me just mention a few of the biggest: |
| I. Serious Health Care Reform is Dead or on "Life Support"
Versions of this story have been floating around for many months now, with reporters eager to cover a train wreck and flaming failure for Obama. Now don't get me wrong: I don't want to imply that reporters particularly want health care reform, or Obama, to fail. They just like to declare everything a failure. In the 1992 campaign, reporters and pundits declared Clinton to be a walking corpse after Jennifer Flowers, the draft dodging thing, the didn't inhale quote, the brutal NY primary, after Perot got in, several other times as well. They declared the 1993 Clinton budget dead at least a dozen times before we passed it, and the same thing happened with the 1994 crime bill. After the '94 elections, they declared Clinton gone, irrelevant, powerless, certain to be defeated many times before he smoked Gingrich in the '95 budget battle and went on to another electoral vote landslide in '96. They declared that it was a matter of days before his resignation after the Lewinsky scandal broke, and that he would be forced out of office for sure after the news about her dress came out. They declared Gore toast before he won the popular vote in the 2000 elections, and Kerry dead in the primaries before he won in Iowa. They said Hillary Clinton was the nominee for sure in the fall shortly before Obama won in Iowa. This year so far, they declared the stimulus in deep trouble, right before it was passed, and Obama's budget in a world of hurt shortly before it passed. A strong comprehensive health reform bill (yes, with a public option) has passed four committees so far, and according to public statements by members and private vote counts a lot of us advocates have been doing, we are well within range of victory. House Progressives have the votes to defeat anything without the public option, and they are still standing firm. Strong health care reform, with a public option, is far from a done deal, but it is quite alive, thank you. 2. The town halls and August recess have been a disaster for health care The yelling, Hitler comparisons, and people bringing semiautomatics to events made for great theater, but the reality on the ground was very different. In the local newspapers and monitoring by Congressional offices I am aware of, supporters of health reform out-numbered opponents at most places. The swing Congressional offices I have talked to received more calls, faxes, mail, and email from supporters than opponents. And I have yet to talk to any members of Congress, or even their staffers, even the more conservative ones, who have said to me that they have come out of the August recess wanting to give up on or even slow down on health care reform. |
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Health Reform: If Everyone Is Happy, Nothing Is Getting Done
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on August 6, 2009 at 3:34 PM.
There is a buzz building in the traditional media and in some DC Democratic circles about how we should just accept the fact that we are not going to get a bigger health care reform bill passed, and should just agree to accept the things that the insurance industry has already said they are willing to give us. The insurers say they are willing to give us doing away with coverage denial for pre-existing conditions, for example, or not charging sick people high rates. Let's just take what we can get, some Democrats are saying, declare victory, and go home.
This line of thinking reminds me of a piece of legislation that all you non-health care wonks out there probably have never heard of: the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act of 1996. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 98-0 and the House 421-2. Its stated aims were to protect health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose jobs, and to limit to the pre-existing conditions denial problem. It was all policy the insurance industry agreed to, and the bill passed with a lot of fanfare. There was a very nice bipartisan bill signing ceremony (which I attended) on the South Lawn of the White House. Pundits were delighted.
There was only one problem with it, which you may have noticed if you think about it: it didn't actually do anything to solve our health care problems, even the ones it was specially intended to solve. People still lose their health insurance when they lose their job. Insurance companies still deny people with pre-existing conditions. And the problems of our health care system get steadily worse year after year.
You see, the insurance companies are really good at writing loopholes for themselves, especially if you announce in advance that you will only pass what they agree to.
Look, this should be obvious, but apparently it's not: when some big piece of our economy is really messed up, but some major corporate interest is making lots and lots of money off the system, if that corporate interest doesn't object to the "reform" being proposed, whatever legislation being proposed will not solve the actual problem. The 98-0 votes that folks like David Broder love and extol, the bipartisan bill signing ceremonies that thrill the hell out of everyone in DC - they don't actually solve or resolve anything important.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
We Need a Jobs Package, Not a Stimulus Package
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on July 9, 2009 at 5:01 AM.
This seems like Framing and Political Strategy 101 to me, but since few other people are talking in this way, let me just lay out a basic idea: all this talk about doing a stimulus package versus not doing a stimulus package is fundamentally besides the point. What we need is a comprehensive policy package that is very simply focused on one thing and one thing only: jobs.
I know the policy wonks on Capitol Hill may be confused by that paragraph because, they would say, well, a stimulus program would create jobs. Well, yeah, that is the idea of stimulus. But my point is this: the politics of a second stimulus package are a dead end. The politics of having a debate about a policy package that will create jobs is a helpful thing. Announcing a second stimulus package gets Democrats into a defensive crouch about why the first one failed, and gets us into that same "can we get to 60" dance with Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins that caused the first stimulus bill to be pared back and rendered less effective.
Voters don't know what it means to say you are going to stimulate the economy, but they do know what a job is. And right now, what we need is jobs sooner rather than later. My point here is not to just rename the stimulus bill the jobs bill. In fact, there are quite a few things the White House and Congress can do to focus on jobs that don't involve just spending more, although more money will certainly need to be spent. Here is what I would include in a comprehensive package:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
New Petition Backs Up Pelosi's Position on Superdelegates
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on March 27, 2008 at 1:27 PM.
Today, OpenLeft.com and MoveOn.org are co-sponsoring a new petition to Nancy Pelosi, supporting her position on superdelegates and telling her that we'll back her up when she is threatened.
Matt noted yesterday a letter that 20 major donors and raisers to Hillary and other Democratic Party causes sent to Pelosi, upbraiding her for saying that voters ought to actually determine the election. Now, I don't think there is anything wrong with donors stating their opinion about this issue, and I don't blame them for doing it. I'm sure that the Clinton campaign asked them to send the letter, and they are loyal partisans for Hillary, so they did what they were asked to do.
But I also think that the millions of us who are smaller donors to this party, who give through MoveOn.org and blogs and ActBlue, should have an equal voice on the important issues with the big dog donors, and we believe that the candidate who wins this election ought to be given the nomination.
If the donors and raisers who signed this letter plan to take their money away from the DCCC, that would be a terrible thing, and if that's what they are implying with this letter, shame on them and on the Clinton campaign for encouraging that kind of threat. But, if they do take their money away, I believe those of us signing this petition can more than make up the difference through our collective efforts. More importantly, it will be up to us to make sure that the actions of a few do not change the course that Speaker Pelosi and our House members have been fighting for.
Please sign the petition here.
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Clinton Campaign Attacks Obama for Being a Good Speaker
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on February 15, 2008 at 2:10 PM.
So now that I've done a post on something other than the Presidential race, I just have to say one thing about the Presidential race- sorry.
Hillary Clinton's new attack line against Barack Obama is that he gives great speeches. Seriously, here's her quote:
Speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill up your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night. My opponent gives speeches. I offer solutions.So let me flow this argument out, as we used to say on the debate team: her argument seems to be that Obama gives good speeches, and I don't, so I will be a better President.
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