Posts by Sam Stein

Sam Stein is a Political Reporter at the Huffington Post, based in Washington, D.C.

White House Indicates Obama Willing to Circumvent Republicans on Health Reform
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on August 6, 2009 at 5:15 PM.

The White House insisted on Thursday that it was open to the use of a parliamentary procedure that would prevent health care reform from being filibustered by Republicans in the Senate.

Speaking minutes after President Barack Obama met with a group of bipartisan lawmakers from the Senate Finance Committee, spokesman Robert Gibbs stressed that the administration's preference was to get a health care bill passed through normal measures. But, in one of the strongest indications to date that the president is willing to circumvent Republicans, Gibbs affirmatively stated that the use reconciliation (a move that allows bills to be considered on an up-or-down basis) was on the White House's mind.

"Obviously, the President meeting with Democrats and Republicans means the President is interested in doing this first and foremost through regular order," he said. "Obviously the option for reconciliation was contained in the budget and we will certainly cross that bridge when we get there."

"It is certainly out there," Gibbs added.

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Obama and DNC Try Turning Angry Mobs Into Benefits
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on August 5, 2009 at 6:00 AM.

The White House and allied Democrats are ramping up efforts to make belligerent anti-Obama town hall crowds -- and the media outlets that feed their resentment -- the face of opposition to the president's health care agenda, aides tell the Huffington Post.

On Tuesday morning, the White House's new media team released a 3-minute video hitting back at "falsehoods" and "misstatements" about the president's plans. Notably, the clip highlighted the popular conservative site, the Drudge Report, for posting an old and spliced video clip claiming that the president wanted to eliminate private insurance.

This wasn't the first time the Obama White House has used its own media outlets to whack its foes. But sources tell Huffington Post that Tuesday's video is the harbinger of a much larger effort to change the tide on health care reform.

As detailed by White House officials and aides at allied groups, the goal going into the August recess is not to be intimidated by the angry protesters laying siege to town hall meetings or the information pushed by unfriendly websites, but rather to turn that anger and material into a rallying point for proponents of reform.

"Health insurance reform is an issue that lends itself to fear-mongering and distortion, so when we see those tactics, we are going to respond to them," Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, explained via email to the Huffington Post. "The President has been very clear that he wants to build on and strengthen the health care system we have, bring security and stability to people who have insurance today and access to quality affordable care to those who don't. Those who resist reform are standing up for a status quo that works great for the insurance industry, but not so well for the American people."

Another Democratic operative who is helping to spearhead the push was more succinct: "They [the anti-Obama crowds] don't care about health care. They care about destroying the president."

The obvious comparison -- one DNC aides are actively pushing -- is to the crowds that came to define rallies for Sen. John McCain, (R-Arizona) and Sarah Palin during the late stages of the 2008 presidential campaign. Those audiences, which openly questioned Obama's patriotism and citizenship, may have riled up the conservative base. But they also turned off moderate voters.

Already, a White House official says that the administration is readying more new-media pushback against the disinformation it sees online. And when addressing reporters on Tuesday, press secretary Robert Gibbs described the angry crowds as an extension of the "Brooks Brothers Brigade" that infamously disrupted the Florida recount in 2000.

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GOP Congressman Wants Obama to Apologize to Cambridge Police Dept.
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on July 27, 2009 at 1:00 PM.

At a time of economic distress, two wars, and a health care reform effort stalled by political friction, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, (R-Mich.) is set to introduce a bill calling on Barack Obama to formally apologize to the Cambridge Police.

The Michigan Republican announced on Friday that he would introduce the resolution unless Obama apologized to Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley for criticizing Crowley's handling of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest last week.

The resolution is, as McCotter's Democratic critics note, a political ploy and a waste of congressional time. The congressman undoubtedly has a full plate of issues with which he could concern himself, including his home state's porous job market.

"Times are tough, people need jobs here at home, but instead of offering solutions, obstructionist Republicans like Congressman McCotter continue to put politics first," said Ryan Rudominer, press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

McCotter isn't the only Republican official eagerly working to keep the Gates controversy alive. The National Republican Senatorial Committee on Thursday started distributing an online petition asking supporters to answer the question: "Do you think it's appropriate for our nation's Commander in Chief to stand before a national audience and criticize the men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day, when by his own admission, he doesn't even know all the facts?"

Though falling short of a formal apology, Obama's comments on Friday were widely seen as conciliatory. "I want to make clear that in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically," Obama said, "and I could have calibrated those words differently."

But McCotter appears undeterred. "He has said he will introduce the legislation if the President does not retract and apologize for his comments," said Jameson Cunningham, press secretary for McCotter, when asked if Obama had already addressed his concerns. "As of now, no apology has been issued."

Here is the full text of his resolution:

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Senators Urge Progressives To Keep Targeting Dems On Health Care
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on July 8, 2009 at 11:01 AM.

Two Democrats in the Senate said on Tuesday that they disagreed with President Obama's backchannel complaints that progressive advocacy groups ought to stop targeting Democrats on health care.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has been a target of the ads himself, said he was perfectly fine with progressive organizations airing television spots critical of him in his own state.

"Folks are using that wonderful First Amendment to be heard," said the Oregon Democrat, whose refusal to commit to voting for a public health insurance option has caused great frustration among health care reform advocates.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose progressive tilt has made him a champion of many such activists, was much harsher. Asked about Obama's remarks, in which the president reportedly bemoaned the ads run by a variety of left-leaning organizations, Sanders whacked the president for trying to stifle the same groups that got him elected.

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Bernie Sanders Demands Democrats Commit To Stopping Health Care Filibuster
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on July 1, 2009 at 3:16 PM.

One of the Senate's most vocal progressives is demanding that the Democratic Party commit to voting against filibustering health care legislation now that, with the impending arrival of Al Franken, the party has 60 caucusing members.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called on the White House and Democratic leadership in Congress to ensure that party members agree unanimously to support cloture on legislation that would revamp the nation's health care system. Democratic senators on the fence, he added, could still oppose the bill. But at the very least they should be required to let the legislation come to an up-or-down vote.

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents," Sanders said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'"

"I think the idea of going to conservative Republicans, who are essentially representing the insurance companies and the drug companies, and watering down this bill substantially, rather than demanding we get 60 votes to stop the filibuster, I think that is a very wrong political strategy," Sanders added.

Coming hours after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Franken the winner in a nearly eight-month recount process, Sanders' remarks reflect what will likely be a more aggressive political ethos from within the Democratic Party. Having a sixtieth caucusing member in the Senate gives the party the margin it needs to stave off a Republican filibuster, which seems all but certain should health care reform include a public option for insurance coverage. But the reality remains that the Democratic caucus is far from united. Corralling all of its members behind one piece of health care legislation -- especially the public option -- remains elusive.

Sanders' advice, which he hinted at in a separate interview with the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, is to simply take the parliamentary hurdles out of the process. The Party wouldn't have to worry about whip counts and could, in the end, get a more favorable final product, he believes.

"I think that politically that is something everybody can handle. You say, 'Look, I think there should be a vote. I'm gonna vote against it for A, B and C reasons. But I think the process has to move forward and it's unacceptable that Republicans keep trying to stop everything," said the Vermont Independent, who added that "The White House could play a very important part in this process"

"I think it would be great if we could have 100 senators voting for this, but what is important is the product that you get, not bipartisanship," Sanders went on. "So we should ask Republicans to support it. If they choose not to they do so at their own political risk. The focus should be on a strong bill trying to get Republican support rather than a weak bipartisan bill."

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Pawlenty Whacks Sanford: "Troubling And Hypocritical"
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on June 29, 2009 at 6:02 AM.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) offered one of the harshest rebukes from within the Republican Party of Mark Sanford, suggesting on Sunday that the South Carolina governor was hypocritical and had damaged the GOP at a time when the brand was already hurting.

"It's hard to quantify [the damage he has done]," said Pawlenty. "But clearly there has been damage. Any time you have leading figures who are engaged in behavior that's sad and troubling and hypocritical other people are going to look at that and say, 'Hmmm, they don't walk the walk. And so the words and the actions don't ring true."

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McCain Hits Obama On Iran, Joe Klein Tells Him "Be Quiet" (VIDEO)
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on June 23, 2009 at 9:29 AM.

Sen. John McCain continued to rap President Barack Obama for his measured reaction to the crisis in Iran, which McCain said was inadequate in its support for the protestors of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's contested re-election.

Appearing on C-Span's Washington Journal on Tuesday morning, the Arizona Republican said that when it came to Iran, Obama response "has not been enough."

Saying that he expected Obama to "come out more strongly" during his press conference on Tuesday, McCain urged the man who defeated him in the 2008 campaign to "follow the example of our founding fathers that declared that all of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights."

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Daschle's Firm And Group Have Ties To Private Health Care Industry
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on June 19, 2009 at 5:32 AM.

The firm that houses two of the three former Senate majority leaders who proposed a comprehensive health care compromise bill on Wednesday has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on behalf of key players in the health care industry. In addition, the company that presented those findings, the Bipartisan Policy Center, counts as a major fundraiser one of the country's largest pharmaceutical companies.

Former Sens. Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Howard Baker joined forces this week to put out a health care plan 15 months in the making. The three political gray beards, who co-founded the Bipartisan Policy Center, called for an approach to reform that included state-operated public insurance options as well as individual and employer mandates for coverage. Their proposal was pitched as a bi-partisan effort at solving one of the most complex legislative issue facing the nation.

Not everyone was ready to take out the anointing oils. Opponents of the proposal and good government groups are questioning the ties the plan's authors and organizations have to groups with direct financial interests in the health care debate.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, for instance, lists the pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough as a "substantial contributor" on its 990 form. How much money the company contributed is not listed.

A spokesperson for BPC, Eileen McMenamin, dismissed the notion that Schering-Plough -- which is a member of the anti-public-option Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association -- played any role in crafting the group's health care proposal.

The company did not have "unique access to or influence over any of our projects" McMenamim said. They were "one of 16 members of our Leaders' Council, which provides 10% of the total organization's funding."

"The entire funding for the Leaders' Project on the State of American Health Care (which is our health care project that released the report yesterday)," she added, "came from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation."

The ties between BPC and the health care industry, however, don't end there. For its health care project, BPC employed former Clinton administration official Chris Jennings as a co-director. Jennings is listed on BPC's site as being "a health policy veteran of the White House, Congress and the private sector." His resume also includes his role as president of Jennings Policy Strategies (JPS), a firm that, among other things, has earned millions of dollars in lobbying fees from companies with interests in the health care debate. Clients have included the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (which, since 2001, has paid at least $2 million), The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association ($450,000), and Actelion Pharmaceuticals ($320,000).

The ties connecting BPC to private industry influence extend to the group's figureheads as well. Both Daschle and Dole are employed (though not as lobbyists) by the firm Alston + Bird, a Washington D.C. powerhouse with substantial influence inside government and numerous clients in the private health care industry.

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Holder: Indefinite Detention Will Include Measures Of Due Process
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on June 17, 2009 at 9:31 AM.

Eric Holder asserted on Wednesday that terrorism suspects indefinitely detained by the United States would be granted opportunities for due process, both before and during their detention. But he declined to detail how and where such appeals could take place, telling members of Congress that such specifics had yet to be agreed upon by the administration.

At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General was pressed early and often on the Obama White House's approach to detainee policy. Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.), in particular, asked why the president supported a system that would essentially transfer the Guantanamo structure (holding suspected terrorists without trial for an indefinite period of time) to another location.

Holder acknowledged that there could be a group of detainees who fell into that category. But, he added, "It will only happen pursuant to really pretty robust due process procedures."

"There is a third category," said Holder, "where [detainees] will be detained in a way that we think is consistent with due process both in the determination as to whether or not they should be detained and then with regard to periodic review as to whether or not that detention should occur..."

Holder subsequently pledged to "work with members of this committee and Congress," to find "the exact parameters of that due process."

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Dick Cheney Says He Supports Gay Marriage
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on June 1, 2009 at 1:04 PM.

Dick Cheney rarely takes a position that places him at a more progressive tilt than President Obama. But on Monday, the former vice president did just that, saying that he supports gay marriage as long as it is deemed legal by state and not federal government.

Speaking at the National Press Club for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards, Cheney was asked about recent rulings and legislative action in Iowa and elsewhere that allowed for gay couples to legally wed.

"I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," replied the former V.P. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. ... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."

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Obama Calls for Health Care Reform Now ... or Never
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on May 28, 2009 at 2:43 PM.

President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that if health care reform didn't take place this year, it won't be completed during his presidency.

"We need health care reform legislation that works, that preserves what works about health care, that fixes the things that are broken. And I think the status quo is unacceptable " said the president, on a conference call with volunteers for his leftover campaign arm, Organizing for America. "And we have to get it done this year. If we don't get it done this year we are not going to get it done."

Underscoring the high stakes of the debate, Obama called on his supporters to make the same organizational effort on behalf of health care that they did during the election. There were, he said, few more important issues facing his administration.

"Now we are moving to one of our biggest priorities," he said, "something that all of us on the phone have been talking about since the earliest moments of this campaign... We know what is at stake; we know we need reforms... Americans now spend more on health care than on housing or food."

The conference call, in which Obama participated while onboard Air Force One, is one of several moves on the part of Organizing for America to help set the table for the upcoming battle over health care reform. Organizing for America is also distributing a video message from the president and hosting a kick-off event for its health care reform campaign on June 6.

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White House Smacks Gingrich for Calling Sotomayor a Racist
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on May 27, 2009 at 11:43 AM.

The White House hit back at Newt Gingrich on Wednesday for a twitter post made by the former House Speaker accusing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist.

Early on Wednesday, Gingrich put up a post on twitter rapping Sotomayor for saying that her background as a Hispanic female allowed her to understand cases in a different, better, manner than her white male contemporaries.

"Imagine a judicial nominee said "my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman" new racism is no better than old racism."

Asked at the daily briefing to respond to the tweet, spokesman Robert Gibbs offered a bit of thinly-veiled frustration with Gingrich and warned against the escalation of racially heated rhetoric.

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Gen. Petraeus Endorses Obama's Plans To Close Gitmo, End Torture
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on May 26, 2009 at 7:37 AM.

General David Petraeus said this past weekend that President Obama's decision to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogation techniques would benefit the United States in the broader war on terror.

In an appearance on Radio Free Europe Sunday, the man hailed by conservatives as the preeminent military figure of his generation left little room for doubt about where he stands on some of Obama's most contentious policies.

"I think, on balance, that those moves help [us]," said the chief of U.S. Central Command. "In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.

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Obama and Bush, Staying in Touch?
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on May 23, 2009 at 10:50 AM.

The ongoing spat between the Obama White House and former vice president Dick Cheney has, to a large extent, marginalized the one other figure with serious chips in the current national security debate. George W. Bush has faded into private life with only the rare public utterance. And by ceding the task of defense to the second in command, it's become more and more apparent that, towards the end of the previous administration, Bush and Cheney did not see eye to eye on these matters.

In an interview with C-SPAN that will air in entirety at 10.a.m. Saturday, President Barack Obama acknowledged having had conversations with Bush since leaving office, though he insisted on abiding by "a general policy of keeping confidence with your predecessor."

More telling was that later in the segment Obama offered the slightest bit of rationalization for the past administration's national security policies. And, more to the point, he made note that there were two distinct threads of thought that personified the Bush administration's approach to holding and trying detainees.

"I think there was a period of time, right after 9/11, understandably because people were fearful, where I think we cut too many corners and made some decisions that were contrary to who we are as a people," Obama told C-SPAN. "I think there were adjustments that were made even within the Bush administration to try and deal with some of those mistakes. There are still consequences though to some of those earlier poor decisions and I think Guantanamo was one of them."

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Pressure Mounts on Minnesota Governor to Seat Al Franken
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on May 20, 2009 at 8:28 AM.

DNC Chairman Tim Kaine penned a letter to Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday, asking the Minnesota Governor to persuade Norm Coleman to concede and, short of that, sign the certification of Al Franken's election once the state's Supreme Court makes its final ruling.

The letter is the latest in a growing effort to ramp up the pressure on the governor - and Republican Party as a whole - to seat Franken, as the Minnesota Senate race drags on more than six months since the actual election. In his note, Kaine claims it is "all but indisputable" that Franken won the election and urges Pawlenty to "use [his] influence to bring this process to an end by asking Norm Coleman to allow his neighbors and yours, their full representation in Congress."

"However," Kaine adds, "if Mr. Coleman refuses to concede and this case is heard and decided by the Minnesota State Supreme Court, I urge you to commit to signing an election certificate for the rightful winner as soon as the Court issues a ruling in this case. To allow this to process to continue into the federal courts for no other reason than to deny for as long as possible the seating of another Democratic Senator would make what has been a bad situation for Minnesotans even worse. I urge you to do everything within your power and influence to bring this process to an end."

The political demands for Pawlenty to intervene in Minnesota's lengthy recount process have, indeed, been mounting. As Kaine notes in his letter, two-thirds of Minnesotans now "believe it's time for [Coleman] to concede." The governor himself, meanwhile, is facing new polls showing that 55 percent of his constituents disapprove of his job performance. And while officials inside the state generally believe these numbers to be a bit overstated, the highest Democrats in Minnesota are in agreement that if the Supreme Court declines Coleman's appeal in the next few weeks, Pawlenty is in a tight bind.

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