AlterNet Comics: Tom Tomorrow On Obamacare Mishaps
November 15, 2013
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health reform
US Government on Verge of Shutdown as House Votes to Delay Obamacare
September 29, 2013
The US government is on the precipice of a historic shutdown that would result in hundreds of thousands of federal workers being placed on unpaid leave, after House Republicans refused to pass a budget unless it involved a delay to Barack Obama's signature healthcare reforms.
Democratic leaders declined to convene the Senate on Sunday, standing firm against what they described as the extortion tactics of their Republican opponents who they accused of holding the government to ransom for ideological reasons.
The resolution passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the early hours of Sunday morning makes funding the government until the middle of December contingent upon a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act. It also strips the new healthcare law, which is due to come into force on Tuesday, of a key tax on medical devices.
Senate Democrats and the White House have said they will block any budget resolution that is tied to the healthcare law – known as Obamacare – which was passed three years ago and upheld by the US supreme court last year.
Undermining the healthcare reforms – the flagship legislative achievement of Obama's presidency – has been a priority for the conservative wing of the Republican party for years and the spectre of government shutdowns has been used in the past.
However there was a growing sense on Capitol Hill on Sunday that House Republicans were prepared to see through their threat of a shutdown, which would begin at 12.01am ET on Tuesday, even though polls show they would be blamed for a maneuver that could damage the party during next year's midterm elections.
"Republicans in Congress had the opportunity to pass a routine, simple continuing resolution that keeps the government running for a few more weeks," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "But instead, Republicans decided they would rather make an ideological point by demanding the sabotage of the healthcare law."
Harry Reid, the Senate leader who on Saturday said he would refuse to bow to "Tea Party anarchists", showed no interest in negotiating with Republicans over the stalemate. He was criticised by leading Republicans for failing to invite the Senate to debate the House resolution, less than 36 hours from the budget deadline.
Instead, the Senate was expected to wait until Monday before stripping the Republican motion of its references to Obamacare and, for the second time in a week, returning a "clean" bill to the House that would fund federal departments, without also impeding the introduction of mandatory healthcare for Americans who are uninsured.
If there is time, the House would then have just a few hours to either vote to fund the government, free of any measures that would impede the introduction Obamacare, or trigger the first American government shutdown in 17 years.
Asked if he thought a shutdown was now inevitable, Richard Durbin, the second most senior Democrat in the Senate, replied: "I'm afraid I do."
Durbin told CBS's Face the Nation that he was open to negotiating over the tax on medical devices, "but not with a gun to my head, not with the prospect of shutting down the government".
Senior Republicans took to the Sunday morning talk shows to defend their stance, claiming that it was Democrats who were forcing a shutdown by refusing to compromise over the controversial healthcare reforms.
Congresswoman Cathy McManus Rogers, chair of the House Republican conference, said Reid was acting irresponsibly by refusing to hold a session of the Senate. "They're the ones threatening a government shutdown by not being here," she said.
Ted Cruz, the Republican senator spearheading the congressional campaign to undo Obama's healthcare reforms, turned the debate on its head by accusing Democrats of holding "political brute force" for refusing to delay or unravel the healthcare law.
"If we have a shutdown, it will be because Harry Reid holds that absolutist position and essentially holds the American people hostage," Cruz, who this week gave a 21-hour speech to draw attention to his campaign, said on NBC's Meet the Press.
"So far, majority leader Harry Reid has essentially told the House of Representatives and the American people, 'go jump in a lake'," Cruz added. "He says: 'I'm not willing to compromise, I'm not willing to even talk.' His position is, 100% of Obamacare must be funded in all instances. Other than that, he's going to shut the government down."
The impact of any federal shutdown would depend upon how long it lasts. Under contingency arrangements, essential services such as law enforcement, will be kept alive, although hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be placed on unpaid leave.
Social security and Medicare benefits would continue, and air traffic controllers would remain in place to ensure airports function. However museums, national parks and landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument, would be closed.
The military's 1.4 million personnel active duty would remain in post, but their paychecks would be delayed. About half of the Defense Department's civilian employees – about 800,000 people – would be furloughed, meaning they would be suspended from work without pay.
Federal courts would continue to function as usual for around a fortnight, after which the judiciary would have to start shelving work that is not considered essential.
The gridlock over the government budget could be just the prelude to an even more serious showdown expected in mid-October over the government debt ceiling.
Republicans are threatening to refuse to lift the ceiling unless Obamacare is reigned back, which could mean the US Treasury would be forced to default on its debt payments.
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How Democrats Helped Fire Up the Crazy Right While Demoralizing the Left
August 05, 2010
Whatever the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections, the activist phase of the Obama administration has likely come to a close. The President may have a fight on his hands even to hold on to what he’s already achieved because his legislative successes have been large enough to fuel strong opposition but not big enough to strengthen his support. The result could be disastrous for him and congressional Democrats.
Consider the stimulus package. Although it’s difficult to separate the consequences of fiscal and monetary policy, most knowledgeable observers conclude that the stimulus has had a positive effect.
Yet the official rate of unemployment remains above 9%, not including millions either too discouraged to look for work or working part-time when they’d rather have full-time jobs. Almost half of the jobless have been without work for more than six months, a level not seen since the Great Depression.
The central problem continues to be inadequate aggregate demand. The administration’s original sin was not spending enough and focusing the stimulus more directly on job creation.
In fairness, no one knew how sick the economy was in February 2009 when Congress approved the initial stimulus. Yet by late spring 2009 the White House knew the extent of the damage and should have pushed much harder for significantly more spending. Almost a third of the initial stimulus, moreover, came in the form of temporary tax cuts, which already had been proven relatively ineffective at spurring demand after President Bush tried them in 2008. And many states were engaging in reverse stimulus policies, slashing spending and increasing taxes. The administration knew its stimulus was not nearly up to the job.
Even so, the initial spending inflamed conservative critics who claimed that it unnecessarily enlarged the federal deficit. And its subsequent apparent failure to reduce unemployment has only added more fuel to the fire. This pattern—big enough to energize adversaries but not enough to tangibly benefit most people or to gain the enthusiastic support of independent voters and the Democratic base—has come to haunt almost every major initiative.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was a clear financial success: It brought Wall Street back from the brink of collapse and in the end will likely cost taxpayers well under $100 billion. Yet in a larger sense, TARP also failed.
The bailout of Wall Street had been sold to the American people, by the Bush and then by the Obama administrations, as a way to revive Main Street and protect homeowners and jobs. But it didn’t accomplish these broader goals. Small businesses have had difficulty getting loans. Few homeowners—according to a recent report by the special inspector general for TARP, only 340,000 of the estimated three to four million borrowers who were supposed to receive assistance—have had their mortgage terms permanently modified.
As Wall Street profits rebounded, TARP increasingly looked to many Americans like a giant political payoff. In a poll taken by Hart Associates in September 2009, more than 60% of respondents felt that “large banks” had been helped “a lot” or “a fair amount” by government economic policies, but only 13% felt that the “average working person” had been. TARP has fueled tea party anger on the right, disillusionment on the left, and cynicism on Main Street.
The recently enacted financial regulatory legislation offers another example. Although the legislation has riled Wall Street and fueled Republican opposition, it lacks many of the large-scale changes reformers were seeking. For example, it neither limits the size of big banks nor explicitly ties banker compensation to long-term performance. And despite Paul Volcker’s entreaties, many risky trades will continue to be subsidized by protections the government accords to commercial banking. In short, the financial reforms do not rule out more bank bailouts down the road—a specter critics are already exploiting.
The health-care law, too, is big enough to have unleashed fierce attacks about a “takeover” of the health-care sector. But it’s not nearly large or bold enough to assure most people truly affordable care in the future. By leaving the system in the hands of private for-profit health insurers rather than building on Social Security and Medicare, the law continues to subject most Americans to escalating costs. Yes, people with pre-existing conditions will gain coverage, and those who become seriously diseased can’t be dropped. But most Americans will have to contract with insurers that already have or will be able to gain significant market power.
Reasonable people disagree about whether these initiatives should have been more or less ambitious, but almost everyone falls into one of these camps. And that’s precisely the political problem Democrats now face.
A stimulus too small to significantly reduce unemployment, a TARP that didn’t trickle down to Main Street, financial reform that doesn’t fundamentally restructure Wall Street, and health-care reforms that don’t promise to bring down health-care costs have all created an enthusiasm gap. They’ve fired up the right, demoralized the left, and generated unease among the general population.
This leaves the Democrats in a difficult position. They have to prove a negative proposition—that although these initiatives cost lots of money or require many new regulations, conditions would be or will be a lot worse without them.
The administration deserves tactical credit. It accomplished as much as it possibly could with a fragile 60 votes in the Senate, a skittish Democratic majority in the House, and a highly-disciplined Republican opposition in both chambers. Yet Bismarck’s dictum about politics as the art of the possible is not altogether correct.
The real choice is between achieving what’s possible within the limits of politics as given, or changing that politics to extend those limits and thereby more assuredly achieve intended goals. The latter course is riskier but its consequences can be more enduring and its mandate more powerful, as both Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan demonstrated.
So far, Barack Obama has chosen the former course. Despite the remarkable capacities he displayed during the 2008 campaign to inspire and rally Americans behind him, as president he has for the most part opted for an inside game.
Perhaps he didn’t want to risk what he could achieve through inside deals. Maybe by temperament or inclination he is more comfortable with compromise than conflict. It’s possible he implicitly traded a more ambitious domestic agenda for Republican support on foreign policy. Or perhaps he has sensed the increasing polarization of the electorate and didn’t want to further exacerbate it.
Any or all of these hypotheses may be true, but the undeniable consequence has been to erode the capacity of the president and his party to accomplish much more from here on. Still, it is far too early to write an epitaph for the Age of Obama. He may yet surprise. He is, as he reminds us, a most improbable president.
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The Weaknesses of the Pro-Choice Movement Have Been Exposed -- Now What?
April 01, 2010
The months of debate and politicking around the health care overhaul provided a glimpse of the political strength of the pro-choice movement that hasn't been possible for years. The picture that emerged wasn't pretty, as supporters of choice found they don't have the influence many assumed they did. Almost as soon as the reform process began, abortion rights became a bargaining chip. And after the frenzied horse-trading that finally produced a law, women across the country were left with less access to the procedure and a seriously weakened power base from which to protect and advocate for abortion rights.
"It's an enormous setback," says Laurie Rubiner, vice president for public policy for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
How did an invigorated pro-choice movement, still pumped up from Democratic victories in 2008, wind up shafted?
For many, the loss was as unexpected as it was disappointing. President Obama's election instilled a sense of political safety. For the first time since Bill Clinton was in office, there was a Democratic majority in both houses and a pro-choice president. After the dark period of the Bush years, when pro-choice advocates' best hope was to minimize their losses, long-shelved goals suddenly felt possible. The most optimistic set their sights on getting rid of the Hyde Amendment, the 1976 provision that forbids the use of federal funds to pay for abortion in most cases.
"Many of us in the reproductive justice community were looking for a huge leap forward with Obama," says Lois Uttley, co-founder of Raising Women's Voices, a national initiative devoted to making sure women's concerns are addressed by health care reform. "We really hoped that we might actually be able to make some progress in overturning Hyde."
Because of Hyde, poor women in most of the country have had to scrounge for the money to pay for abortions (though 17 states now have laws allowing Medicaid dollars to be spent for most medically necessary abortions). While the majority of poor women who can't get Medicaid to pay for their abortions still go through with the procedure, somewhere between 18 and 37 percent continue their pregnancies, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that does research and policy analysis on reproductive health.
Yet, in the past year and a half, instead of abolishing Hyde and convincing the country that current policy amounts to discrimination against poor women, Uttley and others wound up looking on in dismay as Obama's top legislative priority, healthc are reform, ensnared and ultimately set back abortion rights generally--and funding for abortion in particular.
In order to win the support of anti-choice Democrats and save the bill, the Obama administration embraced the principle of Hyde, signing into law a bill that, in the words of Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, "goes far beyond current law by placing unreasonable burdens on those who want to either offer or purchase private health insurance coverage for abortion." Desperate to keep health care reform alive, even pro-choice groups found themselves defending the public-funding ban they so despised. "The most damaging thing about healthcare reform is that even our pro-choice leadership has been, through no fault of their own, reinforcing Hyde," says Laura MacCleery, spokesperson for the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The compromise on abortion coverage that became law was only slightly less odious than the Stupak Amendment, which, to the horror of pro-choicers, passed the House in a 240-194 vote on November 7, and would have prevented any health plan that receives federal money from paying for abortions. Politically, the Stupak vote laid bare the fact that there simply aren't enough people willing to go to bat for abortion in Congress. The resounding vote count, coming late on a Saturday evening after hours of back-room scheming, was no surprise to Washington insiders on both sides of the issue. They already knew what would soon become plain to everyone else: a Democratic majority is not the same as a pro-choice majority. And many Democrats who entered Congress in the past few elections not only oppose abortion but will work as a bloc to stand in its way.
In fact, the Democratic majority in the House that many found so comforting in the last election was largely won by the party's decision to embrace socially conservative candidates, including opponents of abortion. Consider some of the recently elected House Democrats who voted for Stupak. Heath Shuler, who represents western North Carolina and beat a Republican incumbent in 2006, has, along with Bart Stupak, lived in the Washington residence owned by the religious organization The Family. On every occasion possible, Shuler has voted against choice. He even opposed the international distribution of condoms, as did his friend Brad Ellsworth, an Indiana House member who defeated a six-term Republican incumbent and opposes abortion and stem cell research. Then there's Kathy Dahlkemper from Pennsylvania, another Democrat who knocked out a Republican incumbent, in 2008. Dahlkemper has spoken on the House floor about how her own unintended pregnancy shaped her opposition to abortion.
In all, 64 House Democrats voted for the Stupak Amendment, most of them representing conservative districts where many constituents are uncomfortable with the notion of public funding for abortion. A 2009 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center suggests that this critical anti-choice demographic may be growing. Not only did the poll document less support for abortion overall than in previous years; it also found one of the biggest increases in opposition to be among white, non-Hispanic Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly, a description that fits Bart Stupak and many of his constituents.
Democratic opposition to abortion has traditionally come in what some Congress-watchers refer to as the "Harry Reid model," since the Senate majority leader, though anti-choice, has been noticeably levelheaded, willing to work with others on the issue, and clear about his support for contraception and services for women and children. By contrast, after the vote on Stupak, it became clear that some House Democrats were ideologues in the fiery Republican mold, just as hardline as some of their colleagues across the aisle.
Indeed, Stupak managed to wrest the role of chief abortion opponent in health care reform from the Republicans, overtaking them in self-serving histrionics and sheer drama. (Although Randy Neugebauer, a Republican Congressman from Texas, helped Republicans reclaim their rightful position as the party of heckling wackos when he screamed out "Baby killer!" on the House floor as Stupak was defending the reform bill.)
Stupak insisted that his willingness to hijack the entire health care reform process was a matter of principle. But his resistance to efforts to honestly resolve funding questions after his initial stand showed him to be primarily concerned about drawing attention--both to the issue and himself. (Obama played his part in this charade. If his last-minute executive order had any function, it was to be a face-saver for Stupak, who ultimately signed on to reform. Instead of restating what the bill already said, the decree might as well have read: "For Bart Stupak, for being a really important player in health care reform. Really.")
The Stupak vote set off a wave of outrage among supporters of choice, spurring Stop Stupak campaigns, a gush of contributions to Planned Parenthood and a primary challenge to Stupak. But the prochoice side did not do much better when the debate moved to the Senate, where another Democrat, Ben Nelson, led the charge to restrict abortion coverage, proposing an amendment requiring any woman who wants insurance to cover the procedure to write a separate check for that premium. The Nelson Amendment also requires health plans to keep funds for abortion separate.
As the final vote neared, pro-choice Senators Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray worked hard to keep Stupak-like language completely banning abortion coverage out of the bill, but they couldn't even make a show of being able to stop Nelson. Around this time, Scott Brown had won the special election in Massachusetts, dispensing with the Democrats' supermajority and putting the fate of health care reform in serious jeopardy. Though the major advocacy groups raised strong objections to the Nelson language--Planned Parenthood called it "offensive," while NARAL Pro-Choice America called it "outrageous" and "unacceptable"--neither advised voting against the bill. While the Catholic bishops had used this strong-arm tactic to bring the Stupak Amendment to a vote in November, pro-choicers cared too much about the other parts of the bill that benefit women to put the bill in peril. Moreover, by the time the Senate was voting, it was clear that abortion rights supporters simply didn't have the numbers on their side.
But if pro-choice leaders felt beleaguered, the outcome was not so much a reflection of their loss of influence as a painful public display of their longstanding political weakness. "The conditions that allowed health care reform to totally exclude abortion existed before it happened," says Frances Kissling, a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, who was president of Catholics for a Free Choice for 25 years. "The difference now is that everyone knows we're powerless." Or, as Tanya Melich, a political consultant who has worked on women's issues for 30 years, puts it, "We've never had the votes. And we've always had anti-choice Democrats."
Indeed, by some measures the pro-choice movement is actually in better shape than it's been in for years. "This is the best vote count we've had in my time here," says Donna Crane, policy director for NARAL, where she has worked for 11 years. "But we're still more than thirty votes short in the House and almost twenty away from a pro-choice Senate."
How can we be doing better than ever and yet still so poorly? If you count just those who are strictly pro- or anti-, there are actually 41 senators who consistently vote in favor of choice in the Senate, versus just 40 who consistently vote against it. In the House, there are 203 strict opponents of choice, 185 in favor. But the real battle lies in the middle, the remaining 19 senators and 47 representatives who vote according to the issue at hand. Activists have long known that the abortion war is to be won or lost in this gray area. Abortion opponents have done better in constructing wedge issues, through legislation such as "partial birth" bans and the Stupak and Nelson amendments, attracting lawmakers who are neither firmly pro- nor anti-choice but on the fence.
Now, of course, the Nelson Amendment is law. And unless it is mitigated or eliminated through the regulatory process (a possibility that policy experts and lawyers are delving into), it will definitely create hassles for both women and insurers and will probably result in some health plans dropping abortion coverage altogether. Politically, it will likely create a new platform for antiabortion groups, which are expected to push state legislators to ban abortion coverage offered in their state-level exchanges (existing policies outside the exchanges would not be affected).
The new law and the debate that preceded it set back the pro-choice movement in subtler ways, too. Among the collateral damage was the delicate effort that had been under way to loosen restrictions on some abortion coverage. Before the health care reform debate, pro-choicers had been within a handful of votes of overturning a ban on abortion coverage through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) plan, making the case that salaries earned by government workers should be considered private dollars. But such a win now seems impossible.
"Whereas before, only direct money was considered federal funds, now even things like government underwriting or government administering of programs are considered public," says Planned Parenthood's Rubiner. "We knew [health care reform] gave the anti-choice side an opportunity to impose Hyde on everyone, and they went far with it."
How can abortion rights supporters regain the ground they've lost? Part of the usual fix, getting more pro-choice lawmakers into Congress, has been complicated by health care reform. Traditionally, pro-choice PACs enforce their power by supporting only those candidates and lawmakers who support their exact positions. EMILY's List, for instance, contributes to the campaigns of women candidates who vote exclusively pro-choice--and almost always drops people who vote for anything that would set back reproductive rights. The fact that the health care legislation included abortion restrictions initially put the group in a quandary, but after much discussion it decided not to impose negative consequences on supporters of health care reform.
NARAL and Planned Parenthood's Action Fund, which score candidates according to their voting record on reproductive health issues, have decided not to include the final health care reform vote in scoring, a decision that reflects the fact that even their most loyal supporters in the House voted for the final legislation. Both groups categorized the Stupak vote as "anti-choice." But, even with the antiabortion language, they couldn't judge the final vote the same way. According to Rubiner, this was both because health care reform offers so many benefits to the low-income women Planned Parenthood serves and because the Nelson language wasn't as onerous as that of the Stupak Amendment. "Stupak was an outright ban on abortion coverage, period. It was very black and white," says Rubiner. "Nelson, by contrast, sets up a very cumbersome scheme by which insurers can provide coverage, but it doesn't ban it."
The fight has begun to define the meaning of health care reform in the midterm elections--and the crucial battleground is swing districts, where sentiment on abortion is murky. A recent poll conducted for the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports women anti-abortion candidates, showed that in seven of eight Congressional districts represented by anti-abortion Democrats who voted for Stupak, most voters said they would be less likely to support the re-election of their representative if he or she voted for a health care bill that included federal funding of abortion. Of course, the health care bill doesn't do this--notwithstanding the claims of extreme abortion opponents (à la Randy Neugebauer). So pro-choicers have to set the record straight on that score. But abortion rights supporters also have to convey how the new law actually sets those rights back, depriving women of access to a legal medical procedure--an argument that could potentially gain the sympathy of gray-area voters.
It's probably unreasonable to hope for anything more. Yet some advocacy groups, such as NOW and Raising Women's Voices, are aiming higher--pushing to finally roll back Hyde. Given what we've just learned about Congressional backing for public funding, such an effort will clearly be a steep uphill battle. Yet you can see why some of the boldest activists think its time has come. With the other side, led by Stupak, having alienated at least some of the public with its extremism, pro-choice advocates hope the pendulum of moderates' sympathy will swing their way.
The real policy setbacks of health care reform could also serve as the wake-up call for women that pro-choicers need. Because the new law will bring about a major expansion of Medicaid, and also because the economic downturn has driven up the number of uninsured, more and more women will soon be in the position of relying on government-subsidized or -provided health insurance. And thus more and more women will likely have abortion excluded from their medical coverage.
Advocates are already thinking about how to best harness their discontent. "We'll be trying to convince women to tell their stories about what it means not to have that coverage," says Uttley of Raising Women's Voices. "We think we have a chance. As long as people think it's someone else who won't get coverage, they won't care. Once they realize it's the family next door, the lady who sits behind them in church, then their hearts can be changed."
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Bill Moyers: The Health Bill Is a Bonanza for the Insurance Industry and Other Monied Interests
March 28, 2010
That wickedly satirical Ambrose Bierce described politics as "the conduct of public affairs for private advantage."
Bierce vanished to Mexico nearly a hundred years ago -- to the relief of the American political class of his day, one assumes -- but in an eerie way he was forecasting America's political culture today. It seems like most efforts to reform a system that's gone awry -- to clean house and make a fresh start -- end up benefiting the very people who wrecked it in the first place.
Which is why Bierce, in his classic little book, The Devil's Dictionary, defined reform as "a thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation."
So we got health care reform last week -- but it's a far cry from reformation. You can't blame President Obama for celebrating what he did get -- he and the Democrats needed some political points on the scoreboard. And imagine the mood in the White House if the vote had gone the other way; they would have been cutting wrists instead of cake.
Give the victors their due: the bill Obama signed expands coverage to many more people, stops some very ugly and immoral practices by the health insurance industry that should have been stopped long ago, and offers a framework for more change down the road, if there's any heart or will left to fight for it.
But reformation? Hardly. For all their screaming and gnashing of teeth, the insurance companies still make out like bandits. Millions of new customers, under penalty of law, will be required to buy the companies' policies, feeding the insatiable greed of their CEOs and filling the campaign coffers of the politicians they wine and dine. Profits are secure; they don't have to worry about competition from a public alternative to their cartel, and they can continue to scam us without fear of antitrust action.
The big drug companies bought their protection before the fight even began, when the White House agreed that if they supported Obama's brand of health care reform -- not reformation -- they could hold onto their monopoly. No imports of cheaper drugs from abroad, no prescriptions filled at a lower price by our friendly Canadian neighbors to the north.
And let's not forget another, gigantic health care winner: a new report from the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity says the battle for reform has been "a bonanza" for the lobbying industry. According to the Center's analysis, "About 1,750 businesses and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists, total -- eight for each member of Congress -- and spent at least $1.2 billion to influence health care bills and other issues."
But while we're at it, a cheer for the federal student loan overhaul -- Democrats managed to pass that reform with an end run around powerful lobbyists, cleverly nestling it in the health care reconciliation package.
Nonetheless, under pressure from the lending industry, it, too, was watered down from its original intent. The three Democratic senators who voted against -- Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor -- have all received campaign contributions from Nelnet, the student loan company based in Nelson's home state of Nebraska, or its lobbyists.
(And would you be amazed to learn that one of the student loan industry's lobbyists used to be Blanche Lincoln's chief of staff? The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call described Kelly Bingel as Lincoln's "alter ego," and cited a former colleague saying Bingel was "first on the list of the Senator's callbacks," words that would sound like heaven to any Washington lobbyist's ears.)
Another case of reform gone off track: this week, a year and a half after Wall Street brought us so close to fiscal hell we could smell the brimstone, a crippled little financial regulation bill seems to be hobbling out of the wreckage, but still faces an array of well-armed forces gunning for it.
No wonder. In the 2008 and 2010 election cycles, members of the Senate Banking Committee -- which sent the bill to Congress this week -- received more than $39 million from Wall Street and the banks; members of the House Financial Services Committee raked in more than $21 million -- so far. Just how serious do you think they're going to be about true reform?
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut has sounded like a champion of reform ever since he announced he will not run for reelection. It's about time. Since 2005, his top ten campaign contributors have included Citigroup, AIG, Merrill Lynch and the now deceased Bear Stearns, all front-line players in bringing on the financial calamity.
Then there are the Republicans, shamelessly hawking their favors en masse to the highest bidder. The website Politico.com reports that the reelection campaign of Tennessee Senator Bob Corker -- who's one of the key negotiators on financial reform -- sent an e-mail to Wall Street lobbyists and others soliciting contributions of up to $10,000 for a chance to meet or grab a meal with the senator.
Informed of the e-mail, Corker was shocked -- shocked! -- saying the e-mail was "grotesque and inappropriate." But did House Republican leader John Boehner think it was inappropriate last week when he advised the American Bankers Association to fight back against the proposed rules and regulations?
This is, of course, the same John Boehner who in the summer of 1995 walked around the floor of the House of Representatives handing out checks to his fellow Republicans -- checks from a tobacco company. And the same John Boehner who was the grateful recipient of campaign contributions from the four Native American tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist currently cooling his heels in a Federal corrections facility.
So wouldn't it have been fascinating to have been a fly on the wall earlier this year when Boehner sat down for drinks with Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase? Reportedly, he invited Dimon and the rest of the financial community to pony up the cash and see what good things follow.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Republicans already were receiving an increasing share of campaign contributions from the Street. In the game of reform, it's the political version of loading the dice.
We can't know for sure what Ambrose Bierce would have made of all this; what The Devil's Dictionary author would say about the current DC scams. But he might have agreed that the only answer to organized money is organized people. That would be one hell of a reformation.
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Kucinich Airs His Disagreement with Markos Moulitsas on Health Care Bill
March 14, 2010
JUAN GONZALEZ: We begin our show in Washington with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has been at the center of two important debates in the House this week.
On healthcare, the Ohio Democrat is threatening to vote against his party’s healthcare reform package because it does not contain a robust public option. With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrambling to get enough votes, the fate of the healthcare reform bill could come down to a single vote.
Dennis Kucinich’s bill to force the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan was taken up on Wednesday. After a rare three-and-a-half-hour debate on the war, the majority of House Democrats joined with Republicans to defeat the measure. The vote was 356 to 65. Kucinich said he introduced the bill because he wants Congress to take responsibility for the war.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: This debate today, Mr. Speaker, we will have a chance, for the first time, to reflect on our responsibility for troop casualties that are now reaching a thousand, to look at our responsibilities for the costs of the war, which approaches $250 billion; our responsibility for the civilian casualties and the human costs of the war; our responsibility for challenging the corruption that takes place in Afghanistan; our responsibility for having a real understanding of the role of the pipeline in this war; our responsibility for debating the role of counterinsurgency strategies, as opposed to counterterrorism; our responsibility for being able to make a case for the logistics of withdrawal. After eight-and-a-half years, it is time that we have this debate.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Dennis Kucinich speaking on Wednesday. During the debate on Afghanistan, Rhode Island Democrat Patrick Kennedy condemned the media for failing to cover the issue.
REP. PATRICK KENNEDY: Finally, if anybody wants to know where cynicism is, cynicism is that there’s one—two press people in this gallery! We’re talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We’re talking about war and peace, $3 billion, a thousand lives! And no press? No press? You want to know why the American public is fit? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work that they’re sent to do. It’s because the press, the press of the United States, is not covering the most significant issue of national importance, and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It is despicable, the national press corps right now!
AMY GOODMAN: Rhode Island Congress member Patrick Kennedy, the son of former senator, or the late senator, Ted Kennedy.
Well, Congress member Dennis Kucinich joins us now in Washington, DC.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about trying to invoke the War Powers Act, Congressman Kucinich.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Congress has a clear constitutional responsibility, under Article I, Section 8, but the War Powers Act is a vehicle by which we can exercise our constitutional responsibility to be able to enter into the decision-making process as to whether we keep troops at war. I felt, after a eight-and-a-half years, we had waited long enough to have the debate, and so I used the War Powers Act to create the debate.
I’m glad there was a debate. Now Congress has taken responsibility. The debate didn’t turn out the way I would have liked it to, but at least we brought it into the public’s awareness that Congress has now entered into essentially affirming the Obama administration’s policy on Afghanistan.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Were you surprised by how few Democrats, of your fellow Democrats, joined you in the vote, and in terms of compared to how many Democrats, for instance, question what was going on in the war with Iraq?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I think that Afghanistan, for the longest time, has been kind of the silent war. Yet with the troop surge—and we’ll have more troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq—Afghanistan will begin to emerge in the public’s awareness and in the awareness of members of Congress, not only because they have to vote on supplemental appropriations and defense appropriations, but because we’ve had a debate now. They’ve had to cast a vote to either keep the war going or not. And this resolution called for essentially an end to the war by December 31st, 2010. The Congress now has to have it in its awareness, you know, and around Washington, if you’re not having to vote on something, you just don’t have to think about it. And now we have to think about Afghanistan a little bit more than we did the day before yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: Among those who supported you, Congress members of Alaska, of New York, Maxine Waters, oh, McDermott and McGovern, George Miller, Jerrold Nadler of New York, Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, Congressman Grijalva—sixty-five for, 356 against. You’re linking the issue of the war in Afghanistan to our lack of healthcare at home. Can you talk about that link?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, we’re spending $250 billion in Afghanistan already. We have spent close to $700 billion—a little bit more than $700 billion, spent it already in Iraq. If you look at the research that Joseph Stiglitz and his assistant or co-worker Linda Bilmes have done, they’re projecting $3 trillion for the combined cost, long-term, of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, I made a presentation on the House floor yesterday that talked about if we had chosen to spend that kind of money on matters domestically, how many schoolteachers we could hire, how many people could have healthcare, how many people could be able to have decent housing. We clearly make a choice when we choose for war. We clearly make a choice when we choose to fatten the defense budget. We make a choice when we fund counterinsurgency strategies. And as General Eisenhower said many years ago, when you are funding these bombs, that creates a shift in priorities. It takes money away from domestic matters.
So I think it’s important that we have this debate, because we cannot continue to sustain the wars when we have very high levels of unemployment, when we have so many people who are losing their homes, and we have so many people without decent healthcare. We really have to recognize that we’re making choices here, when we keep funding the wars and—you know, ad infinitum and don’t really consider that we’re wrecking a domestic agenda.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to come back to you, Congressman Kucinich. We just have to take a break. And we also want to get your response to a blistering attack on you by Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the website Daily Kos. We’re talking to Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who tried to invoke the War Powers Act, tried to raise the issue of Afghanistan on the floor of the House, leading to a rare three-and-a-half-hour debate on the war. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Congressman, on the issue of healthcare, you’ve come under intense criticism by some commentators. Earlier this week, Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the website Daily Kos, appeared on MSNBC and slammed you for threatening to vote against the Democrats’ healthcare reform bill.
MARKOS MOULITSAS: [I’m going to hold] people like Dennis Kucinich responsible for the 40,000 Americans that die each year from a lack of healthcare. And I don’t care if you’re a Republican or you’re a conservative Democrat or you’re somebody like Dennis Kucinich. The fact is, this does a heck of a lot for a lot of people. And like I said, it’s not perfect, it definitely needs to be improved, but it’s a first step. And God knows, it’s taken us a long time to even get our toe in the door, given the corporate interests that are arrayed against any kind of real reform. So I think this is a first step. It’s definitely not the end of the path. It’s not the ideal solution. But we are—our foot’s in the door. And if somebody like Kucinich wants to block that, I find that completely reprehensible.
And he’s elected, not to run for president, which he seems to do every four years. He’s not elected to grandstand and to—and to give us this ideal utopian society. He’s elected to represent the people of his district, and he’s not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here. What he’s doing, he’s undermining this reform. He’s making common cause with the Republicans. And I think that’s a perfect excuse and a rationale for a primary challenge.
JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. Congressman Kucinich, your response?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, I brought the issue of single-payer healthcare before three separate meetings of the Democratic Platform Committee. I brought it into two presidential campaigns to raise the bar about what’s possible. Now I made a compromise when I backed the public option and voted for it in committee. I also had an amendment passed that would protect the rights of states to proceed with a single-payer approach at a state level. Each step along the way, I’ve shown a willingness to try to work with the White House so that we can have meaningful healthcare reform. I signed a letter, along with seventy-seven other members of Congress, saying that I would not vote for the bill unless it had a robust public option. At this point, I’m the only one left standing who has kept that pledge.
I think that we have to ask ourselves why we would have a circumstance where, you know, a week or two before a vote would come, that it would be said that this is going to come down to a single member of Congress, who stands for healthcare for all, Medicare for all, who stands for a public option, who stands to protect right of states, to pursue it, and yet, we should sweep all that aside in favor of a bill that gives the insurance companies a lock on health insurance in America, privatizes the health insurance—$70 billion-a-year subsidy to the insurance industry.
I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There’s about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, “Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure’s building. Just forget about it,” actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it’s really critical to take this stand, because without it, there’s no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you talk about the pressure that the members of the Progressive Caucus received on this issue and the pressure that you’ve received in recent weeks?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Listen, I’m out in my district all the time. You know, I’ve held town hall meetings in my district on healthcare over the years. I spoke to the Democratic annual dinner for Cuyahoga County on Sunday, and I laid my program out in exactly what I—you know, why I feel the way I do about this bill. And people listen.
I think pressure comes when you’re not really sure where you stand. Pressure comes when you’re willing to try to cut a deal for the sake of making a deal. You know, I’m ready to listen to the White House, if the White House is ready to listen to the concerns about putting a public option in this bill. I mean, they can do that. You know, they’re still cutting last-minute deals. Put the public option back in. Make it a robust public option. Give the people a chance to really negotiate rates with the insurance companies, where—from the standpoint of having a public option. But don’t just tell the people that you’re going to call this healthcare reform, when you’re giving insurance companies an even more powerful monopoly status in our economy.
I think that these questions are important to be asked. I have not—I’ve never been intransigent. I’ve always been able to try to find a way to work things out. But, you know, it’s a two-way street. The White House has a responsibility to produce a bill that is worthy of supporting. And you can’t say it’s taking a step in the right direction if what you’re doing is taking a step towards increasing privatization of the healthcare system.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama—
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: You know, this is no more a—
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, President Obama says that the Senate bill does include single-payer language. He was talking about a provision by Senator Bernie Sanders which would allow states to use federal money to set up a single-payer system years down the road. What do you think of that?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, it provides for a waiver; it doesn’t grant the waiver. And it takes effect 2017. But by then, we’ll already have a system in place that will be very difficult to move out of. And it doesn’t cure the attack that insurance companies can make on state plans using the Employee—the ERISA Act. And so, my amendment that was passed in committee would have protected states from illegal challenge by insurance companies. The Sanders amendment doesn’t do that, so you still have the problem that, no matter what reforms are enacted, can be knocked out. I mean, I talked to the President personally about this. I’ve met with the President three times on this bill. The White House knows my position.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you included in any of the summits on healthcare? Like, were any single-payer advocates?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: No, I asked—I asked to attend. I was not granted that request. But again, you know, I have met many times with the President and with people on his staff. They know what the concerns are that I’ve expressed. And I’m not doing this on behalf of me. I’m not doing this on behalf of some special interest group, except the special interests of my constituents.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Massa—Congressman Massa says he was driven out of the House by Rahm Emanuel simply because he wasn’t going to support this bill and was a big advocate of single payer. Do you believe that?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: You know, I’m very sorry for what’s happened with Congressman Massa, but I don’t know that it has anything to do with this healthcare bill.
AMY GOODMAN: Is anything that would cause you to support the bill at this point?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I mean, it’s—we don’t have the vote yet. The ball is still in play. The White House could decide that in order to pass the bill, they need to put public option in it, a meaningful public option. That would certainly get my attention. Or they could decide that they also want to protect the right of states to proceed with single payer, and not some place far into the future, but do it now. I mean, you have movements in Pennsylvania and in California, in my own state of Ohio, for states to be able to take responsibility for healthcare. I mean, create the possibility now. Let the momentum go in many different areas. But to say 2017 at best, and then it’s an if-come waiver to not permit the states to have legal protection against challenge by the insurance companies?
I mean, it really raises questions as to where we’re being taken with this. Remember, Medicare Part D was sold as some kind of a grand reform, turned out to be a huge bailout to the pharmaceutical companies. I’m concerned about whether or not people are really going to get healthcare from this. You know, just because you have health insurance doesn’t mean you get care. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: insurance companies make money not providing healthcare. When we want a private structure for healthcare, and we’re increasing in that—our attention in that direction, we’d better start thinking about the consequences of what happens when this bill passes, because just having coverage doesn’t mean you’re going to get care.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Congressman, I’d like to ask you about another issue: campaign finance and the recent dispute between the Supreme Court Justice—Chief Justice John Roberts and the White House. At this year’s State of the Union, President Obama openly criticized the Court’s decision in the Citizens United case.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And earlier this week, Chief Justice John Roberts told law students in Alabama that he found the timing of the President’s comments to be very troubling.
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering, while the Court, according to the requirements of protocol, has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling. And it does cause you to think whether or not it makes sense for us to be there. To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there.
JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Chief Justice Roberts. Representative Kucinich, your response to both the President’s statements and to Chief Justice Roberts’s concerns?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, the Citizens United case was very controversial. The fact of the matter is that it gave corporations even more power to influence our political process, and this is one of the central problems in our democracy today.
And, you know, the Supreme Court is the third branch of government. They should be at these grand pageants of democracy, which State of the Union addresses represent. And I don’t think they should fear being there. I think that they should welcome an opportunity. And it’s good for them to get feedback. I mean, it’s important to come off a pinnacle once in awhile and just be with everyone else who’s affected by the decisions that you make. So I think that the Chief Justice, with all respect, ought to lighten up a little bit and just realize that his presence there is very important. And if something’s said that is somehow opposed to a decision that’s made, it shouldn’t bother him at all, because, frankly, he has the last word, unless Congress passes a constitutional amendment or the process starts in a state to amend the Constitution to correct the Supreme Court’s decision. Supreme Court has a lot of power. When you have that kind of power, you surely should not be disturbed by criticism. Matter of fact, that criticism could prove to be enlightening in future decisions. But we can’t pretend that there’s no influence from the broader culture on these questions.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, I wanted to ask you about the passing of one of the country’s leading activists on campaign finance reform, “Granny D” Haddock, who died on Tuesday at her home in Dublin, New Hampshire at a hundred years old. At her centennial birthday celebration on January 28th, she said of the Citizens United ruling, quote, “I guess the Supreme Court has burned down our little house, but, truth be told, it was pretty drafty anyway. We had not really solved the problem of too much money in politics. Not hardly. And now we have an opportunity to start clean and build a system of reforms that really will do the trick.” Congress member Kucinich, your thoughts on Granny D, as we wrap up?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: What a sweetheart Granny D was. I had a chance to get to know her in my travels both to New Hampshire and as she walked across the country. What an amazing woman, who lived her life with great passion and commitment to the highest principles of our country. Her commitment to seeing real campaign finance reform, you know, has really been a central part of a movement that tells us we have to change the way we finance elections in order to reclaim our government. She understood that, and she proved and sent a message to everyone, that no matter what your age happens to be, you can continue to make a real and a powerful contribution. And so, her memory will long live on for those of us who really know that campaign finance reform is central to reclaiming our government.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, we want to thank you very much for being with us.
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Hightower: Why Obama and Dems Seem Incapable of Taking a Firm Stand on Anything
March 11, 2010
You know what we need to juice up the performance of our weak economy? Viagra.
Yes, America needs a new Viagra, specifically targeted to stiffen backbones -- in particular, the limp backbones of Barack Obama's team, as well as the flaccid spines of Democratic congressional leaders. Where's the drug industry when we really need it?
The Obama-ites seem incapable of firm stands. They excite us by boldly addressing our economic woes, then they seduce us by proposing stout actions. But when it comes time to follow through -- it's droopsville.
Take America's job crisis. Obama and the Democrats eloquently empathize with the plight of struggling families who are falling out of the middle class. They point out that after Wall Street banksters crashed our economy and created the Great Recession, which began in December 2007, the number of jobs available to Americans has plummeted by more than 8.4 million. Since then, another 2.7 million jobseekers have come into the workforce. That leaves us in a hole that is 11.1 million jobs deep.
The White House and Congress correctly note that our economy must not merely stop losing jobs, it must create more than 400,000 new positions a month for the next three years just to get us out of this hole. Nothing is more important, they tell us, blowing kisses of compassion and promising satisfaction.
"Our three most important priorities in this Congress," says Rep. Bob Ethridge, a North Carolina Democrat, are "jobs, jobs, jobs." Obama himself has titillated the hopes of working families by proposing a $266 billion national emergency program to put America to work.
Strong stuff -- let's get it on!
Sure enough, after a lengthy romancing of their Republican colleagues (who are devout believers in an abstinence-only job-creation policy), the Democrats finally made their move last week. With the support of five GOP senators, the "jobs, jobs, jobs" bill passed in both houses of Congress.
But ... what a letdown. To win those five Republican senators, Democratic leaders shriveled their job investment program from a robust $266 billion to a frustratingly puny $15 billion. Even such phony Casanovas as Sen. Chuck Schumer had to confess that the "package is not a panacea; it's not going to solve everything."
Everything? Chuck, admit your impotence. At most, this bill might stimulate the creation of 250,000 new jobs -- a bit short of the 11 million that America needs just to get back to where were in 2007, much less the need to create an economic path to lead us into a bold future of new, sustainable, middle-class job creation.
In fact, the Democrats' response is even weaker than it appears. Rather than directly creating jobs that pay workers, the $15 billion is going into tax breaks for businesses. The convoluted hope is that the money will "encourage" the recipients to hire a few people who're suffering from long-term joblessness. This trickle-down approach is even more pathetic than trying to fight a house fire with a squirt gun, for it doesn't even put the squirt gun in the hands of the people caught in the fire.
What the Democrats have done is to pass a do-nothing Republican bill, a reality that was blurted out by Sen. Orrin Hatch, one of the five GOPsters to vote for it: "This is a conservative approach to help put our economy back on track through tax relief, not government spending."
What a fraud. And an insult. Remember when Wall Street bankers shouted "Fire!" two years ago? Both parties rushed to the rescue, not with "conservative" tax relief, but with trillions of public dollars that they put directly in the hands of the same Wall Street arsonists who started the fire.
We expect pious Republicans to consider millions of struggling American workers to be less worthy than a few greedheaded bankers, but not the Party of Roosevelt. Yet one Democratic leader said of this feeble bill, "Better something than nothing."
Maybe they're fooling themselves -- but not us, and certainly not the jobless. This bill is nothing. And if Democrats don't stiffen their spines, they'll be nothing, too.
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Is the Senate Health Care Bill a Step Backward for Women's Health Care?
March 08, 2010
Monday evening, after a rousing speech in Philadelphia pushing for health reform passage, President Obama will celebrate International Women's Day with a White House reception honoring women around the world for their achievements.
This recognition is important. However, International Women's Day - the brainchild of a group of predominantly socialist women with revolutionary dreams of equality and basic human rights for all - presents an opportunity for a little more expansive thinking on the part of the Obama administration.
One item that's ripe for rethinking, ASAP: the gender discrimination that is burning a hole through the Senate health reform bill that's headed for a House vote next week.
Though the Senate bill lacks the Stupak stamp of shame, it certainly doesn't come up short in the department of reactionary anti-choice provisions. Currently, the vast majority of private health plans cover abortion procedures. The Senate plan endorsed by President Obama would severely complicate payments for abortion-inclusive plans, requiring individuals covered by those plans to write two separate checks - one to cover abortion procedures and one for all other coverage. Insurers then must deposit abortion payments and everything-else payments into two separate accounts.
Chances are, the new regulations would drive insurance companies to drop abortion coverage from their plans, according to health policy analysts. These eliminations would impact millions of Americans: more than one-third of adult women in the US have had at least one abortion. When it comes to choice, the health reform plan in its current state marks a dangerous step backward.
The bill's shortcomings for women don't stop at abortion. Earlier in the health-care-push season, Obama promised a plan that would eliminate "gender rating" - the practice of charging more for women's coverage than for men's. Gender rating is still going strong in 40 states. Insurance companies rally around the excuse that the policy is "actuarially based"; that women cost more to insure than men, mostly due to pregnancy- and birth-related medical care. Beneath that flimsy statistical veil, it's blatant discrimination: Insurance companies acknowledged that themselves 40 years ago when they abandoned race as a price-determining factor.
Despite the president's promise, the Senate bill upon which we're pinning our hopes for health reform would not eradicate gender rating. It would openly permit the practice for employers of businesses with 100 employees or more, giving large employers an obvious incentive to hire men over women to keep down insurance costs. Gender rating also puts businesses with a mostly female workforce - childcare centers, some school districts and nurse associations - at a disadvantage. According to the National Women's Law Center, "One such employer with a predominantly female workforce estimated that, due to gender rating, her annual premiums were $2,000 higher per employee."
As the health care debate drags on and on, there's a lot of shushing going around. Many leading Democrats are hoping to sweep the Senate bill's discriminatory flaws under the rug. After all, health reform is desperately needed, and it would be really nice to finally push a passable bill through before we all lose our sanity (not to mention our insurance).
However, as it stands, the health reform bill would endanger the basic human rights of many women. This International Women's Day, it's time for Congress and the president to stop ignoring the bill's consequences for women's health coverage - and start discussing options for averting them.
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards calls for Congress to fix the legislation's abortion caveats during reconciliation - a move that could prove very difficult, since reconciliation is designed to address only items that are relevant to the budget. Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check notes that the only route to a true repair job may be a "future bill aimed at making technical fixes to health reform."
Either way, the work to protect women's health coverage from these sweeping restrictions and limitations must begin now. As the International Women's Day reception festivities wind down at the White House tonight, the president should do some hard thinking about how to ensure the basic human right of health care for women here at home.
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Health Insurers Spent $38 Million Lobbying Congress in 2009
January 25, 2010
The Hill reports today that insurance companies -- who have fought hard against health reforms like the creation of a new public health insurance plan -- spent $38 million in 2009 to influence the direction of the health care debate. Here are some of the biggest spenders:
WellPoint: The Indiana-based insurer spent $4.7 million lobbying Congress last year, an increase of 21 percent from its expenditures in 2008.
UnitedHealth Group: The largest of all health insurance companies spent $4.5 million on lobbyists last year, an increase of 7 percent from 2008.
Humana: The insurance mega-company "showed the biggest increase in its lobbying spending among ... insurers." It spent $3.2 million lobbying in 2009, which is an 80 percent increase from 2008.
America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP): The health insurance industry's lobbying group spent $8.9 million on lobbyists in 2009, a 20 percent increase from the previous year.
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What Would Ted Do? It's Time for House Dems to Follow Their Lion and Pass Health Care
January 24, 2010
"But the key to his legacy is not that he is determined to stick up for his principles. It's that he is willing to compromise on them." That's Time Magazine in 2006.
"Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said that one of Kennedy's great strengths was the ability to separate his often fiery liberal rhetoric from his behind-the-scenes desire to compromise. Because of the respect he commanded among Democrats, he could persuade the left wing of his party to support his concessions." That's Judd Gregg in USA TODAY in 2009.
In eulogy after eulogy Democrats waxed about how Senator Ted Kennedy was the master negotiator and compromiser. Ted never lost site of the dream, fought like hell, but accepted the realities of legislating and would pass an imperfect bill -- ready to come back the next day -- and the next day -- and chip away -- until he got the full loaf. Even if it took years and years.
Democrats -- get a grip.
If Senator Ted Kennedy were alive today, he would be imploring House Democrats to immediately approve the historic and imperfect Senate version of the Health Care Bill -- word for word -- without any return to the Senate and their 41 No votes. Get the Senate version onto Obama's desk tomorrow -- before "Trucker" gets within 100 miles of DC. Democrats -- stand on the steps of the Capital and celebrate.
Senator Ted Kennedy -- politician -- would understand walking away now -- would be a resounding defeat for Democrats. Senator Ted Kennedy -- legislator -- would recognize the Senate Health bill, with all its flaws and compromises - would bring 31 million Americans into the health care fold and eliminate scores of unsavory Insurance company practices. Senator Ted Kennedy -- Democrat -- would know -- in the long run passing the Senate version of the health care bill would be a net positive and far outweigh the alternative.
Scrapping health care -- after a year of effort -- would signal retreat -- again -- for Democrats. Going back to the drawing board would display a gross overreaction to a single poorly run election with a deeply flawed candidate. The "scrap-it" alternative hands Republicans talking points that will surely lead to an even more devastating November. You think taking some heat now for passing an imperfect Health Bill is a cause for concern? Get ready for an unrelenting barrage of "do nothing Democrats" , "we told you so" "we saved the nation," "give us a chance to do Health Care right" -- charges from the Republicans.
The health care hysteria has been successfully fueled by Republicans and Democrats will finish their dirty work by folding. If Jay Leno were doing his man on the street routine -- asking local citizens of Massachusetts why they were uneasy about health care -- and what alternative approaches they would suggest -- it would quickly become apparent average voters were reacting to the messy process, the vague ideas about the plan and less to real specifics.
What does it do for me? A common lament. Well, the House and Senate Democrats will have a year to explain what the Senate version of the Health Care bill will do for the average citizen. And they will have a year to work out some kinks and maybe even pass some improvements. But only if the bill gets passed and onto Obama's desk.
No doubt Senator Ted Kennedy is rolling in his grave -- but if you listen very closely -- he isn't sighing -- he is saying "sign it."
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Will Brown Give Back the Federal Money that Subsidized Health Reform in Massachusetts?
January 22, 2010
Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) supports Massachusetts’ 2006 health care reform but opposes the near-identical Senate health care bill. During the campaign, Brown promised to provide the 41st vote for any national reform effort that required states like Massachusetts to finance reform elsewhere:
Thank you for the question, the health care plan is not good for Bay State Health Center here in Springfield, I worked on that health care bill, the problem with it is that we have 98% of our people insured and we have to look at pricing it’s getting out of control – but the Federal plan, taking a half trillion from Medicare, why would we go and subsidize the failure of other states – not only would we be paying for our plan, we’d be paying for everyone else – and look at the back door deals – I think people have lost confidence – and I think that we need to go back – I’d work on it – why do we need a one size fits all government approach we already did it.
Watch it:
But if Brown believes that Americans should not have to finance other states’ reform efforts, he should return the federal dollars that subsidize Massachusetts’ Medicaid expansion. After all, the state’s 2006 health care reform legislation included an expansion of Medicaid for children up to 300% of the federal poverty level and increased enrollment caps on existing Medicaid programs for adults. Massachusetts relied “very heavily on federal Medicaid funds to finance the plan, including $385 million in annual federal Medicaid payments that would have been lost in the absence of a plan to reduce the number of uninsured.”
Massachusetts used federal funds because, like all states, it lacked the economic capacity to invest in something as big as health care reform. Only the federal government can fix the systematic problems plaguing the health care system and improve the system in an equitable manner. Brown’s insistence that states can do reform on their own, is just a back door way for preserving the status quo that denies millions of Americans the kind of reforms that they’re financing in Massachusetts.
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