- Jan 4–10 11–17 18–24 25–31
- Feb 1–7 8–14 15–21 22–28
- Mar 1–7 8–14 15–21 22–28 29–31
- Apr 1–4 5–11 12–18 19–25 26–30
- May 1–2 3–9 10–16 17–23 24–30 31
- Jun 1–6 7–13 14–20 21–27 28–30
- Jul 1–4 5–11 12–18 19–25 26–31
- Aug 1 2–8 9–15 16–22 23–29 30–31
- Sep 1–5 6–12 13–19 20–26 27–30
- Oct 1–3 4–10 11–17 18–24 25–31
- Nov 1–7 8–14 15–21 22–28 29–30
- Dec 1–5 6–12 13–19 20–26 27–31
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thank you, Mr. Obama!
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 3:52PM
I don’t know about you, but I think this health reform stuff is going to be GREAT!
I currently have a pretty good deal. I’m 62 years old with high blood pressure and cholesterol. I pay $322/month ($3,864 a year) for an HSA qualifying policy with a $2,500 deductible.
I know I won’t be able to keep that coverage after reform goes through, but that’s okay. I won’t need it any more.
You see, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to consider my pre-existing conditions in giving me coverage. They won’t even be able to raise my premiums much because of my age. Even though I’m a couch potato, they will have to charge me no more than twice what they charge a 25-year old marathon runner!
But it gets even better. I will be able to drop my coverage completely and save myself almost $4,000 a year, knowing that if I ever get sick and need services, I can sign-up and get coverage immediately. Not only that, but I will be able to sign-up, get the service I need, and drop the coverage the next month.
Oh. sure, there will be a “penalty” for not being covered. But so what? The penalty is only $75 a year, going up to $750 eventually. Let’s see. On one hand I can keep paying $4,000 a year for my current coverage. On the other hand, I can pay the $75 fine for not having coverage and put $3,925 in the bank.
This is so cool! Thank you, Mr. Obama!
Pro-Life Leaders Continue to Denounce Compromise Abortion Language
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 3:43PM
From Charmaine Yoest, president of American United for Life: "Majority Leader Reid's amendment to the Senate health care bill absolutely fails to meet abortion and life protections that exist in current federal law and policy. It does not prevent federal funding of plans that include abortion coverage, it does not adequately protect health care providers who choose to exercise their rights of conscience, and it does not prevent government involvement in assisted suicide. A vast majority of the American people are opposed to these policies and will make themselves heard loudly over the coming days."
Ben Nelson's Treachery
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 3:25PM
Never has a Blue Dog barked so loudly only to roll over so pathetically, and that is saying something given the sorry history of the Blue Dogs. No senator who votes for cloture at this stage should be given a pass, even if they ultimately end up voting against the final bill. This is the health care vote that matters. The Ben Nelson test has come and he seems intent on failing, like the rest of the pro-life Democrats in the Senate. The compromises the Democratic moderates have won have only served to turn the bill into an incoherent mess, preserving the private health insurance industry while negating major reasons for its existence. If it passes, opponents should move on toward working for its repeal.
Flashback: Two Days Ago, Nelson Said Taxes in Bill Were "Not Acceptable"
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 2:10PM
On Thursday, Sen. Ben Nelson told a Nebraska radio station that the tax increases in the Senate health care bill were "not acceptable," especially given the economic climate. But this morning he announced his support for the revised bill, which includes even higher tax hikes than the earlier version he criticized.
Here was what Nelson had to say when asked about tax increases in the bill just two days ago (you can listen here, around the 9 minute mark):
"The problem with the legislation is, it is complex, and it is further complicated by tax increases as a means of funding extending coverage, to people who currently have it. There is no free ride here. If you’re going to extend coverage, obviously, there has to be some mechanism to raise the money. The way in which money is raised is not acceptable. If there isn’t a way to raise the money in tight times, I think you have to look at a scaled back version."
Yet according to the Congressional Budget Office, the revised Reid bill not only maintains the major tax increases, but actually raises taxes by an additional $12 billion on a net basis, bringing the total to $498 billion.
Specifically, the revised bill stiffens the tax penalties for those who don’t purchase insurance, raising an additional $7 billion. It also raises the new Medicare tax on individuals making over $200,000 and families making over $250,000. The new additional tax on payrolls during a time of double-digit unemployment would now be 0.9%, instead of the 0.5% originally proposed by Reid. And instead of a 5 percent "botox tax," there's a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning.
CBO Finds Revised Bill Raises Taxes and Spending More than Original One
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 1:51PM
The Congressional Budget Office has just released its score (PDF) of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care bill, which is now expected to pass on Christmas Eve.
The new bill relies on a number of familiar accounting gimmicks that have allowed Democrats to claim that legislation is cheaper than it actually is, and that it reduces the deficit. Broadly speaking, the revised bill includes more spending than the original Reid bill, but more taxes to offset the spending increases.
The numbers will that will get the most media attention will be the CBO’s estimate that the major coverage provisions of the bill will cost $871 billion over 10 years, reduce the deficit by $132 billion, and extend coverage to 31 million Americans.
Like in previous versions of legislation, Democrats delayed the major spending provisions in the bill from being implemented until 2014, making the bill appear less expensive over CBO’s 10-year budget window. Just $17 billion, or 2 percent, of the cost of expanding coverage under the bill comes in the first four years, while the remaining 98 percent of spending comes in the following six.
The 10-year deficit projections include $72 billion in revenue from the Class Act, but that boost from the new government long-term care insurance program will be short lived, according to the CBO. “In the decade following 2029, the CLASS program would begin to increase budget deficits,” the CBO report says. The reason is that the program begins to collect premiums before it starts paying out benefits, so it achieves a surplus at first, but then runs into deficits down the road.
The report assumes that a 21 percent cut in doctors’ payments under Medicare will actually take affect next year, yet this very morning, the Senate passed the $636 billion defense spending bill that delayed the cuts until the end of February, and it’s all but assured that they’ll take action before that deadline to avoid the cuts again.
The tax hikes total $498 billion in the revised bill, higher than the original Reid bill. Specifically, the revised bill stiffens the tax penalties for those who don’t purchase insurance, raising an additional $7 billion. It also raises the new Medicare tax on individuals making over $200,000 and families making over $250,000. The new additional tax on payrolls during a time of double-digit unemployment would now be 0.9%, instead of the 0.5% originally proposed by Reid.
And while it expands coverage overall, the bill violates the spirit of Obama’s declaration to the American Medical Association that “If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” In fact, CBO estimates that between 8 million and 9 million people would lose their employer-based coverage under the bill.
In order to win over the vote of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the avowed socialist who was upset at the stripping of the public option, Reid allocated $10 billion in spending to one of Sanders’ pet projects, expanding the role of “community health centers.”
The CBO also poured cold water on the idea of having the entity that runs the federal benefits program oversee the creation of new plans, arguing that it wouldn’t make much of a difference in coverage or enrollment, because any insurers participating in the program were likely to offer plans in the exchange anyway.
As always, the CBO cautions that its projections are based on the assumption that “These longer-term calculations assume that the provisions are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation.”
Health Care Bill to Tax Indoor Tanning
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 11:03AM
The revised health care bill introduced by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid includes a new 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services.
According to the manager's amendment reflecting Reid's final changes (see pages 373-74 of the PDF):
‘‘IN GENERAL.—The term ‘indoor tanning service’ means a service employing any electronic product designed to incorporate 1 or more ultraviolet lamps and intended for the irradiation of an individual by ultraviolet radiation, with wavelengths in air between 200 and 400 nanometers, to induce skin tanning."
The tax will be collected by the tanning salon owner, who will have to pass along a quartetly payment to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Insert your own jokes.
Nelson Caves
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 10:25AM
Sen. Ben Nelson has said he would support the health care bill, all but ensuring that Sen. Harry Reid will be able to secure the 60 votes he needs to set up final passage on Christmas Eve.
"Change is never easy, but change is what's neccessary in America today," Nelson said in a press conference this morning. "And that's why I intend to vote for cloture."
Nelson called the agreement to achieve 60 votes "an accomplishment of historic proportions," but warned that if there were "material changes" to the bill in the conference committee with the House, then he would not vote for cloture on the final merged bill.
Reid was able to secure his support without adopting the Stupak abortion language that passed the House. While I'm still analyzing the tricky abortion language included in Reid's final amendment (which you can read here, beginning on page 38), it seems the difference is that states will be able to opt out of offering abortion coverage on the new government-run exchanges. The compromise still relies on a "segregation of funds" model with the idea that government subsidies wouldn't be used to pay for the abortion benefit in an insurance policy.
Meanwhile, Igor Volsky notices that Nelson's home state of Nebraska was given additional funding to offset the cost of the Medicaid expansion.
Nelson wouldn't comment on the Medicaid payment to Nebraska when asked about it in a press conference, but he defended the abortion compromise.
The way he described it, if a woman using government subsidies to purchase health insurance wants abortion coverage, she'll have to send one payment to the insurer to pay for the policy, and a separate payment if she chooses a policy that covers abortion.
Where does this leave us now? The Senate is expected to hold its first procedural vote on health care on Monday at 1 a.m. to stay on track for a final vote on Christmas Eve.
Next month, the House and Senate will reconcile their bills, which will then have to pass both chambers again before President Obama can sign it, which he hopes to do before his State of the Union address. At this point, the smart money would have to be on Democrats getting it done, but there are still obstacles to reaching a final agreement.
"Let me be clear: this cloture vote is based on a full understanding that there will be limited conference between the Senate and the House," Nelson warned. "If there are material changes in that conference report, different from this bill, that adversely affect the agreement, I reserve the right to vote against the next cloture vote."
The House is both more liberal and more pro-life than the Senate, and thus the bill that cleared the House (by a narrow 220-215 margin) had a public option and stronger abortion language. Many liberal activist groups have pushed for passage of the Senate bill, while still insisting on a fight for the public option in the conference. If liberals and pro-life House Democrats are insistent, it would complicate any final deal.
You say Copenhagen, I say Kyoto...
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 9:32AM
We will call the whole thing off.
Although the media altered the story line beginning in March 2001, the inescapable fact is that the Clinton administration doomed the Kyoto treaty by agreeing to something for which there was insufficient will in Congress. Clinton thereby put our name and political prestige on the line recklessly, hoping to pressure Congress, but leading to eight years of (largely either uninformed or simply disingenuous) harping about the wretchedness of George W. Bush refusing to follow through on Clinton's political commitment.
By this and according to none other than candidate Barack Obama, our national name was tarnished. He vowed to restore it. He has not only failed but made things worse, though we should remain thankful for small favors such as this.
On its face the Euro-driven narrative was absurd because it was up to the Senate, not a president, to ratify a signed agreement (we signed Kyoto November 12, 1998) just as it is up to Congress, not Obama, to enroll legislation meeting the promise of emission reduction he just made, in our name, in Copenhagen.
As such, Obama has just repeated Clinton's misstep with Kyoto.
Read the following excerpt, in pertinent part, from Samuel Thernstrom's recent recapitulation of the sordid Kyoto affair (emphases added but the very useful links are in the original):
Having promised to lead the Copenhagen negotiations to a successful conclusion, Obama now finds himself in a bind: Unable to get a bill through Congress, he doesn't want to repeat Gore's mistake of letting Europeans pressure him into signing a treaty the Senate won't ratify while sanctioning unrestricted emissions from the developing world. ... So the administration's draft implementing agreement submitted to the UN in May specified that emissions reductions would be subject to "conformity with domestic law." In other words, whatever is agreed to here doesn't mean a thing if the Senate doesn't agree. As Jonathan Pershing, a top State Department negotiator, remarked at the recent climate negotiators' meeting in Bangkok. "We are not going to be part of an agreement we cannot meet."
Except that -- although yesterday's political commitment was unable to rise to the level of something the Senate would have to ratify, yet -- the Senate clearly cannot and will not adopt such economy-killing cuts that it promised. Not that we don't want them to try next year -- heck, I've got a book coming out exposing the whole sleazy lie -- which would allow for the much-needed salting of the political ground.
But the take-away from Kyopenhagen, what makes this absurd theater just engaged in all the more unforgivable, is that Obama's administration had for months vowed how it learned that lesson and would not repeat it. Until they did.
Reid Offers Final Health Care Bill
Posted by on 12.19.09 @ 8:52AM
Moments ago Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced his 38 "manager's amendment" -- reflecting final negotiated changes in the health care bill, and Republicans are now forcing it to be read on the Senate floor.
Before, the reading comenced, Reid asked for Sen. Ben Nelson to be granted nine minutes to make a floor statement, but Republicans denied the request.
We should know more shortly, but one would have to assume at this point that it would be unlikely that Reid would introduce the amendment if he hadn't secured 60 votes.
You can read the amendment for yourself here.
Friday, December 18, 2009
NRLC and Catholic Bishops Blast Casey's Abortion Language
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 5:25PM
The National Right to Life Committee and the Conference of Catholic Bishops have come out strongly against proposed language by Sen. Bob Casey aimed at mollifying Sen. Ben Nelson's concerns that the health care bill would provide taxpayer subsidies toward abortion coverage.
In a letter to Casey (PDF), the NRLC wrote that "your proposal completely fails to correct any of the major pro-abortion provisions in the underlying Reid bill. The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation strongly oppose the language you have proposed regarding federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion on demand. We believe that your proposed language in no way improves the highly objectionable provisions of the Reid bill that authorize subsidies for health plans that cover elective abortion, and that authorize federal mandates for private health plans to cover elective abortion, as described below."
It went on to say that "the Nelson-Hatch (Stupak-Pitts) language is the only acceptable solution to the far-reaching pro-abortion problems in the Reid bill."
The Conference of Catholic Bishops reached the same conclusion, reiterating that the abortion language would still be "morally unacceptable."
"Despite repeated claims to the contrary, it does not comply with longstanding Hyde restrictions on federal funding of elective abortions and health plans that include them,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo said of the Casey proposal in a statement.
Nelson has said repeatedly that he could not vote for cloture on the bill if it did not include abortion language akin to the Stupak language that passed in the House, and these harsh responses from anti-abortion groups won't make it any easier to forge a deal.
And in order to keep to his tight deadline to pass a health care bill on Christmas Eve, Reid will have to satisfy Nelson's concerns on abortion by midnight tomorrow.
Morocco: No Friend of Human Rights
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 4:31PM
Morocco is one of those "moderate" Islamic states that portrays itself as pro-Western. But that doesn't mean it is pro-human rights. Better than Iran or Saudi Arabia, certainly, but Morocco still isn't the most pleasant place for religious or political dissidents.
Freedom House condemns the recent arrests and sentencing of Moroccan blogger Hazzam El Bachir and internet café owner Abdullah Boukfou and calls for their immediate release without harm. The events in Morocco reflect a troubling trend by governments in the Middle East and North Africa Region to use traditional means of repression to clamp down on bloggers and human rights activists.
El Bachir was sentenced on December 15 after he posted a previously-published article about a harsh government crack-down of a student protest in Taghjijt. El Bachir received a four-month sentence for "spreading false information about human rights that undermined the kingdom's image." Internet café owner Boukfou receiveda 12-month sentence on a charge of "possession of publications inciting racial hatred." Three student protesters also received six month sentences the same day.
Some day, let us hope, liberty and democracy will spread across the Islamic and Arab worlds.
Ah, Yes, the Old 'Sources Say' Trick
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 4:25PM
Michael Calderone has an item at the Politico in which an editor at the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Baker, is accused of being "responsible for a more partisan tone" in the WSJ's news coverage, which "has started to slant to the right."
And by whom are these accusations made? A good question. There is no suggestion that WSJ readers are canceling their subscriptions in response to this alleged eruption of partisan bias in the paper's reporting. The only Baker critic named in the story is a media columnist for the New York Times, while the rest of the criticism is from anonymous WSJ staffers. (Attention reporters everywhere: If you don't like your boss, call Michael Calderone immediately.)
The essential thrust of Calderone's article is that any news coverage that departs from the standard-issue pro-Obama slant of the liberal media is highly suspicious and possibly of nefarious origin.
Should Calderone get hired by the Obama administration -- as many liberal journalists have already done -- his first order of business will be to collect back pay.
Ben Santer is Smiling Somewhere
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 4:01PM
Danish police knock Lord Christopher Monckton unconscious outside the Bella Center. The thuggery-minded Lawrence Livermore alarmism promoter, whose favored strategy for persuasion is similarly to "beat the crap out of" his opposition, must be envious.
Durbin "Hopes" Final Bill Will Be Introduced Saturday Morning
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 3:49PM
Sen. Dick Durbin, the majority whip, just said on the Senate floor that he hoped the "manager's amendment" to the health care bill -- reflecting all of the final negotiated changes -- would be introduced tomorrow, along with a score from the Congressional Budget Office.
Responding to an inquiry form Sen. Pat Roberts, Durbin acknowledged that the Democrats' 2,074 page piece of legislation "is not the final bill."
"There is a manager's amendment that will be offered tomorrow, and it will be considerably smaller than this," Durbin said. "And it will have specifics in it that will be reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office, and that is underway. It will be introduced, I hope, tomorrow morning."
Once Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduces the bill and files cloture, it will set up the key vote for 1 a.m. on Monday, which will require 60 votes to pass, and keep Democrats on track for a final vote -- a formality by that point if they already cleared the filibuster hurdle -- on Christmas Eve.
Nelson Unsure if Deal Can Be Made Today
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 3:15PM
With the deadline swiftly approaching to reach agreement on a health care bill, Sen. Ben Nelson tells the Politico that he still hasn't reached a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resolve his objections to the bill, and can't say whether he's getting any closer:
"Hopefully we're making progress," Nelson said. "As I've said there is always a lot of room which you have to have between the bid and the ask, and we're seeing if we can close the gap."
Asked whether it was possible to resolve their differences Friday, Nelson said: "I don't know. I can't predict the time."
Yesterday Nelson elaborated on a number of his problems with the health care bill that would lead him to join Republican efforts to block the legislation by filibuster. While abortion language is the biggest obstacle, he also said he had a problem with the tax increases and the Medicaid expansion.
Earlier, I outlined why Reid must lock up 60 votes by midnight tomorrow to be able to pass the bill by Christmas Eve.
The Washington Post Is As Objective About ObamaCare . . .
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 3:07PM
. . . as I am about University of Alabama football. But whereas I make no secret of my Crimson Tide loyalties, the Washington Post engages in its ObamaCare boosterism under the aegis of neutrality:
Friday's Washington Post offers a highly timely article on its front page: grass-roots liberal anger at southern Democrats who voted against health "reform." But the Post hints at its own anger between the lines. The caption under its photo on page A-22 reads: "Rep. Larry Kissell (D-NC) voted against health-care reform even though it is badly needed in the largely rural district he represents."
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey remarks:
That's an objective caption? It should read, "Rep. Larry Kissell explains his position on health-care reforms to his North Carolina constituents," since that appears to be what the picture depicts.
And veteran journalist Danny Glover of Accuracy in Media writes:
We weren't even allowed to use the word "reform" at [Congressional Quarterly] when I covered the health-care debate in 1993-94 because the word implies that something is bad and needs changed. It gives credence to one viewpoint in the debate. We used phrases like "health-care overhaul" or the even more generic "health-care legislation."
The same kind of rhetorical games were involved in immigration "reform," where anyone who opposed the Senate bills of 2006-07 was accused not only of being "anti-reform" but also "anti-immigrant." Now, if you oppose the current legislation, you're accused of being "anti-reform" and "anti-health."
Robby George Profile
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 3:01PM
The New York Times Magazine for this weekend features a long profile of Princeton professor Robert P. George, written by David D. Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick dubs George "this country's most influential conservative Christian thinker," and the "reigning brain of the Christian right." That's a fair assessment. In fact, if anything Kirkpatrick understates George's involvement in the Christian right.
Read George's September '08 Spectator feature here.
Reid Must Get 60 Votes By Midnight Tomorrow
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 1:37PM
If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hasn't secured 60 votes by midnight Saturday, he won't be able to meet the ambitious deadline of passing a health care bill on Christmas Eve.
The reason is that in order to trigger the chain of events leading to a Christmas Eve vote, Reid would have to file cloture on his "manager's amendment" -- containing all of his final negotiated changes to the bill -- by the end of tomorrow.
Once Reid files that amendment, it will set up the key cloture vote on Monday at 1 a.m., requiring the support of 60 Senators to pass. While that would technically give him all of Sunday to win over Sen. Ben Nelson or any remaining holdouts, Reid would not be able to make any further changes to the bill in order to accommodate any Senator.
While a lot of people are focusing on Christmas Eve, the key vote will be that first cloture vote on Monday. If he gets 60 votes on that, the rest of the process will be a mere technicality.
So, while it sounds dramatic, the future of the nation's health care system may be decided in the next 34 hours.
Copenhagen: Obama Shows Commitment to Recycling
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 1:05PM
I'm pretty sure he just gave the same speech he gave a year ago, here. Start at 2:50 and tell me it isn't the same hopeychangey science-beyond-doubt time-for-talk-is-over stuff.
But don't expect him to stop talking.
Sanders, a Remaining Holdout, Working on Health Clinic Deal
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 12:59PM
Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the remaining holdouts on supporting the Senate health care bill, is working on a provision with Sen. Ron Wyden to expand the role of health clinics.
“I want to salute you, Sen. Wyden, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for one particular provision in here," Sen. Dick Durbin said on the Senate floor moments ago. "We don’t have the details yet, but we believe that this will result in the most dramatic expansion of health care clinics across America.”
Sen. Wyden followed him on the floor to speak about the proposal, and said the clinics "will be like farmers' markets."
Sanders, an avowed socialist who wants a single-payer health care system, has said he would not vote for the current bill when it comes to a final vote, but remains undecided on whether or not to vote on the key cloture motion. Expanding health clinics could be one way to win him over.
Webb "Undecided" on Health Care Bill
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 11:07AM
Under fire from Republicans who expect him to vote for cloture on the health care bill, Sen. Jim Webb's office has issued the following statement to the Washington Post:
"Senator Webb has taken a number of tough votes in the last month-- always voting his conscience and without bowing to party politics. It is not surprising that he is being lobbied by interests on both sides of the aisle. Senator Webb has a reputation for being very deliberative and independent-minded. The fact that he has said he is undecided about this bill is not extraordinary. He reviews all legislation with great care and deliberation. During this debate, he has broken with his party six times, including four votes to prevent cuts in Medicare. At the same time, he appreciates that the need for health care reform is great. The status quo of our health care system burdens families and undermines the competitive position of American business."
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 10:17AM
- The strict Senate disciplinarian, Al Franken cuts Joe Lieberman off during health care speech for running too long (Politico)
- Senator Inhofe tells appalled reporters in Copenhagen: "The United States is not going to pass cap and trade. It just isn't going to happen. Its chances are zero." (Fox News)
- Santelli: Tea Parties are good for US dollar (News Busters)
- 72-passenger per day airport gets a $7.5 million terminal paid for by federal tax money. The terminal is a "lodge style building with three stone fireplaces, ticket counters with stone facade and exposed log beams decorating the business center, observation deck and lounge with picture windows" (USA Today)
64 Hours Before First HC Vote, Still No Bill
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 9:33AM
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's breakneck schedule to get health care legislation passed by Christmas Eve would mean that the first vote on health care would happen to less than 64 hours from now -- at 1 a.m. Monday morning -- and yet we still have no final bill or score from the Congressional Budget Office.
Back in October, a group of Democratic Senators sent a letter to Reid urging him to post the final bill and CBO score online for 72 hours prior to a vote. The letter was signed by Sens. Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Claire McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Mark Pyror, and Jim Webb.
Now technically, they could argue that the Monday morning vote on the "manager's amendment" with all of the final changes of the bill doesn't count. Here's precisely what they requested:
The legislative text and complete budget scores from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of the health care legislation considered on the Senate floor should be made available on a website the public can access for at least 72 hours prior to the first vote to proceed to the legislation. Likewise, the legislative text and complete CBO scores of the health care legislation as amended should be made available to the public for 72 hours prior to the vote on final passage of the bill in the Senate. Further, the legislative text of all amendments filed and offered for debate on the Senate floor should be posted on a public website prior to beginning debate on the amendment on the Senate floor. Lastly, upon a final agreement between the House of Representatives and the Senate, a formal conference report detailing the agreement and complete CBO scores of the agreement should be made available to the public for 72 hours prior to the vote on final passage of the conference report in the Senate.
But certainly the idea of releasing a bill on the Saturday before Christmas -- as Reid is expected to do -- and then holding a vote at in the middle of the night Sunday/Monday morning, violates the spirit of transparency called for by these Senators, who wrote:
By publically posting the legislation and its CBO scores 72 hours before it is brought to a vote in the Senate and by publishing the text of amendments before they are debated, our constituents will have the opportunity to evaluate these policies and communicate their concerns or their message of support to their Members of Congress. As their democratically-elected representatives in Washington, D.C., it is our duty to listen to their concerns and to provide them with the chance to respond to proposals that will impact their lives. At a time when trust in Congress and the U.S. government is unprecedentedly low, we can begin to rebuild the American people's faith in their federal government through transparency and by actively inviting Americans to participate in the legislative process.
Remember, the vote to occur at 1am Monday is really the big hurdle -- if Reid gets 60 votes for that, it's pretty certain he'll pass the bill. Can any of these Senators argue with a straight face that releasing a bill on a weekend when most Americans are out Christmas shopping and decorating trees will provide them the "opportunity to evaluate these policies and communicate their concerns or their message of support to their Members of Congress"? Or "provide them with the chance to respond to proposals that will impact their lives"?
If they think trust in Congress is low now, wait until they see what happens if Reid resorts to such draconian tactics to ram through a bill by Christmas that would overhaul one-sixth of the nation's economy and that is supported by less than a third of the public.
Opportunity Lost
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 8:25AM
Now that President Obama and the Congressional Democrats are twisting themselves like pretzels to get something – anything – passed on health reform with no Republican support, it might be worth reviewing what might have been.
During the campaign, Mr. Obama promised to work in a bipartisan fashion to solve problems. He told one interviewer, “I have always been able to work together with Republicans to find compromise and to find common ground.” If he had stuck with that in health care we might be telling a very different story today.
In fact, the health reform proposals presented during the campaign by Barack Obama and John McCain were not that far apart. Both candidates supported "reimportation" of American drugs and greater use of generic drugs. Both wanted to increase "coordinated care" and do more for people with chronic conditions and both supported transparency on costs and quality. Both wanted to do something about medical liability. McCain wanted to exempt physicians "who follow clinical guidelines" from malpractice actions, and Obama wanted to "strengthen antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians for their malpractice insurance." Both believed we could save a lot of money by using health information technology and both wanted health insurance coverage to be portable, so people can take it with them when they change jobs.
They had differences too, of course. Obama wanted to create a public insurance option with comprehensive benefits and subsidies for lower income Americans and a national insurance exchange with no limits for pre-existing conditions, and he was willing to make coverage mandatory for children but not for adults.
McCain wanted to provide vouchers of $5,000 per family to help them afford coverage and he wanted to allow people to buy coverage across state lines. He wanted to guarantee access for the uninsurable and provide additional premium assistance for lower-income people. He also wanted to create high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions and expand Health Savings Accounts.
Now if Obama had been serious about bipartisanship and about health reform he could have picked up the phone last January and invited McCain over to the White House to thrash out their differences and come up with a unified proposal.
Obama's "national insurance exchange" would have fit in nicely with McCain's support for buying coverage across state lines. And McCain's tax credit and additional low-income assistance would be one way for Obama to deliver the subsidies he desired.
Even McCain's support of health savings accounts could have easily been absorbed into Obama's desire for comprehensive benefits. A rarely mentioned advantage of HSAs is that they offer a way to fund comprehensive benefits while still offering flexibility and choice. One family might want coverage of alternative medicine while another wants dental and vision to be covered. HSAs enable both to get what they want without having Congress picking one over the other.
These differences could have been hammered out in a day of meetings between both men’s key advisors on health care – Peter Orszag for Obama and Douglas Holtz-Eakin for McCain. Interestingly, both are former directors of the Congressional Budget Office, so they can talk the same language and have deep knowledge of what Congress is looking for in legislative proposals.
With the endorsement of the presidential candidates from both parties, such a proposal would have sailed through Congress and Mr. Obama would have had the August signing ceremony he craved, and a bi-partisan love fest, too.
It is not a solution I would have liked, but it would have avoided the current incomprehensible mish-mash of proposals that are opposed by 61% of the people. What a way to run a railroad.
Chinese 1, US Poor 0
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 8:25AM
You probably heard promises during the debate over the House-passed cap-and-trade energy tax/rationing scheme that some of the wealth transfer would be "recycled" to the poorest of our poor, to offset at least in part the higher costs they would face as a result of Obama's plan that he openly admitted was intended to cause energy prices to "necessarily skyrocket". Energy costs are embedded in everything, so the cost of everything goes up; energy tax hikes are highly regressive, so seniors and the poor, anyone on a low or fixed income, gets hit the worst.
Now we read that the U.S. has agreed in Copenhagen to take part in an annual wealth transfer in the name of "global warming" to developing countries of $100 billion per year. Assume we pay a third of that as we usually do. Now remember that our entire overseas development aid budget last year was $26 billion. So we're about to increase that 130%.
But the important point is that this deal negates Obama's promise to use the money from selling cap-and-trade allowances to protect families from the rising energy costs of cap-and-trade. There just isn't enough to do both. Nicely played, comrades.
Copenhagen Shock: Greens Given US Government Badges for Special Access
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 7:43AM
P.J. O'Rourke attended the World Environment Summit in Rio de Janiero in 1992, the confab that gave us the fir "global warming" treaty, a document which Kyoto amended and the ongoing Copenhagen meeting is also to amend to get Kyoto II. There, he wrote, in the scrum caused by typical UN ineptitude an earnest lass cried out something along the lines of "this is what life would be like in an overpopulated world!" To which O'Rourke replied, no, dear, this is what life would be like in a world run by the United Nations.
Well, similarly, you may by now have heard that Copenhagen is proceeding in even worse than normal fashion, thanks to 45,00 attendees -- either Party, Observer or Media -- having been accredited. The hall being used holds 15,000. The spillover is not so much from the welfare-seeking countries and their delegates but delegates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These include mostly green pressure groups but also groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Chamber of Commerce.
So thousands are forced to stand for as long as eight hours waiting to gain access to the convention hall in the freezing and now snowing weather more wintry than Copenhagen is used to (what did you expect, Gore showed up). And a world where some would be more equal than others, particularly our environmentalist betters, is on display, but in an utterly impermissible way.
I have received an email from someone attending the Conference of the Parties (having been to six such absurdities, I actually finally learned a few years ago not to bother). And he informs me that the greens were not having any of this system whereby they lose a lottery and don't get to be inside hectoring negotiators, or otherwise dealing with things the way everyone else has to.
The Obama administration agreed. My observer source writes:
"Lack of space has led to reduction in number of observers allowed access to Bella Center.
ENGOs complained to US Delegation that not enough of them were allowed in.
US Delegation rides to rescue and supplies 10 "PARTY" badges (not "observer" badges, but "Party" badges) with the understanding that they not abuse them, that is, pretend like they are observer badges (eg, don't go to delegate meetings or other meetings observers would not normally be allowed in to).
David Doniger [NB: of pressure group Natural Resources Defense Council, a group that used to work closely with Enron to get cap-and-trade, incidentally] is running around with his badge tucked beneath his sweater--a no-no. Badges are supposed to be worn in full view.
Business groups, also with people cooling their heels outside the Bella Center, caught wind of this. Someone approached [US "climate envoy"] Todd Stern. He seemed in the dark.
US delegation said it would provide 10 badges to business groups. (Not sure if they've been delivered yet)."
As indicated, in addition to granting the greens disproportionate access and more than had been decided through allocations and actually a recent lottery for Thursday and Friday passes, "Party" badges also allow access to rooms and negotiators that Observer badges do not.
Would it be ok for State Department employees to hand over their identification badges to green lobbyists to wander around the building as if they were employees? Why not? Do take note of the too-close-for-comfort relationship exposed by the impropriety.
Now, about how those cap-and-trade "allowances" are politically allocated...
Only in Alabama
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 3:28AM
A superior commitment to football excellence extends even to Alabama's legal system:
The BCS Championship game is so big in Alabama that it has shut down school for three days and now led to an accidental-death case being delayed so an attorney can attend the game.
In a move that is becoming as much of a trend as SEC teams playing for and winning the national title, an Alabama lawyer filed a motion seeking a trial date continuance based upon a conflict with the Alabama-Texas BCS title game. Jon B. Terry, a 57-year-old defense attorney for Energen Corporation filed the motion in Jefferson County, Alabama stating as grounds for the continuance, the well-established Roll Tide exception to general court business.
In a call to his office, Mr. Terry's secretary "not the Auburn one" said she was not at liberty to announce the judge's response to the motion. But a call to the judge's chambers, the honorable Dan C. King presiding -- an Auburn man no less -- confirmed that the judge has granted the motion although an official order has not yet been released.
Judge King told the Birmingham News, "If I didn't, they'd say, 'He just didn't grant it because he's an Auburn fellow. I wouldn't do that to 'em."
Texas can't hope to match the football fanaticism of a state where "Roll Tide" constitutes a principle of law as sacred as habeas corpus.
Senate Invokes Cloture on Defense Spending Bill
Posted by on 12.18.09 @ 1:25AM
The Senate voted after 1 a.m. Friday morning to limit debate on a defense spending bill, in keeping with Majority Leader Harry Reid's pace to hold a final health care vote on Christmas Eve.
The appropriations bill included must-pass funding to keep the military running as well as other items such as an extension of unemployment benefits and food stamps.
Democrats accused Republicans who were delaying a final vote on the bill of playing politics with the troops.
"Senate Republican leadership has shamelessly turned this into a purely partisan exercise," Reid said.
But Sen. Jon Kyl argued that Democrats run Congress, and they could have passed a bill to fund the Department of Defense at any time over the past several months.
Sen. Arlen Specter seemed to undercut the argument that the Democratic concerns were all about the troops when he wrote on Twitter, "In session tonight so that we can stay on track to pass health care reform as soon as possible."
Earlier Thursday night, Democrats became concerned that Republicans would successfully filibuster the spending bill and delay the health care push, but convened a meeting in which anti-war Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, who had intended to oppose the measure, agreed to give his party the necessary votes. Ultimately, the motion passed 63 to 33.
Senate procedure requires 30 hours of debate after a cloture vote, setting up a final vote on the defense bill at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning. Then Reid will have to file his "managers amendment" -- essentially the final version of the health care bill -- Saturday in order to be on track to pass legislation on Christmas Eve.
The Hill reports:
The first big test is expected at 1 a.m. Monday, when the Senate would vote on the final changes to the healthcare bill that are packaged in a manager’s amendment. If Reid fails to rally his entire conference for that vote, or offset any defectors with an equal number of Republicans, the game is up and Democrats go home without advancing President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Puzzling Pawlenty
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 8:09PM
Like the chairman of the Democratic Governor's Association, Montana's Brian Schweitzer, Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty now says he thinks cap-and-trade is a bad idea. In an interview Wednesday night with New Hampshire Watchdog reporter Grant Bosse, Pawlenty said the scheme was harmful to the economy and jobs, but he still holds to the idea that carbon dioxide is "pollution:"
Pawlenty, who until recently was a cheerleader for state- and regional-level greenhouse gas limitations, unfortunately is like Montana's Schweitzer in another way. While they both have spoken against cap-and-trade, they are each keeping their respective states as participants in such agreements on a regional scale. Montana is part of the Western Climate Initiative, which is run by the Western Governors Association, yet Schweitzer's made no move to match his actions with his rhetoric.
Pawlenty, who as chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association enthusiastically led an agenda to fight global warming, entered his state into the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord -- and it remains there. The goals of the accord are:
- Establish greenhouse gas reduction targets and timeframes consistent with MGA member states’ targets;
- Develop a market-based and multi-sector cap-and-trade mechanism to help achieve those reduction targets;
- Establish a system to enable tracking, management, and
crediting for entities that reduce greenhouse gas
emissions; and - Develop and implement additional steps as needed to achieve
the reduction targets, such as a low-carbon fuel
standards and regional incentives and funding mechanisms.
If that doesn't sound like the economy- and jobs-killer that likely presidential candidate Pawlenty says he now opposes, I don't know what does. So when will he withdraw Minnesota from this commitment?
'Round Midnight
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 6:58PM
The Senate just approved Majority Leader Harry Reid's motion to recess until 12:01 am as part of a mad dash to pass a health care bill by Christmas Eve.
The chamber must pass the defense appropriations bill tomorrow, and Senate procedure holds that they would have to wait at least an hour after convening to hold the vote, meaning that the earliest they could vote on it would be 1 am.
The Hill has a good rundown of the timeline of all of the procedural steps over the next week that the Democrats would have to abide by to set up a 7 p.m. vote on Christmas Eve, assuming they can cobble together the needed 60 votes.
And just for kicks:
It's Inhuman All Right
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 4:41PM
Patrick Appel, guestblogging for Andrew Sullivan:
I'm not nearly as talented a writer as Andrew is, a fact readers ceaseless remind me of whenever I guest-blog for the Dish. Andrew has an inhuman ability to write a well-reasoned and beautifully-crafted 700-word blog post in about fifteen minutes.
I guess at least he's proved the point that he's not a good writer.
Netroots to Falling Netleaves
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 4:30PM
Reihan Salam makes an astute observation about the left's netroots. Once viewed as the rise of a new kind of political movement, one critically independent of those in power, they have become, with the ascent of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, standard Beltway fare. Except for, of course, a 'Kos here and there.
In a sense, Moulitsas is striving to maintain a movement stance independent of the Democratic establishment. His interlocutors, who began as independent voices highly critical of said Democratic establishment, have come to see its virtues as they've gained access and prestige.... [I]t's a mark of the continuing evolution of a political movement that, it turns out, wasn't as distinctive or as important as advertised. As many conservatives argued at the time, the rise of the netroots didn't really represent a genuinely new ideological tendency. It was and remains a vehicle for the revival of 1970s-style liberalism, which holds northern European social democracy as its lodestar.
It's a convincing argument, and Salam identifies a few potential villains in the story, which always makes for a better read.
No Minarets in Switzerland Means Death Threats in Turkey
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 4:19PM
In response to Switzerland's recent referendum to prohibit the construction of new minarets, Turkish muslims in eastern Turkey have threatened to kill a Christian priest unless he tears down his church's bell tower.
Three Muslims on Dec. 4 entered the Meryem Ana Church, a Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, and confronted the Rev. Yusuf Akbulut. They told him that unless the bell tower was destroyed in one week, they would kill him.
“If Switzerland is demolishing our minarets, we will demolish your bell towers too,” one of the men told Akbulut.
This sort of persecution is apparently quite common:
At press time the tower was standing and the priest was safe, said Jerry Mattix, youth pastor at the Diyarbakir Evangelical Church, which is located across a street from Meryem Ana Church.
Mattix said that threats against Christians in Diyarbakir are nothing out of the ordinary. Mattix commonly receives threats, both in the mail and posted on the church’s Internet site, he said.
“We’re kind of used to that,” Mattix said. He added that he has received no threats over the minaret situation but added, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we do.”
Hat tip to James Kushiner.
Patrick Hughes Busts a Cap on Mark Kirk's Voting Record
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 4:14PM
Senate candidate and real estate developer Patrick Hughes came out swinging at primary opponent Congressman Mark Kirk's liberal and centrist voting record in a conversation with TAS on Thursday. When comparing his conservative candidacy to that of Marco Rubio running against the more moderate Charlie Crist for Senate in Florida, Hughes said, "I believe that Mark Kirk is far more liberal on all the issues than Charlie Crist is, and would be much more likely to vote outside a Republican line of thinking, or even in many cases a moderate line of thinking, than Crist would."
Of particular concern was Kirk's "yes" vote on Cap and Trade in June, but Hughes also raised questions over Kirk's "F" rating from the NRA, his vote against a partial-birth abortion ban, his co-sponsoring of hate crimes law, his vote against the Iraq War surge, and the congressman's opposing a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
When discussing Cap and Trade, the issue he said drove him to run for Senate, Hughes argued that Kirk's vote has led to fewer capital investments due to price uncertainty that has resulted from the bill, and has in turn damaged job creation in Illinois -- a state with 11% unemployment. He also cited the direct impact it would have on coal miners, as Illinois is the 7th-most coal producing state in the country.
Hughes went a step further in his attacks on Kirk by arguing that his vote for Cap and Trade allowed the political capital that President Obama needed to pass healthcare -- saying that Obama's approval would have fallen if Cap and Trade had failed, which would make it more difficult for healthcare to pass with some Democrats. "I believe we would have been able to pull off those three Democrats (that would have resulted in the House Healthcare bill not passing) and probably more. I think, ultimately, Congressman Kirk's vote for Cap and Trade proved to be a vote in favor of the healthcare bill."
Congressman Kirk has since signed the Americans for Prosperity pledge not to raise any climate taxes, but Hughes argued that Kirk has no credibility on this issue since he had voted for Waxman-Markey just three months prior to signing. "His switch on that position shows his willingness to do whatever it takes to win the election," Hughes concluded.
On national security matters, Hughes supports the Afghan surge. He also spoke out against non-intervention conservatism. "I don't support non-interventionism at all. To me, non-interventionism is extremely dangerous in a way that economic protectionism is extremely dangerous," Hughes stated.
Despite the many left-of-center stances that Kirk has adopted, Hughes's campaign has not yet taken off when looking at most polls, or gained much traction in terms of endorsements or fundraising to reach the level of support that Kirk has received. While Hughes and others have compared the Illinois campaign to that of the more conservative Marco Rubio running against a more liberal Charlie Crist for Senate in Florida, the amount of national attention and support that Rubio has received -- endorsements from Club for Growth, DeMint, Huckabee, Karl Rove, and speaking at CPAC -- has not yet materialized for Hughes. Even Red State has indicated that it "would be fine" with Kirk, albeit maintaining some suspicion.
A large concern is that Illinois is viewed as a liberal state, and the seat that Hughes and Kirk are seeking was the one occupied by President Obama. Looking at Illinois's D+9 Cook Partisan Voter Index rating, which puts Illinois in a tie for 7th most Democratic, many have believed that the best way for Republicans to win is to put up a more centrist or even liberal candidate to run against front-runner state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. Another problem that some critics see is that Hughes has never held elected office, and thus has no record to cite.
Hughes, however, citing the successful candidacy of Peter Fitzgerald's 1998 election run, argued that the key to winning was coalescing the conservative base in the primary rather than rushing to the center. He could be right about that, but he needs to coalesce the conservative base very quickly in order for us to see how it plays out. He has 47 days until the primary.
Franken Slaps Down Lieberman on the Senate Floor
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 4:05PM
Liberal anger toward Sen. Joe Lieberman boiled over to the Senate floor this afternoon when Sen. Al Franken denied the Connecticut independent a routine request to extend his remarks.
Sen. Lieberman was speaking out in favor of an amendment he is offering along with Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Sheldon Whitehouse to strengthen the proposed Medicare advisory commission as a means of reducing health care costs.
After Lieberman spoke for 10 minutes, Franken, who was presiding over the Senate, informed him that his time had expired. Lieberman asked that he be given "an additional moment" to finish up -- a request that requires the consent of all Senators, but something that is typically granted without objection.
But before he could continue, Sen. Franken speaking from the presiding officer's table, snapped, "In my capacity as Senator from Minnesota, I object."
A suprised Lieberman laughed. "Really?" he said incredulously. "Okay, I don't take it personally."
Sen. John McCain then took the floor and came to Lieberman's defense.
"I've been around here 20 some years, it's the first time I've seen a member denied an extra minute or two finish his remarks," McCain lamented. "I don't know what's happening here in this body, but I think it's wrong."
Sen. Carl Levin responded that, "The same thing did occur earlier this afternoon for reasons which have to do with trying to get this bill going."
"Well, I haven't seen it myself, and I don't like it," McCain snapped back. "I think it harms the comity of the Senate not to allow one of our members at least a minute. I'm sure that time is urgent here, but I doubt it would be that urgent."
NRSC's Brian Walsh Should Be Muzzled
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 3:52PM
In response to a Red State post criticizing him for taking nasty shots at Chuck DeVore's Senate campaign in California -- something no staffer should do -- the NRSC's Brian Walsh again attacks the DeVore campaign: “It’s hard to draw any conclusion other than that this is a campaign that likes to play games,” NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh said. “It’s unfortunate, but if and when they’d like to stop this nonsense and work with us on defeating Barbara Boxer next year, we look forward to meeting with them.”
Also, he writes here that "we see a campaign sending out information which they themselves know to be false." Again, another attack, as if the DeVore campaign is the political enemy, rather than a potential nominee.
This is an outrage. No campaign committee staffer should be publicly disparaging a campaign that may end up being that of his party's nominee for a key Senate seat.
This is the time that a staffer should A) shut up; and B) arrange for another NRSC committee spokesman to say something along thse lines: "We are sorry that there appears to have been a misunderstanding with the DeVore campaign. It matters not how the misunderstanding occurred. We want to make sure the misunderstanding is solved. We welcome any inquiries from Mr. DeVore's campaign, and will gladly set up a meeting between him and chairman John Cornyn if he wants one."
Period. End of story. How difficult is that? Stop the infighting, move to a higher plane, be constructive, and stop making yourself, as a staffer, the story. Gee, when I was a press secretary, I learned that sort of thing in, oh, about 11 minutes and 27 seconds on my first day of work.
Clinton Says Not Passing HC Bill Would Be "Colossal Blunder"
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 3:31PM
Bill Clinton pushes back against the Howard Dean view that the bill has been compromised to the point that it would be better to kill it, arguing:
Take it from someone who knows: these chances don't come around every day. Allowing this effort to fall short now would be a colossal blunder -- both politically for our party and, far more important, for the physical, fiscal, and economic health of our country.
His full statement is here.
Hostettler: Bayh to Cast Right Health Care Vote for Wrong Reasons
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 2:30PM
On the main site, RiShawn Biddle has a piece looking at Evan Bayh's unexpected challenges in 2010. Today, John Hostettler, the best-known Republican to have declared for the Senate seat, argued that Bayh's personal interests play a bigger role than principle in motivating his health care vote. "A vote for President Obama's most important legislative initiative will create a clear conflict of interest at home, literally, for Indiana's junior senator," Hostettler said. "The fact is that his wife, Susan, serves on the Board of Directors of one of America's largest health insurance companies, and she has been paid more than $1 million since first being named to that Board shortly after Senator Bayh's reelection in 2004."
Hostettler continued with some backhanded praise for his Democratic rival. "I do not support the Senate bill or any other government takeover of the best health care system in the world," he said. "Though I oppose the Senate bill for other reasons, I am nonetheless encouraged that Senator Bayh will listen, if not to his constituents, to his family's economic interests."
Breaking News on Walpin-Gate
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 1:50PM
Read all about it at the Water Cooler blog at the Washingon Times. Is there what amounts to obstruction of justice going on?
Nelson Says He Can't Vote for Cloture, Doesn't See Deal By Xmas
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 1:38PM
Sen. Ben Nelson said on a radio interview today that he could not vote to advance the health care bill in its current form, that the abortion compromises being discussed are not acceptable to him, and that even if the abortion issue were resolved, it would not be sufficient to earn his vote if other changes weren't made.
And asked whether these issues could be resolved by Democrats' Christmas deadline, he quipped, “Are you talking about this Christmas or next Christmas?”
Nelson made the comments in an interview on Nebraska radio station KILN (listen to it here).
The senator, on of a few holdouts in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's quest for 60 votes, said that he's working to change the bill so it could get in a position where he could vote for it, but “As it is right now, I can’t and I don’t.”
Nelson said that he still supports including more restrictive abortion language akin to the Stupak amendment that passed in the House, and than none of the compromises offered so far -- including one being worked out by Sen. Bob Casey -- was good enough. “As it is right now, without further modifications, it isn’t sufficient,” he said.
On the issue of federal funding for abortion, he said, “That alone is a reason not to vote for cloture.”
But he said even if Democrats granted his wishes on abortion, he'd still need other changes in the bill.
He said he had problems with expanding Medicaid to 15 million people, which he called an "underfunded federal mandate for the state of Nebraska." He suggested that states be allowed to "opt in" to the expanded Medicaid program.
Nelson also complained about the tax increases necessary to finance the bill.
“The way in which money is raised is not acceptable,” Nelson said. He added, "If there isn’t a way to raise money in tight times, I think you have to look at a scaled back version.”
He continued, "“I’ve said, this needs to be handled on an incremental basis.”
Nelson said that he thinks the "first order is to get costs under control," because if you just cover more people and don't do anything to control costs, it will only make the problem with health care spending worse.
While he said that sometimes, deadlines were needed to put pressure on lawmakers to pass something, "A timeline that’s out there that is not achievable, isn’t helpful.”
He said he doubted he could reach a deal with other Democrats in time to meet the Christmas deadline.
“I couldn’t tell you that they can’t come up with something that is satisfactory on abortion between now and then, and solve all of the other issues that I’ve raised to them, but I don’t see how,” he said.
And he insisted: “I’m not going to be rushed into a timeline.”
Needless to say, this is a a serious blow to Reid's efforts to get to get 60 votes needed to pass a health care bill by the end of next week. Many of Nelson's complaints aren't merely about simply removing elements -- i.e. strip the public option and Medicare buy-in -- but resolving them would require a significant redrafting of the legislation.
Rules on Withdrawing an Amendment
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 12:37PM
Yesterday, I wrote about how Senate Republicans were incensed that the parliamentarian allowed Sen. Bernie Sanders to cut off the reading of his single-payer proposal, and today a reader from Dallas, Texas passes along further evidence to support their complaint.
By way of background, yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn forced the reading of Sanders 767 page amendment, but three hours into reading of the amendment, which was on pace to take more than 12 hours and wipe out an entire legislative day, Sanders withrew the amendment. This stopped the reading, and allowed Democrats to get on with their business.
The problem is that when an amendment is introduced, it has to be read on the Senate floor unless all Senators agree to cut off the reading. In Senate jargon, this is granting "unanimous consent."
Today, a reader noted that on page 119 of Riddick’s Senate Procedure, it says that "the Senator offering the amendment must have the floor in order to withdraw the amendment.”
But at the time he withdrew the amendment, Sanders didn't have the floor. The only way to regain the floor was to dispense with the reading of the bill, which again, calls for unanimous consent.
In non-Senate jargon, it appears that Republicans were in fact robbed. But sort of like complaining about a bad call by the ref after the game is already over, there's not much they can do about it.
Ted Kennedy's Dream...
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 12:33PM
Seriously, Drunk Four Year Old sounds like he has the right attitude and ideology to be a productive member of Pelosi's caucus. Technically he should be 25, but if we can get around the First and Fourth Amendments so easily, surely we can make a wee Constitutional exception for a kid who thinks outside the box, right?
And this is, I'll remind you, the Children's Congress.
Under Artest
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 12:26PM
Ron Artest, NBA player famous mostly for pummeling fans and players in an Indiana Pacers vs. Detroit Pistons game, has some interesting things to say about role models and Tiger Woods.
In an open letter to Tiger Woods, and in some show of solidarity or support for the current celebrity cipher, Artest told Tiger Woods, "you have been the perfect role model for me and my sons."
I'd say this was unbelievable, but that wouldn't be accurate. Today, it's very much believable.
It's just shameful.
Bernanke Advances to Senate Vote
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 12:08PM
The Senate Banking committee has approved the nomination of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to a second term in a 16-7 vote.
Voting against him were Republicans Shelby, Bennett, Bunning, Crapo, DeMint, Vitter, and Hutchison, and Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Merkel has cited Bernanke's apparent concern for Wall Street over Main Street as the basis for his opposition, which more or less squares with the Republicans' motivations. The Republicans, in general, are also more worried about inflation, but Bunning for one has criticized the Bernanke Fed for its actions in bailing out AIG and the lack of transparency in that transaction.
Bunning, notably, was the only Senator to go on the record as opposing Bernanke's confirmation in 2005, when he was approved with a voice vote. It's interesting to see that in the intervening period the Bush-nominated Bernanke has earned himself opposition that, while bipartisan, skews heavily Republican.
Ted Kennedy's Class Act Another Obstacle in Getting to 60 Votes
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 11:55AM
Even without a public option, the Senate health care bill would create a new government-run health insurance program. You may not have read much about the long-term insurance plan, which was brainchild of Ted Kennedy, but Sen. Ben Nelson continues to bring it up as a sticking point for him in not being able to vote for the health care bill, so you may be hearing more about it in the days to come.
In any other year, the creation of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act would be a big deal and subject to a major debate, but this new entitlement has largely been ignored because it was burried among the more massive entitlements within the 2,074 page Senate health care bill.
Should the health care bill become law, Americans would be enrolled in a governement-run insurance program in which they would pay premiums that would enable them to collect long-term care benefits down the road, though people would be allowed to opt out.
The program would start collecting premiums immediately but wouldn't begin paying out benefits until 2016, so it would initially run a surplus. But the Congressional Budget Office said last month that, "In the decade following 2029, the CLASS program would begin to increase budget deficits." The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that benefits doled out would exceed premiums in 2025, "resulting in a net Federal cost in the longer term."
The Washinton Post reported that Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad called it, "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of."
While Conrad has not hinged his vote on the final bill on the CLASS Act, Nelson has consistently brought it up as one of his objections to the bill --other than abortion -- that could make it impossible for him to give Democrats their 60th vote. Unless those issues were addressed, according to the Congressional Quarterly, he said the bill was "not something I can vote for right now, and not something I can vote for cloture right now."
And when listing his beefs with the health care bill on Sunday,
Sen. Joe Lieberman also brought up the program. "You
probably have to take out the Class Act, which was a whole new
entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further
into deficit," he
said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
How hard Nelson and/or Lieberman are pressing for the removal of the CLASS Act is unclear, but keep in mind how much this would be asking the party's liberals to swallow.
To them, it has the emotional appeal of its association with Kennedy.
Sen. Chris Dodd co-authored the provision with Ted Kennedy, and it is also important to Sen. Tom Harkin.
"Senator Kennedy has worked on this for years, and the couple of times that I talked to him this summer and this spring, this is what he wanted to talk to me about, about making sure that we included this in the bill," Harkin said in floor remarks defending the program. "This was his cause, to make sure that we had a program in which people could contribute, that would afford them some support if, in fact, they became disabled."
Harkin called it "the next logical step after the Americans with Disabilities Act," which he authored.
An amendment by Sen. John Thune to strip the the CLASS Act from the bill came nine votes short of the 60 it needed.
The Race to Christmas
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 10:39AM
We still don't have a bill or a score from the Congressional Budget Office and in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, support for passing Democrats' health care legislation has dropped to 32 percent, yet Democrats are still pushing to pass a bill before Christmas.
Sen. Max Baucus told the Hill that they are prepared to vote on Christmas Day, while the Politico reports that "Senators privately considered one scenario Wednesday that would have them casting a final vote at 7 p.m. Christmas Eve."
Passage of the health care bill would require three 60-vote thresholds, which would have to occur over the course of several days, meaning that Senate Majority Reid would have to begin that process -- i.e. file cloture -- this weekend.
Of course, all of this is contingent on him getting 60 votes. So far, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ben Nelson are holdouts, while people assume that Sens. Russ Feingold and Roland Burris will be onboard, but they haven't declared that they would be.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 10:12AM
- Palin blacks out "McCain for President" on her visor (NY Daily News)
- Michael Moore calls for boycott of Connecticut in response to Senator Lieberman's opposition to the public option and Medicare expansion (Hill)
- Rumors are surfacing that Crist may eventually run for Governor re-election instead of Senate (Wall Street Journal)
- Blago attorneys are considering calling Obama as a witness (Washington Times)
Howard Dean on Obamanomics
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 9:44AM
Howard Dean rips into the Senate health care bill in today's Washington Post.
The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.
Sounds just like right-wing policy experts' warnings.
I know health reform when I see it, and there isn't much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America.
Which brings him into line with conservatives.
It's amazing on how many topics the administration and congressional leadership have managed to force progressives and conservatives into alignment. The Fed's record, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, comes to mind. The important legislative battles right now are big business Obamanomics vs. everyone else instead of right vs. left to an extent that I wouldn't have thought possible.
ADDED:
I should make clear that the title of this post was an implicit reference to Tim Carney's book Obamanomics, the first of probably many to come.
Kleptocracies Cash in in Kyopenhagen
Posted by on 12.17.09 @ 7:36AM
So Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just made news by landing in Copenhagen and immediately announcing $100 billion through 2020 in additional new money to developing countries, in the name of "climate change".
Climate changes. Always has. Always will. And so long as a country remains poor, its climate and weather will be among the greatest challenges to its people. Just like it was to us until we industrialized and got wealthy. All of the billions in foreign development aid have ostensibly been to help these countries deal with climate change (though it is not due to the weather that they remain poor). We know how wealth transfers to kleptocracies works out. We should expect nothing different here. It's just waste and an invitation to fraud on a far grander scale.
For perspective, in 2008, total United States Overseas Development Aid was $26 billion. So you see we're talking about a spectacular increase in foreign development aid in the name of something the case for which is collapsing all around us.
Now comes the cynicism. Clinton's offer carries two caveats. These are first that the money will go only to the poorest developing countries and not to richer ones like China, and second that it is conditioned on richer countries like China making binding and verifiable emission reductions.
So you see the disconnect. Here's a bag of money to incent and assist Party A, but only if Party B agrees to harm itself. I'm pretty sure every law student studies this fact pattern in contracts class.
But there is a loophole in that second caveat such that Party B doesn't really have to self-inflict harm in order to trigger Party A's lucre. Further, bear in mind that Party B -- China, India et al. -- already clean up via the jobs and wealth transferred to them when rich countries undertake Kyoto-style schemes, the continuation of which is also an implicit part of the deal. So it isn't like Party B walk away empty-handed, whatever the perils of the funding model.
This loophole is that China's "reductions" are actually huge emission increases. For example, China's offer of a 45% reduction in emission intensity (emissions per unit of economic output) would, by 2020, produce a 130% increase of what is already the world's largest emissions source. This is being hailed as a massive cut even though it is also less impressive even than business as usual over the last fifteen years of economic maturation, as such improvements are inherent (over that time China reduced its emissions intensity by over 46%).
Better yet, the compromise over how to verify whether China et al actually do what they promise is to allow China et al to tell us in the reports they already files with the UN. I feel better already.
This is a political commitment and Congress must actually appropriate the money. It is just that Obama is putting them in the difficult position of promising they will agree to such a spectacular undertaking. But the key to an actual Kyoto II rising to the level of Senate ratification is some binding promise of U.S. reductions, not just more wealth transfer. And that this is being kicked down the road, but still is on tap, will largely be lost in the fanfare over claiming an agreement not remotely resembling what Obama et al said simply had to be agreed in Copenhagen.
So now it's off to Mexico City next year, when the U.S. would agree to real cuts, through cap-and-trade, etc. We would harm ourselves as the price of admission in order to pay to upgrade the infrastructure of other nations on an unprecedented scale.
But for now, just as predicted, by signaling that he would come to Copenhagen President Obama has cornered himself such that politically he could not yet again fly off to catcalls and no achievement, telling the rest of the world that they could hold him -- meaning us -- up for billions. He would do anything for a deal, and is doing it. The framework has been erected in anticipation of his arrival.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Sanders: "As of this point, I'm not voting for the bill"
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 9:56PM
Sen. Harry Reid's quest to sixty isn't merely about convincing Sen. Ben Nelson, but avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders also remains on the fence on supporting a bill without a public option:
"I'm struggling with this. As of this point, I'm not voting for the bill... I'm going to do my best to make this bill a better bill, a bill that I can vote for, but I've indicated both to the White House and the Democratic leadership that my vote is not secure at this point. And here is the reason. When the public option was withdrawn, because of Lieberman's action, what I worry about is how do you control escalating health care costs?"
Via Political Wire.
Re: On Romneycare and Federalism
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 5:35PM
I don't really see this as an argument about federalism. It's one thing for me to argue as a pundit that Massachusetts should be allowed to have a big government health care system, but it's another thing to be the governor who signed the legislation that created that system. The point is that when candidates seek the presidency, we judge them by their records. If they raised taxes and spending at the state level, that's something they'll be judged on when running for president. And Mitt Romney's signature legislative accomplishment was creating a health care system that's been used as the model for what Democrats are on the verge of passing nationally. Besides, federalist arguments are only valid when the policies of one state don't have an impact on those living in other states. But as Cato's Michael Cannon has noted, federal taxpayers picked up 20 percent of the Romneycare tab, because it expanded Medicaid eligibility -- a program in which funding is split between the federal government and individual states.
NRSC, jerks
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 5:06PM
I'm with Chuck DeVore on this one. And with Ovide Lamontagne, Rand Paul, and others who are complaining. The NRSC, which has been screwing up races consistently since at least 1986, should not, repeat not, repeat NEVER EVER EVER, take sides in basic intraparty primaries. It should hold its fire, and its money, for the general election campaign against Democrats. (For that matter, that's what the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, or whatever it's called, should do as well, vs. Repubs.) But the ever-arrogant, ever-clueless, ever-counterproductive, ever-anti-conservative NRSC repeatedly shows favoritism, sometimes tacit and sometimes explicit and measurable, for moderate, establishment, milquetoast candidates supposedly supported by wealthy backers or by their own wealth. This is true for the staffers; it is true for the pompous senators chosen to chair the NRSC (in this case, John Cornyn), and it is true for the Senate Republican leadership that pressures the NRSC to behave as it does. And the amazing thing is, these paragons of conventional wisdom are always wrong. They always pick the wrong candidates, do the wrong things, promote the wrong strategies and tactics. They are a plague on Republicanism and on conservatism. They are a disaster. And they should cease and desist.
The rules should be this: No endorsements intra-party. No aid given to one candidate intra-party that is not given for all, unless there is an open, 90 percent vote of active GOP senators (this would be known as the David Duke Exception). No secret help that is not available to all. No fundraising lists given to one that are not given to all.
This goes the other way, too. No NRSC aid for conservatives ahead of moderates. This isn't ideological (although the NRSC clearly is, the wrong way). It's practical. It is a recognition that Washington doesn't know best, that local Republicans are perfectly capable of choosing their own candidates, and that money and time and effort spent trying to beat other Republicans is money, time and efforts that won't be spent beating Democrats.
If John Cornyn and his ilk and his aides can't understand that, then may a pox fall on their houses.
On Romneycare and Federalism
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 4:53PM
Phil's post yesterday on Romneycare and the current Senate healthcare bill struck me as, if not necessarily unfair to Romney, then perhaps incomplete in its critique. Phil writes:
So now, if Obamacare passes, Romney will be left telling angry primary voters that the only real difference between the two plans is that he implemented his policies at the state level, while Obama did it through the federal government. Sure, it's clearly worse if the federal government is implementing bad policies, but it's hard to see how such an argument would pass muster with anybody but those who are already ardent Romney supporters. It's sort of like saying, "As governor, I raised state income taxes, but the thought of raising federal income taxes -- that's an outrage!"
The case for federalism, though, goes beyond the argument that it's "worse if the federal government is implementing bad policies." There are, in fact, policies that are defensible or even necessary at the state level that would be pernicious at the federal level. Now, it would be a gross understatement to say that Phil knows more about healthcare policy than I do, so it may well be that a Massachusetts-style healthcare bill is analogous to raising income taxes, and would have similar policy implications at both the state and federal level. But it isn't immediately obvious to me that it isn't instead analogous to levying a sales tax, which is prudent under some circumstances at the state level but would be fairly radical at the federal level.
All that said, if Mitt Romney runs for president next cycle, the burden will be on him to draw the distinction between a state and federal healthcare program, and he will have to do a bit better than the line from his spokesman, quoted in the update to Phil's post, about "a 'one-size-fits-all' solution."
NBC Poll: Just 32% of Americans Support HC bill, Status Quo Now More Popular
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 4:49PM
First Read gives an advance look at a new NBC/WSJ poll due to be released tonight:
As the Senate sprints to pass a health-care bill by Christmas, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that those believing President Obama's health-reform plan is a good idea has sunk to its lowest level.
Just 32 percent say it's a good idea, versus 47 percent who say it's a bad idea.
In addition, for the first time in the survey, a plurality prefers the status quo to reform. By a 44-41 percent margin, respondents say it would be better to keep the current system than to pass Obama's health plan.
By comparison, in September's and October's NBC/Journal polls, the American public preferred changing the system to the status quo, 45 to 39 percent.
What's Going On With Berlusconi?
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 4:23PM
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is going to spend a fourth night in the hospital recovering from an attack by an assailant wielding a model of Milan Cathedral that left him with a broken nose and two chipped teeth. A hockey player with those injuries would get taped up in the locker room and be back out on the ice in five minutes. Is there more to Berlusconi's injuries that we're not being told?
GOP: Dems Violated Senate Rules By Cutting off Reading of Sanders Amendment
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 4:05PM
The Senate Republican leadership believes that the parliamentarian allowed Democrats to violate the rules of the Senate by allowing Sen. Bernie Sanders to cut off the reading of his single-payer proposal.
When an amendment is introduced, it has to be read on the Senate floor unless the rest of the Senate agrees to cut off the reading, and typically, the requirement is waived through "unanimous consent." Yet today, Sen. Tom Coburn insisted that Sanders' 767 page bill be read on the Senate floor, which was on pace to take more than 12 hours.
But about three hours into the reading, Sanders withdrew his amendment, and this stopped the reading of the bill -- even without unanimous consent.
"In allowing Sanders to do that, it appears the parliamentarian has broken the standing rules of the Senate," a Republican aide emails. "We're looking into the implications of this and working on where to go from here."
Here is the relevant part of Riddick's Senate Procedure, which the GOP believes Democrats have violated, emphasis was in the email:
“Reading: Under Rule XV, paragraph 1, and Senate precedents, an amendment shall be read by the Clerk before it is up for consideration or before the same shall be debated unless a request to waive the reading is granted; in practice that includes an ordinary amendment or an amendment in the nature of a substitute, the reading of which may not be dispensed with except by unanimous consent, and if the request is denied the amendment must be read and further interruptions are not in order; interruptions of the reading of an amendment that has been proposed are not in order, even for the purpose of proposing a substitute amendment to a committee amendment which is being read. When an amendment is offered the regular order is its reading, and unanimous consent is required to call off the reading.” (Riddick’s Senate Procedure, P.43-44)
"It looks like there’s nothing the Democrats aren’t prepared to do to jam this unpopular health care bill down the throats of the American public," the aide writes.
Dems Use Defense Spending Bill to Delay Medicare Doctor Payment Cuts
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 3:23PM
After failing in October to shift $247 billion in the cost of health care legislation to a seperate bill that would avoid scheduled cuts to doctor's payments under Medicare, House Democrats have inserted a measure in the must-past defense appropriations bill that would delay the cuts.
In 1998, Congress voted to contain the growth rate of doctors payments through Medicare, but it has consistently voted to avoid the cuts under pressure from doctors' groups. This reality undermines Democratic claims that Congress will actually be able to enact the hundreds of billions in proposed cuts to Medicare that are essential to the larger health care bill being deficit neutral.
Unable to pass a long-term measure on the issue, Democrats have tacked onto the $636 billion defense appropriations bill a measure that would delay the scheduled doctor payment cuts until Feb. 28, so that they can deal with the issue next year. Having passed the House, the bill now moves to the Senate, where it has to pass by tomorrow to keep funds flowing to the military.
Sanders Withdraws Single-Payer Amendment
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 2:54PM
Sen. Bernie Sanders has just withdrawn his single-payer amendment after Sen. Tom Coburn forced the reading of the 767-page measure.
Senate clerks had spent nearly three hours reading the provision, and they were unlikely to finish until well after midnight. Sanders withdrew the amendment to stop the reading.
Sen. Sanders is now making the case for single-payer on the Senate floor.
According to the Hill's Jeffrey Young, Sanders told reporters that he was not yet on board in supporting a bill without a public option, and that he was in talks with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House.
Rand Paul Money Bomb
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 2:48PM
Like father, like son. Less than 12 hours into his latest online "money bomb," Rand Paul had already raised more than $100,000 for his race to win the Republican senatorial nomination in Kentucky. Buoyed by scientific polling that shows the Bowling Green ophthalmologist and son of Ron Paul leading Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, the party establishment's favorite, Paul has begun to attract the kind of mainstream conservative support propelling primary campaigns by Marco Rubio and Chuck DeVore.
Rand Paul has already won the endorsement of RedState's Erick Erickson and Sen. Jim DeMint might be next. The younger Paul has been able to win over the kind of traditional Republicans who balked at his father's presidential campaign. If this success continues, it may more closely resemble Ron Paul's return to Congress in 1996, when the elder Paul put together a coalition of Old Right libertarian types and such mainstream conservatives as Steve Forbes and ace pitcher Nolan Ryan to defeat Democrat-turned-Republican Greg Laughlin in the GOP primary -- against the establishment's wishes. Either way, this has emerged as a race to watch.
Think of the Possibilities
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 2:47PM
Deep down, you knew it would come to this.
If you've got a child abused by the global warming machine, and a telephone, you've got a lawsuit.
But that's not really me.
Transgressions Against Gaia
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 1:53PM
Global warming environoiac Bill McKibben went to church in Copenhagen on Sunday, and in a post at The Wonk Room he shared the emotional experience about his encounter with his god:
...my tears started before anyone said a word. As the service started, dozens choristers from around the world carried three things down the aisle and to the altar: pieces of dead coral bleached by hot ocean temperatures; stones uncovered by retreating glaciers; and small, shriveled ears of corn from drought-stricken parts of Africa. As I watched them go by, all I could think of was the people I’ve met in the last couple of years traveling the world: the people living in the valleys where those glaciers are disappearing, and the people downstream who have no backup plan for where their water is going to come from. The people who live on the islands surrounded by that coral, who depend on the reefs for the fish they eat, and to protect their homes from the waves. And the people, on every corner of the world, dealing with drought and flood, already unable to earn their daily bread in the places where their ancestors farmed for generations.
Those damned shriveled ears of corn. I’ve done everything I can think of, and millions of people around the world have joined us at 350.org in the most international campaign there ever was. But I just sat there thinking: It’s not enough. We didn’t do enough. I should have started earlier. People are dying already; people are sitting tonight in their small homes trying to figure out how they’re going to make the maize meal they have stretch far enough to fill the tummies of the kids sitting there waiting for dinner. And that’s with 390 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere.
Thank you for your repentance, Bill. And does Morano really need another hat tip?
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 12:58PM
- Senator Schumer curses out a flight attendant because she asked him to turn off his cell phone (New York Post)
- Sarah Palin praises Mark Kirk (Politico)
- Japan launches cash for clunkers program that excludes credits for buying Chrysler and General Motors (Hill)
- Republicans likely to object to transfer of Gitmo detainees to Illinois (Los Angeles Times)
Coburn Forces Reading of Single-Payer Amendment
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 12:27PM
The Senate clerk is now reading through a 700-page amendment to the Reid health care bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist from Vermont trying to get single payer. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) objected to dispensing with the reading.
Coburn Forces Reading of 767-Page Single Payer Amendment
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 12:25PM
Sen. Tom Coburn has just demanded that the Senate clerk read the single-payer amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders -- and it's 767 pages.
Typically, Senators offering amendments will ask for unanimous consent to avoid reading the entire meausure, but all it takes is one Senator to object to demand its reading, and Coburn objected to Sanders attempt to dispense with the reading of the amendment.
To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the amendment, which were the table of contents. At this current pace, it will take 38 hours to get through the entire amendment.
You can follow along with the amendment here.
UPDATE: The body of the bill seems to be going faster than the table of contents, but it still looks likely to take at least 12 hours at this pace.
"Smoking Gun" CBO Memo Exposes Effort to Hide Cost of Obamacare
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 11:36AM
Cato's Michael Cannon has been arguing for months that Congressional Budget Office estimates have not been measuring the full price tag of Obamacare, because they aren't taking into account the private sector costs of components such as the insurance coverage mandate. Back in 1994, the CBO did include such costs in its estimates of the Clinton proposal -- and such provisions accounted for 60 percent of the total cost of the legislation.
Today, Cannon points to a CBO memo that was released with little fanfare over the weekend, and calls it the "smoking gun" showing that there has been a concerted effort among Democrats to make sure the CBO does not start taking into account the cost of mandates and new regulations.
The memo concerned a proposal by Sen. Jay Rockefeller -- reportedly part of the now defenct Medicare expansion "deal" reached last week -- that would require insurance companies to spend 90 of the money collected in premiums on medical claims. Their conclusion was: "In CBO's view, this further expansion of the federal government's role in the health insurance market would make such insurance an essentially governmental program, so that all payments related to health insurance policies should be recorded as cash flows in the federal budget."
In other words, adopting such a measure would have forced the CBO to begin to measure the private sector costs of certain elements of the bill, making it unlikely to be adopted.
"The Medical Loss Ratios memo is the smoking gun," Cannon writes. "It shows that indeed, Democrats have been submitting proposals to the CBO behind closed doors and tailoring their private-sector mandates to avoid having those costs appear in the federal budget. Proposals that would result in a complete cost estimate — such as the proposal by Sen. Rockefeller discussed in the Medical Loss Ratios memo — are dropped. Because we can’t let the public see how much this thing really costs."
Vehement Loss of Sovereignty
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 11:17AM
News from Copenhagen's climate talks.
In those overnight talks, the American delegation apparently objected to a proposed text it felt might bind the United States prematurely to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, before the U.S. Congress acts on the required legislation. U.S. envoys insisted, for example, on replacing the word "shall" with the conditional "should." (emphasis mine)
Further evidence of the pointlessness of these talks (as if we need more).
Two things:
(1) that the American delegation would only "apparently" and not "vehemently" object to language that could bind us to an international legislation is curious. I hope that "vehemently" was lost in translation from Copenhagen to the Associated Press. There is no permissive legislation that would ever empower "the [unelected] American delegation" (whoever they are) to act on behalf of the United States. Therefore, I vehemently object to even the implication that such an agreement is or was in consideration, absent U.S. Congressional say so. Certainly, the Senate and arguably, the American people might have a little something to say about this.
(2) What shall we do with "should"? This delegation could should itself into another ice age and it wouldn't mean anything. Non-binding, to say the least, "should" makes all the time, effort, and travel associated with creating this vapid conglomerate of delegates nothing more than a carbon footprint to nowhere.
And I'm fine with that under these conditions. It's much ado about nothing but a little more plane, train, and automobile traffic.
The Three Faces of...Andrew Sullivan?
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 10:24AM
I don't know how you define "one-man," but it probably isn't the same way a certain histrionic Atlantic blogger chooses to.
Two thoughts: Even Eve was less of a drama queen, and "marinating" ghost employees in one's "cerebral juices" has got to be violating multiple OSHA regulations.
Greenpeace Gets Taste of Its Own Medicine
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 9:28AM
The good folks at Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow yesterday jumped on board two Greenpeace ships in Copenhagen and, while decoying crew with doughnuts, unfurled banners that said "Ship of Lies" and "Propaganda Warrior." From CFACT's own report:
CFACT unfurled the banners for two reasons, CFACT president David Rothbard explained. “Greenpeace ships, like the Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise, have become global symbols for radical environmentalism, and we wanted to call attention to the harm these groups are causing. And second, it seemed appropriate to use one of Greenpeace’s favorite tactics to make this point.”
Ha!
Dean: "You Can't Vote for This Bill in Good Conscience"
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 8:57AM
Howard Dean went on MSNBC's "Countdown" last night to make the case for killing the health care bill, arguing that without a public option or Medicare expansion, it wasn't real reform, but merely pouring more money into the private insurance industry.
Asked if he would advise Senators to vote yes or no on the health care bill, Dean said, “No. Absolutely not. You can’t vote for a bill like this in good conscience. It costs too much money. It isn’t health care reform. It isn’t even insurance reform.”
Dean said if it were up to him, he'd "kill the bill entirely, and have the House start in reconciliation.”
He said that they should pass a smaller bill that creates the exchanges (without the expensive subsidies that would fund the purchase of private insurance) and has a few of the health and wellness reforms, but then come back in a few years and fight for what he considers real reform.
“This bill is more likely to make the crisis worse than it is better because it’s so expensive,” he said.
Video below.
Bernanke Named Time's Person of the Year
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 8:43AM
From managing editor Richard Stengel's explanation of why:
One scholar has written that the Great Depression of the 1930s could have been averted if the Federal Reserve at the time hadnt constricted the money supply, let a third of American banks go under and told Americans to tighten their belts. That scholar, Ben Bernanke, just happened to be chairman of the Federal Reserve when the economy this year appeared to be headed for a repeat performance.
"I might be in a bad mood now but there are a lot of good things in this bill."
Posted by on 12.16.09 @ 8:34AM
So said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on Fox & Friends this morning about a healthcare bill which he doesn't yet love. He'll be in more than a bad mood (as will you) if this bill passes.
Take a break from reading this excellent journalism and opinion, call your (Democrat) Senator and urge him not to support a healthcare bill that will do more than put you in a bad mood.
Go ahead, list the reasons. You can find them all here.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Very Late Hat Tip to, Yes, Obama
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 11:03PM
I have been so busy that I am very late to this topic, and it is so late tonight when I write this that I have no time for in-depth analysis. I also add a HUGE caveat that I am NOT becoming another David Brooks, eager to find reasons to fawn over Barack Obama while still claiming to be a conservative. Day after day after day I write editorials for the Washington Times and columns and blog entries here and at the Wash Times taking Obama to task on a multitude of fronts. I do not agree with him, do not trust him, do not admire him, do not like him.
BUT, basic fairness requires that when a public figure does something right, it should be acknowledged especially by his harshest critics. Only one other time since he became president have I complimented Obama; I think it was for a morally serious and well targeted speech he gave on the Holocaust. But... and here I finally get to the point ... just a little while ago I FINALLY got a chance to read Obama's Nobel Prize Lecture... and I thought it was mostly well aimed, mostly eloquent, mostly constructive. He made a solid moral case for the use of force, and he made a solid case for universal principles that included not just fuzzy-headed "sustainability" nonsense but also freedom and other Western values. He even praised Ronald Reagan by name -- leaving out a large part of the Reagan story, but still graciously and generously praising him -- for working for peace and achieving it, with appropriate acknowledgement of Reagan's too-little appreciated inspiration of and support for "dissidents" worldwide.
So, while there were a number of things about the speech that grated on my conservative ears, a host of things I could nit-pick, I agree with some other conservative columnists that the bulk of this speech was an admirable representation of American thought and values. Yes, his actions in office have not seemed to match large parts of the speech that were the very parts I liked best. But, as Reagan understood, some world stages are so big that well-chosen words on those stages are effective actions in and of themselves. So, while I will probably never get around to a more thorough public analysis of Obama's Nobel address, I do say here, for the record, that it merits a bit of a "Bravo" from Americans of all reasonable political persuasions, including from conservatives.
Poll Has Crist and Rubio Tied Up
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 10:42PM
A Rasmussen phone survey taken Monday and released on Tuesday shows Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio tied at 43 percent each for the Republican nomination for Senate from Florida, indicating a 14-point swing over the last two months and a 22-point swing since August.
Post's Robinson Partly Right About Palin's 'Climategate'
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 7:25PM
Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson today writes about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's policy flip-flop on global warming and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He notes her current recommendation -- expressed in her own Post op-ed last week -- that President Obama boycott Copenhagen, citing the Climategate scandal as reason enough to skip the climate conference. But while she was governor she held a slightly different view, as Robinson explained:
Back then, Palin was the governor of a state where "coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice, record forest fires, and other changes are affecting, and will continue to affect, the lifestyles and livelihoods of Alaskans," as she wrote (in a 2007 administrative order creating the state's Climate Change Sub-Cabinet). Faced with that reality, she sensibly formed the high-level working group to chart a course of action.
"Climate change is not just an environmental issue," wrote Palin. "It is also a social, cultural, and economic issue important to all Alaskans...."
In her administrative order, Palin instructed the sub-Cabinet group to develop recommendations on "the opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Alaska sources, including the expanded use of alternative fuels, energy conservation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, land use management, and transportation planning." She also instructed the group to look into "carbon-trading markets."
Robinson is right about Palin's seeming switch, but he leaves out context and cuts no slack on how the Climategate scandal has been a game-changer. For context, the idea of setting up a blue-ribbon panel to study climate issues likely came from Tom Chapple, a greenie envirocrat in her administration who left not long after she created the Subcabinet. The responsibility for managing the project fell to his successor, Larry Hartig, who has had to juggle the interests of environmentalists and the oil industry up there.
As director of Climate Strategies Watch I studied how the Subcabinet was put together, and specifically how and why they hired the global warming alarmist Center for Climate Strategies as technical advisers and consultants to run all the Subcabinet's activities. I had written a long narrative -- linking public documents and emails -- explaining the developments and the less-than-transparent process, for the CSWatch Web site last year. However, that project has been folded into the activities of the Heartland Institute -- my current employer -- as CSWatch (we believe the site was victimized by a hacker) was only planned to last a year (it lasted about 18 months).
For those who want to plow through the story, I reproduced the original CSWatch narrative at Globalwarming.org with links (some of which may not work) to documents embedded. You’ll see at the end that I tend to believe that then-Gov. Palin was doing the politically correct thing at the time by signing the administrative order, but left the major decisions to Chapple, Hartig, and the Subcabinet itself. I think the views she’s expressed now only serve to confirm that theory, but I could be wrong.
Senate Votes Down Amendment to Allow Drug Reimportation
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 7:04PM
The Senate has just defeated an amendment offered by Sen. Byron Dorgan that would have allowed for reimportation of prescription drugs, on a 51 to 48 vote. Sixty votes were required for adoption.
The vote was not along partisan lines, with conservatives including Sens. Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn voting for it, and Democrats such as Max Baucus voting against it.
Senate Rejects Amendment to Strip Middle Class Tax Hikes
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 6:46PM
By a 45 to 54 vote, the Senate has just rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo that would have stripped any provisions in the bill that raise taxes on individuals earning less than $200,000 and families earning less than $250,000, in keeping with President Obama's campaign pledge.
Jim Antle mentioned the amendment, and the Republican strategy to force Democrats into casting tough votes in an earlier post.
UPDATE: Here's the roll call. The Democrats voting for it: Sens. Evan Bayh, Maria Cantwell, Amy Klobuchar, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson/
MoveOn Activists Protest White House Cave In To Lieberaman
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 6:18PM
In what looked more like a death rattle than a call to arms, about 50 liberal activists gathered in front of the White House this afternoon for a hastily arranged rally meant to protest President Obama for allowing Sen. Joe Lieberman so much leverage in the health care debate.
Protesters were alerted to the event by an email sent out this morning by MoveOn calling for an “emergency White House rally” meant to “show that grassroots progressives aren't ready to cave in to Joe Lieberman.”
While there was widespread frustration with Senate Democrats apparent abandonment of the public option, there seemed to be little appetite for a movement to “kill the bill,” as some liberal bloggers have called for, and Howard Dean suggested later in the day.
“We feel that health care reform is being bogged down by a few individuals who are threatening to not vote against the Republican filibuster, Joe Lieberman specifically, and we’re just calling on Obama to put pressure on Congress and fulfill his campaign promise for health care reform with a public option,” Patrick Robinson, spokesman for MoveOn, told me.
Robinson said that, “Without a public option, it’s just a giveaway to the insurance companies, and it does nothing to control costs.”
He remained convinced that private insurers would find ways around new regulations, such as rules forcing them to cover those with preexisting conditions. But with the Senate racing toward passage of legislation by a Christmas deadline, there didn’t seem to be a sense of urgency.
“Kill the bill is kind of a dramatic term,” Robinson said, suggesting there would still be time to fight when the House and Senate meet to reconcile their two bills. “There’s going to be a back and forth for a couple of months, and we have to keep fighting for a public option in the final bill.”
Stan Boyd, a retired high school American history teacher on hand for the protest was more blunt.
“To me, it’s the death of health care,” Boyd lamented. “And that’s sad, because this was a real opportunity. I think people voted heavily Democratic because they wanted something done to solve the health care problem, and instead we’re just getting something that will benefit the insurance companies.”
Boyd complained about the lack of leadership from Obama, and wished he had called up Lieberman to put personal pressure on him, as Lyndon Johnson was famous for doing to members of Congress reluctant to get behind his agenda.
Yet Boyd also said that the legislation had some “marginal” improvements, such as the requirements that insurers cover those with preexisting conditions, and ending caps on lifetime insurance payments.
“I wouldn’t try and kill the bill,” he said. “One small step is better than nothing at all.”
Later in the day, an offical of Health Care for Americans Now, a coalition of liberal groups including MoveOn that was actively pushing for a public option, said they were preparing to send a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urging passage of the Senate bill.
“There are major problems with the Senate bill,” Richard Kirsch, HCAN’s campaign director, told the Los Angeles Times today. “But if the Senate doesn’t act, there will be no healthcare reform. ... The place to fix [the Senate bill] is in a conference committee.”
This Won't Play Well With the Base
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 5:07PM
Pope Benedict XVI has gone and done it:
Industrialized nations must recognize their responsibility for the environmental crisis, shed their consumerism and embrace more sober lifestyles, Pope Benedict said on Tuesday.
Benedict has always seemed sympathetic to environmentalists and has never shied away from urging Catholics to stewardship. And his economics, while not being socialist by any means, tend to irk free marketeers. In general his views on such matters are hard to categorize. But in this latest pronouncement, he has made certain claims that will be hard for free market pope-fans to square with their beliefs about typical environmentalist policies. For instance,
Speaking of the need for all nations to address the issue of energy resources, he said:
"This means that technologically advanced societies must be prepared to encourage more sober lifestyles, while reducing their energy consumption and improving its efficiency."
"It is becoming more and more evident that the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our lifestyle and the prevailing models of consumption and production, which are often unsustainable from a social, environmental and even economic point of view."
While these comments will certainly elicit the usual backlash from the right and crowing from the left, I think that this underscores the point that the pope's views, in general, do not fit well into the usual political categories. In America, for sure, calling for "sober lifestyles" in light of environmental concerns resonates well with people on the economic left, who tend to abhor the pope's stance on the social issues of the day. And it will outrage or upset folks who are small-government, who are also to an large extent in line with the pope's views on social issues.
To the second group I would say, however, that whenever the pope says or does something impolitic, it is usually the case that his PR has failed him and needlessly exposed him to criticism from one side or another. In this case, issuing a broad statement that seems to endorse the motivations for cap-and-trade-type meauses while the Copenhagen meetings are ongoing seems like a broadside against those who oppose such schemes. I doubt that it was meant in that way, though.
In general the pope is simply not as politically attuned as the press would have him, or as a Rowan Williams is. He tends to think of issues in academic or theological terms, or else as they relate to the responsibilities of leading the Church.
When prompted to weigh in on matters like the environment, as he was by the occasion of the Copenhagen meetings, he puts his own pastoral spin on it instead of merely endorsing one set of opinions or another. Although his quotes above would seem like clear-cut approval of a carbon tax of some kind, it might be a little more complicated than that. He emphasized the moral dimensions of addressing the problems:
"Our present crises -- be they economic, food-related, environmental or social -- are ultimately also moral crises, and all of them are interrelated."
He called on all people to "move beyond a purely consumerist mentality" so that they could "rethink the path which we are traveling together" and adapt "a lifestyle marked by sobriety and solidarity" between the haves and the have nots.
That actually sounds closer to an appeal to personal responsibility than to governments and top-down solutions.
Remember, the pope's concern for AIDs-stricken Africans led him not to recommend foreign donations of contraceptives but instead to promote chastity. For this he was excoriated by the left -- to the left's embarassment. If, similarly, he worries about the environment and accordingly lands on a nuanced position, the right should make sure not to repeat the left's mistake.
Top Ten of the Last Ten
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 4:17PM
WaPo's "The Fix" ranked the 10 best Senate races of decade. Numbers three and four were from Minnesota. #3 was of course, the 2002 Wellstone (Mondale)/Coleman. #4?
Yep.
Dean Wants to Kill the Bill, Weiner Takes Aim at Obama
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 3:40PM
Greg Sargent has this from Howard Dean's pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon on Vermont Public Radio:
“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Anthony Weiner, who last week made waves by declaring the proposed Medicare expansion "an unvarnished, complete victory for people like me who have been arguing for a single-payer system," is now blasting Obama for allowing moderates to dictate the content of the bill.
In a statement on his website, he says:
“Snowe? Stupak? Lieberman? Who left these people in charge? It’s time for the President to get his hands dirty. Some of us have compromised our compromised compromise. We need the President to stand up for the values our party shares. We must stop letting the tail wag the dog of this debate.”
Here's Some Money; Can I Quote You?
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 3:24PM
An article by environmentalist journalist Fred Pearce about the "public relations disaster" that is Climategate is getting a lot of attention for Yale Environment 360, as it should. But the Web site, a clearinghouse for eco-Left points of view, crossed into bizarro territory last week with an "analysis" piece co-written by Michael Northrup and David Sassoon that touts "ambitious actions" by U.S. states to push "toward climate goals." And the centerpiece of their "expert" analysis about the "great" things states are doing on climate policy? The Center for Climate Strategies:
Twenty-four policies and measures account for 85 percent of the states’ emissions reduction potential, touching every sector of the economy. The majority of the policies save money or expand the economy; the remainder either cost money or require investment, but overall they create new economic opportunity.
“Every macroeconomic analysis of state climate action that we have done has shown an expansionary effect,” Tom Peterson, the CEO of the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), told us. “It should not be a big leap to figure out how to nationalize it.”
Peterson’s group has worked with governors and elected officials on both sides of the aisle in dozens of states and is completing an economic analysis of state climate action for presentation at a series of events at the Copenhagen meetings.
The laughable, undisclosed thing about this article is that Northrup, one of the co-authors and program director for sustainable development at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, probably has a conversation with Peterson every day. Why? Because RBF funds a substantial majority of their work, as I explained earlier this year:
While (CCS's) Peterson and (Ken) Colburn have been far from transparent about their origins (they also hide how much they get paid), the work CCS does has also been thoroughly discredited. They forbade any debate or discussion about global warming science. As they wooed states out of as much money as they could (not much, it turns out) to reduce the burden on their subsidizers -- mainly the Rockefeller Brothers Fund -- they peddled incompetent economics (Green jobs! Cost savings!) in every state where they worked. They could not produce analysis in any state that showed the effect their policy recommendations would have upon climate -- ostensibly the purpose for their state commissions. And besides their disregard for recent observed climatological trends, they continue to promote obsolete technologies like biofuels, which recent studies show have increased greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduced them.
So when I asked in the comments section (scroll, baby, scroll) of the Yale 360 article why the authors didn't disclose the RBF-CCS funding relationship, the answer from co-author Sassoon was that they were disclosed -- in RBF's annual reports! That Leftist version of "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" transparency was then followed by, "So what!" In other words, "you idiot readers ought to be well-acquainted with funding specifics of our multi-million-dollar foundation."
Then, in keeping with the global warming alarmist playbook, they suggested I disclose who my funders are. So in response I asked if they could share some of that Standard Oil/Exxon slathered Rockefeller dough they enjoy with little 'ol me. That comment hasn't been posted at Yale 360 as of this writing.
Update 4:45 p.m.: I forgot to mention that CCS is over in Copenhagen delivering advice about how to further wreck state economies by raising energy costs. Surprise, surprise -- RBF's Michael Northrup is on their honored guest list. Payback is not a bitch at all!
Update 5:24 p.m.: Just noticed that the Yale Environment 360 editors posted the following at the end of the article sometime today:
The original posting of this article should have noted that the Center for Climate Strategies — whose CEO, Tom Peterson, is quoted in the story — has received funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. One of the article’s co-authors, Michael Northrop, is program director for sustainable development at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Likely a result of an email I sent them last night. I would have put it at the beginning of the article, but at least it's there.
Is Romney a Big Loser in Senate Compromise? (UPDATED)
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 3:17PM
On Twitter, Politico's Ben Smith asks, "At this point, how is current proposal substantially different from Romneycare?"
The answer is, it ain't.
Here's how Mitt Romney explained the differences between the health care bill he signed in Massachusetts in 2006, and Obamacare, in a CNN interview earlier this month:
(T)here's an important difference between what we did and what President Barack Obama is proposing. Number one, we solved our problem at the state level. Let states deal with the problem of uninsured individuals.
And, number two, we have no public option. There's no government option. And what's primarily wrong with the president's plan is that he wants to get the federal government into the health insurance business. It's going to require massive subsidies, a trillion dollars of costs down the road.
Though we haven't seen the current bill yet, if reports are accurate, it does not contain a public option or Medicare expansion. What remains is a Medicaid expansion, a mandate forcing individuals to purchase insurance or pay a tax, and sliding scale subsidies for individuals to purchase government-designed insurance policies on new government-run exchanges -- and those elements formed the core of Romneycare.
So now, if Obamacare passes, Romney will be left telling angry primary voters that the only real difference between the two plans is that he implemented his policies at the state level, while Obama did it through the federal government. Sure, it's clearly worse if the federal government is implementing bad policies, but it's hard to see how such an argument would pass muster with anybody but those who are already ardent Romney supporters. It's sort of like saying, "As governor, I raised state income taxes, but the thought of raising federal income taxes -- that's an outrage!"
UPDATE: Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom emails Ben Smith:
There are some similarities. For instance, the concept of the "exchange" where people can shop for affordable health plans was pioneered in Massachachusetts. But Mitt's Romney's health care reforms are different in several important respects. First, the bill signed by Governor Romney did not raise taxes. Second, its focus was on strengthening the private insurance market, and I don't think anyone believes that Democrats have given up on their dream of a public option. And finally, Governor Romney believes states should be free to come up with their own approach instead of having Washington create a "one-size-fits-all" solution for the entire country.
This answer is problematic on several levels. For one thing, while the Romney camp would like to argue that the bill he signed did not raise taxes, in actuality, it did include a mandate that individuals purchase insurance or pay a penalty. In arguing against Obamacare, conservatives have described the mandate as a middle class tax hike. Republican candidates will spend all of 2010 describing it as such, and if anybody else were running against Obama in 2012, it would be used to argue that he violated his pledge to not raise the taxes of those making under $250,000. If Romney wants to spend the Republican presidential primary siding with Democrats and the Obama administration in arguing that the individual mandate isn't a tax, I'm sure his opponents will be thrilled. Furthermore, this doesn't even take into account the subsequent tax hikes signed by Romney's successor to help pay for the ongoing costs of the health care bill, such as last year's cigarette tax increase.
Fehrnstrom argues that the Romney plan was about strengthening private insurance, and yet, just as the government dictates the design of private health care policies offered on the exchanges created by the Senate bill, so too, does Romneycare. In Massachusetts, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector's Board approves plans offered in the exchange, and determines what counts as "Minimum Creditable Coverage" needed to comply with the insurance mandate.
I responded to the whole attempt to differentiate between federal and state policy above, but as Smith notes, "in the end, Romney does seem to have helped set the model for the national plan."
Misery Index for the Teens
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 3:15PM
And here's a topic related to my last post: some analysts at Moody's (according to Economix) have come up for a new "misery index" as we head into the Teens. (We never quite decided what to call this current decade. Was it the aughts? Is the Teens a slam dunk for the next decade?)
As you may recall, the Misery Index usually refers to the sum of the inflation and the unemployment rates. It was created in the '60s, when stagflation -- high inflation coupled with high unemployment -- was a pressing worry.
But today there are greater concerns than inflation, namely the federal debt. Note that for some people inflation is actually a threat, but that's not the mainstream view. As Rep. Paul Ryan's musings suggest, the upcoming legislative battle will not be over how to cure inflation but over what measures are necessary to balance yawning deficits with necessary countercyclical policy measures like the jobs bill. And accordingly these Moody's analysts have added the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP to the unemployment rate and called it the new Misery Index:
So this Misery Index tells you how bad the situation is relative to what the government can do about it: the higher the number, the more out-of-control the economic conditions are. As you can see, the US is in much better shape than Spain. What would be even more interesting, though, is to see this graph using implied debt to GDP rather than deficits. Although it would be a uglier chart it would better illustrate the constrainst the US will face as the recession plays out completely.
Some Good News for Democrats
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 2:58PM
Congressman Chet Edwards (D-Texas) is running for reelection rather than retiring, the Washington Post is reporting. Without Edwards, Democrats would have an awfully hard time holding a district that went 67 percent for John McCain and 70 percent for George W. Bush in 2004. Edwards was reelected with just 53 percent of the vote in 2008.
The Taxes Are Coming
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 2:55PM
James Pethokoukis has interviewed GOP policy wonk-in-chief Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin on different policy strategies the Republicans should employ over the next five or 10 years. It's not a bad list that Ryan comes up with. One prediction that sticks out is his pronouncement on the Dems' plans to introduce a Value Added Tax:
The VAT is coming. They just know they can’t do it before the election. My fear is that the credit markets blow up on us again, we’ll get some shot across the bow by the bond market one of these days. And if the Democrats are still in power, that will bring us the VAT. They will say they have no choice but to do it to save the creditworthiness of the government. It will kind of be like another TARP weekend where the Treasury Secretary and the Fed chairman come to Capitol Hill hyperventilating and out of that comes a VAT. Our government is premeditating a moment like that. But there is another way with real entitlement reform, real tax reform, fulfilling health and retirement security but also paying off our debts and making our economy really competitive.
I think that if you assume that the trends remain the same, the Democrats will be correct at that point to say that we have no choice. We probably will be facing either a debt crisis or a VAT. Of course if there were some kind of meaningful debt-reduction plan put in place, or even if it were reasonable to anticipate now such a plan, there would not be a looming dilemma. Ryan does hint at an approach for reducing entitlements debt in the interview, but it doesn't look politically feasible. Unfortunately, it's hard to think of any kind of plan that involves cutting spending that would be politically feasible.
I Rand So Far Away
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 2:45PM
If I didn't know better, I'd say Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson seemed a little reluctant to debate Rand Paul, his opponent in the Republican primary to replace Sen. Jim Bunning.
Progressive Group Tells Emanuel He Has to Pay to Play
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 1:11PM
Progressive Change Campaign Committee released an advertisement on Tuesday in Chicago attacking Rahm Emanuel for his reported efforts to compromise single-payer. The video itself is a couple months old, but it has been reported recently that Emanuel has pressured Senator Reid to "cut a deal" with Joe Lieberman and abandon the expansion of Medicare that would cover those ages 55-64.
The advertisement concludes "if he sides with insurance companies and undermines the public option, well, he won't have many fans in Chicago." Emanuel is widely believed to want to return to Congress after eventually retiring as Chief of Staff.
In running ads against Emanuel in Chicago, the progressives are also reaching Senator Roland Burris's constituents. Phil pointed out last night that Burris, also a Chicago resident, made ambiguous comments regarding the public option on Monday. Two months ago, Burris stated "unequivocally" that he would not vote for a bill that did not contain a public option.
Here's the video:
Shameless Specter
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 12:22PM
Pat Toomey's Senate campaign has been sending around this doozy from Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.): On health care, today's Washington Post quotes Specter as saying to Senate Democrats, "Don't let the obstructionists win... I came to this caucus to be your 60th vote." As the Toomey campaign rightly points out, this was exactly the opposite of what Specter said not so long ago when he was still running as a Republican.
Here is Specter in March, as quoted by the Hill: "I am staying a Republican because I think I have an important role-a more important role to play there. I think the United States very desperately needs a two party system-that's the basis of politics in America. I think each of the 41 senators-each of the 41 Republican senators-in a sense, I don't want to overstate this, is a national asset, because if one was gone, you'd only have 40. The Democrats would have 60 and they would control all of the mechanisms of government. They're trying very hard for the 60th vote. You got to give them credit for trying, but the answer is no."
Specter was more honest when he first (re)joined the Democratic Party: "In the course of the last several months since the stimulus vote, I have traveled the state, surveyed the sentiments of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, done public opinion polls, observed other public opinion poll, and have found that the prospects for winning a Republican primary are bleak." Yet even then, Specter promised to be independent, saying, "I will not be an automatic 60th vote."
Now Specter says he came into the Democratic caucus precisely to be that automatic 60th vote. The man has truly come full circle.
Oliver Stone: Way Ahead of the Curve
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 11:45AM
I recently saw Oliver Stone on Bill Moyers, talking about his experience as a soldier in Vietnam, where he earned both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and how it informs his opposition to the current Afghanistan surge. Credit where credit is due, Stone gave up a cushy life to go, but I still thought this exchange about why the self-described "cerebral young man" chose to volunteer was chuckle-worthy:
Bill Moyers: Why did you go? You didn’t have to go.
Oliver Stone: Because I wanted to go
Moyers: You could have stayed at Yale.
Oliver Stone: I wasn’t happy. George Bush was in my class, class of 68. It wasn’t my class. It wasn’t my type of people.
It looks like Stone got on the Dubya bashing bus approximately forty years earlier than his political fellow travelers, and was much more committed to it to boot. And that's why he's got them A-cademy Awards.
Democrats Prepare to Lay Foundation for Goverment-Run Health Care
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 10:58AM
In order to calm liberals who are angry that the Senate leadership appears to be dropping the public option and Medicare expansion idea to win over Sen. Joe Lieberman and pass a health care bill before Christmas, Democrats are arguing that this bill is merely a start.
“What we need to do is lay a strong foundation," Sen. Ron Wyden said in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night. "A foundation that we can build on in the years ahead. We are not going to get everything we want in round one, but we are going to get a foundation that we are going to build on in the years ahead.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller told the New Republic "that liberal advocates could try again another year to push for the reforms that didn’t make it into the current bill." He said, "You know we’re going to be back next year, and the year after that, and the year after that."
Yet this argument is precisely the one that free market critics of Obamacare have been making all along. President Obama is a self-described proponent of a single-payer, or government-run health care system, but he's pragmatic enough to know that he couldn't get there with one attempt because the country isn't ready. Instead, the strategy was to move the ball as far down field as possible so that it could be advanced further by future Congresses.
This battle hasn't merely been about what is in the current health care bill itself, but what infastructure it puts in place for future lawmakers to expand the role of government even further. That's why the whole discussion about whether this current bill is a government takeover is not as important as whether it represents progress toward a government-run system.
The public option would have gone further toward a single-payer system than the rest of the bill, but what remains still moves the ball significantly down the field. It expands Medicaid by 15 million people, forces individuals to purchase insurance or pay a tax, moves the individual insurance market to a government-run exchange in which people are given government subsidies to purchase government-run plans, and it imposes so many restrictions, mandates and regulations on the rest of the market that it cannot be described as "private" in any meaningful sense of the word. Once fully implemented, the federal government will have its stamp on every insurance policy that is bought and sold in America.
“Let’s make sure folks know what we are going to get," Wyden reassured liberal activists. "We’re going to get 30 million people covered. We’re going to get these insurance reforms, lifetime limit protections. We’re going to get a real foundation. I don’t want people across the country – activists who have worked for months to months -- to understand that we are getting everything that we have sought, but I think we are going to get enough to say that this is a foundation. We’ll be able to send a message to those activists that their hard work has paid off.”
Divide and Conquer the Democrats
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 10:57AM
Roll Call is reporting that Senate Republicans are practicing a strategy to peel off moderate Democrats to defeat the health care bill:
Convinced for the first time that they can bring down Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) health care reform package, Republicans are trying to get votes on more amendments as part of a strategy to divide the Democratic Conference and turn a few wayward moderates against the bill.
A group of moderate Democrats have repeatedly joined the Republicans in supporting losing amendments aimed at removing Medicare cuts and tax increases from Reid's bill, and the GOP believes there are only so many of these losses centrist Members of the majority can stomach before they walk away from the health care package in its entirety.
"We're being successful at helping the American people understand what this bill costs, what it will do to them, and as a result of that, the American people are turning against the bill and the Democratic Senators are hearing from them," Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) said Monday. "They've had a steady stream of bad news. I mean, their theme song ought to be, ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.'"
The next tough vote Republicans intend to force is an amendment by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) exempting families earning less than $250,000 a year and individuals earning less than $200,000 from having their taxes raised to pay for health care reform.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 10:44AM
- Guam, Maryland Democrats lead in spending the most taxpayer money on food and drinks (Washington Times)
- Full Afghan troop surge will take a full year (Associated Press)
- 37 percent of Americans call global warming a "high priority" (CBS)
- $2.6 million for research into promoting surgery in outer space -- the spending bill is loaded with earmarks for Republicans and Democrats alike (Washington Times)
Old Films Here Are Not Forgotten
Posted by on 12.15.09 @ 9:16AM
My own column about Rhett Butler is certainly not today's only retrospective on the 70th anniversary of Gone With The Wind's cinematic premiere. Atlanta's WSB Radio has an interview with actress Ann Rutherford, now 89, who played Scarlett O'Hara's younger sister, Careen, and describes the scene at the Loew's Grand Theater on Peachtree Street:
"It was absolutely electric," Rutherford says. "And when they introduced Margaret Mitchell, the crowd just roared in appreciation."
Writing for CNN, author Molly Haskell quotes Hattie McDaniel's famous reply to the NAACP's criticism of her role as Mammy: "I'd rather get paid $700 a week playing a maid than $7 a week being one." CNN founder Ted Turner is a huge fan of the film -- which Turner Classic Movies will show tonight at 8 p.m. ET -- and Haskell's essay is both respectful and insightful:
Crafted by the geniuses of the studio system, "Gone with the Wind" is a panoramic epic that never loses sight of its main characters, and -- also startling to young viewers today -- those characters endure vast quantities of pain and suffering in a world turned upside down.
Washington Times film critic Gary Arnold discusses the cinematic history of the movie. Meanwhile, the lifetime-achievement Oscar for most insufferably arrogant Gone With The Wind review goes to David Stratton of the Australian Broadcasting Company:
I think it is one of the most overinflated movies of that period. Still, I mean there are great things about it. I think both Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh are fine in the film but it is not one of my favourite films, I must say.
The same article also offers this quote from Australian film-studies professor Deb Verhoeven:
Some people see the film and see an independent woman's struggle and her ultimate resilience and another person sitting next to them will see a terrible story about sexual subjugation.
Forgive my suspicion that no price on earth could compel Capt. Butler to attempt the "sexual subjugation" of Professor Verhoeven. But what "a terrible story" that would be!
Monday, December 14, 2009
Play The Deciphering Roland Burris Game
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 8:03PM
With reports swirling that Democrats agreed to ditch the public option and the the Medicare expansion in order to get the votes needed to pass a health care bill, Sen. Roland Burris took to the Senate floor.
Burris, a single-payer advocate and strong government plan backer, is one of a handful of Senate liberals who Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would need to win over to pass a scaled back bill.
Depending on how you look at them, Burris' remarks could either be viewed as him preparing to cave in, or standing his ground.
He started his remarks with a history of past compromises that were required to create programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
“Our most optimistic ideas must often be tempered with a pragmatic reality,” he acknowleged.
Burris said, "“Let us pass this health care legislation, but let us also do it right. Let’s not pass something just to pass something.”
Then he used a Ghandi quote that suggested some compromises went too far. “All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals," he said, quoting Ghandi. "Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender.”
While saying he had few details about the compromise being discussed, he said, "I do have deep reservations, deep concerns about what I’ve heard up to this point."
“I am committed to voting for a bill that achieves the goals of a public option, competition, cost savings and accountability," he explained. "I will not be able to vote for lesser legislation that ignores these fundamentals. I will continue to fight every day to strengthen this legislation until it’s final moments on this floor.”
He wrapped up his remarks by saying, "My colleagues may have forged a compromise bill that can achieve the 60 votes that will be needed for its passage, but until this bill addresses costs, competition, and accountability in a meaningful way, it will not win my vote.”
Harkin Waves White Flag on Medicare Expansion
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 6:30PM
Sen. Tom Harkin has conceded that the proposed expansion of Medicare and "triggered" public option would have to be dropped to get a health care bill passed in the Senate, TPM reports, as he tried to sell liberals on the value of the provisions in the rest of the bill:
"There's enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move," he said. "All the insurance reforms, all the stuff we wrote so hard for prevention and wellness in there, the workforce development issues that we have in there, the reimbursement based on quality not on quantity -- there's good stuff in this bill. It's a giant step forward, changing the paradigm of health care in America."
The Democrats are currently in a caucus meeting discussing ways to get to 60 votes. The big question is whether liberals such as Sens. Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Roland Burris and Russ Feingold will go along with the changes. To many ideological liberals, absent a government plan, legislation would merely be pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into a for-profit health care system that they see as fundamentally broken.
And that doesn't even take into account the House progressives, whose leader already came out against the Senate compromise that included the Medicare expansion and "triggered" public option.
Economist Bet Fail
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 5:53PM
Bryan Caplan and Bob Murphy, two economists, are putting their money where their mouths are and betting on their predictions for inflation. Caplan wagers that we won't have double-digit inflation rates any time soon:
At any point between now and January 2016, if there is a year/year increase in seasonally adjusted CPI that is at least 10%, then you pay me at that time $100.
If we get to January 2016, and there has not been any 12-month stretch in which the above happened, then I pay you $100 at that time.
There are two problems with this bet, which I would have thought would be apparent to these two as they are economists.
1. USD is not a good means of exchange when you are betting on...the value of USD. Caplan's payout for winning is bigger than Murphy's, as inflation will have devalued the $100 if Murphy is right that we'll have double-digit inflation. Although maybe Murphy is merely giving Caplan odds here.
2. What is the implied discount rate here? $100 is not much at all to begin with. Assuming that you were just going to put that money under a mattress otherwise, $100 in 2016 is worth about only $84 today, at normal inflation rates. And if you are in general willing to borrow at 5 percent interest, that $100 is worth only about $63 today. That's not that much. It is meaningless relative to the losses they would incur on all their assets if we did have high inflation. You would think that on such an important topic they'd be willing to bet a bit more. (Actually here I realize that if Caplan loses he pays earlier, and with the time value of money the $100 he forked over would be worth more. So perhaps the payouts are equivalent.)
If I were betting on inflation, I would not denominate the bet in USD. And I would bet a lot more.
Taxing Soda: Bad Economics; Bad
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 5:45PM
Veronique de Rugy argues in Reason that soda taxes fail on economic grounds. Such taxes won't improve soda drinkers' health, because people will substitute other harmful drinks once soda becomes more expensive. And they won't raise revenues, because if you tax soda fewer people will buy it. de Rugy presents empirical evidence that shows this to be the case.
I think that sin taxes, whether they be on soda or cigarettes, are unethical even if you put economic considerations aside. The reason that legislators frame the debate in economic terms (de Rugy presents a study that suggests that a "penny-per-ounce tax on sugared beverages could lead the average consumer to reduce soda consumption by about 10 percent and lose two pounds') is that there are social welfare considerations: if we're extending free health care to everyone or paying for Medicaid, we should monitor public health and prevent the uninformed, unwashed masses from taking on stupid health risks like smoking or drinking Coke. Those activities impose costs on the rest of us, responsible taxpayers.
I think the argument is ridiculous, and discriminatory. Smoking and drinking too much soda are not the pastime of the well-to-do. One look at the world around you reveals that smokers are generally working class, and soda drinkers are working class kids (or at least those who drink soda in harmful quantities are). But it's not like there are not activities that only the rich indulge in that pose health risks. For example, you don't see too many poor folks skiing. Yet skiing is a risky business that poses significant health risks to skiiers, and by extension skiing burdens the rest of us with health care costs. Why don't you hear about MDs, economists, and politicians trying to levy sin taxes on skiiers?
If you want to make an argument for sin taxes on moral grounds -- smoking is bad for you -- then fine. But otherwise let's end this discrimination under the guise of public health and health economics, and let the smokers smoke and the kids drink Coke.
Franken Thinks Only He's Entitled To His Own Facts
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 5:31PM
“We are entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts,” Sen. Al Franken hollered on the Senate floor moments ago.
But apparently, he doesn’t think that saying should apply to himself.
Franken was angrily pushing back against the Republican argument that while taxes included in the health care bill would start being collected in 2010, the benefits wouldn’t kick in until 2014.
Up to a point, Franken’s complaint was technically right in that some benefits from the new legislation would kick in immediately, but then he got carried away to the point of blatant lying.
“The fact is that benefits kick in on day one and the large majority of benefits kick in on day one,” he shouted.
But in reality, the overwhelming bulk of the spending in the new health care bill comes by expanding Medicaid and offering subsidies to individuals to purchase insurance on the new government exchanges, and those changes don’t go into effect until year five (or 2014).
The Congressional Budget Office found that just $9 billion of the $848 billion total spending aimed at expanding coverage from 2010 to 2019 would occur in the first four years, while the remaining $839 billion wouldn’t come until the last six. In percentage terms, a whopping 1 percent of spending would occur from 2010 to 2014. This was one of the accounting gimmicks that Democrats used to make the legislation appear cheaper over their 10-year budget window.
Yet this reality didn’t stop Franken’s sanctimonious rant.
“Sen. McCain a week ago said, ‘facts are stubborn things,’” Franken shouted, pounding on the lectern. “These are stubborn things!”
He continued, ironically saying, “I stand here day after day after day, and hear my colleagues, my good friends from the other side, say things that are not based on fact.”
Re: Predicting Stiglitz
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 5:14PM
Wlady -- regarding Stiglitz advocating more stimulus spending: in fact left-wing economists have been after this from the very beginning. The stimulus that was passed was intended to mitigate the recession's impact. But if you believe Keynes, the recession could be avoided altogether if you simply enacted a stimulus equal to the output gap. The output gap is the difference between potential GDP, the goods and services that could have been produced assuming full employmen and normal productivity, and actual GDP. When the administration was putting the stimulus together, the output gap looked like it was going to be about $2 trillion, which, given the hypothesized spending "multipliers," would indicate a stimulus package of at least $1.3 trillion. Instead they only got $787 billion. For a typical argument along these lines, here's Paul Krugman.
I think that as long as the Fed keeps rates near zero, Stiglitz et al. will continue to advocate more spending.
To be fair, though, I think that a $1.2 trillion short-term deficit is much less troubling than adding giant new long-term health care entitlements. Then again, it's not clear at all that the $787 billion they got will be a one-time deal.
He Found One! He Found One!
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 5:07PM
Of all the faux-na and flora-children flitting through Copenhagen, Lord Christopher Monckton discovered the one activist -- from Greenpeace -- who was glad to hear that there's been no global warming for 15 years. All others think it's a "travesty." Check about 3:45 into this interview:
Predicting Stiglitz
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 4:49PM
Back in our June 2009 issue, Andrew Wilson wrote in his piece, "A Ladder to Nowhere: Why WWII-level deficits won't work today":
To listen to some prominent liberal economists who believe in Keynesian-style "demand management," the only thing wrong with this confabulated ladder [of growing debt and money creation] is that it should be even taller. And truly, if money is no object, why not build it right up to the sky? Why stop where we are now -- with a federal deficit expected to reach 13.5 percent of GDP under the current stimulus package.
That question will take on real weight and urgency if the economy continues to be mired in a deep recession entering 2010. At that point, the cry will go out for higher deficits and more spending.
Sure enough, a cry for higher deficits and more spending went out today in Nobel prize-winning economist (and occasional Obama mentor) Joseph Stiglitz's testimony to Congress. He said: "There is, in economics, something akin to the Powell doctrine in the military: one needs to attack the problem with overwhelming force.… As we approach the looming jobs problem, we should not repeat the mistakes we have continually made in responding to this crisis: too little, too late."
In other words, if at first you don't succeed, plough ahead blindly at greater speed. Perhaps Stiglitz should share his Nobel with Wilson.
The Left's New Vendetta: Get Killer Joe's Wife
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 4:16PM
As Shawn Macomber noted earlier today, the Left is in essence calling Joe Lieberman a mass murderer for opposing Harry Reid's heatlh-care bill in the Senate. But they're not stopping there:
Not content to smear Sen. Joe Lieberman for his opposition to ObamaCare, now the Left is attacking Lieberman's wife, Hadassah. Both Jane Hamsher and DailyKos are trying to get Mrs. Lieberman purged from her job at a breast cancer charity.
And I'm sure the Lieberman family wishes Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas a Happy Hannukah, too.
Hey, does anyone else remember the old days, when Democrats used to call conservatives "mean-spirited"?
Fiorina to do Fundraising with NRSC
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 3:54PM
CQ reported today that Senate candidate Carly Fiorina will be doing joint fundraising with the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- forming the "Fiorina Victory Committee." Last week, Fiorina gave the weekly national Republican radio address. The Chuck DeVore campaign has criticized the NRSC extensively for its perceived favoritism of her over him, although it conceded that it has not tried to fundraise with the NRSC.
Fiorina has argued that she is the more electable Republican candidate against Senator Barbara Boxer, but polls have indicated that Fiorina's head on head chances versus Barbara Boxer are taking a hit. The latest Rasmussen poll , which was released on November 20th, showed Fiorina nine points behind Boxer in the general election. In July, before Boxer had officially declared, Fiorina was down four points. The more recent poll showed DeVore ten points behind Boxer in the general election. So, if one believes the polls, there is only one point difference versus Boxer in the general election.
Quick! Copenhagen Needs Greenhouse Gas-X
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 3:49PM
The hypocritical, inefficient anti-Greens at the United Nations, who will be responsible for the deaths of millions if they don't change their behavior, have now far surpassed the simple wastefulness of selling out Copenhagen's fuel-slurping limos instead of riding mass transit. As the National Center for Public Policy Research reported today, the U.N. has denied entrance to two-thirds of the NGO representatives they credentialed for the climate summit:
The restriction was announced today outside the Copenhagen conference center after several thousand accredited NGO conference delegates, including three from the National Center for Public Policy Research, waited outside for eight hours or longer in 32-degree F temperatures for admission.
NGOs apparently are being banned because the United Nations accredited 45,000 people for a building with a capacity of 15,000, although the stated reason was "security concerns." The "security concerns" may be related to the fact that, after waiting several hours in the cold, delegations began to chant, "Let us in! Let us in!"
"To be an "accredited" or "admitted" NGO to a COP conference, NGOs must apply months in advance, and typically only make travel plans to attend after receiving complete credentials from the United Nations," said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an accredited COP-15 NGO organization that is as of now banned from the conference. "To give credentials to 45,000 people while choosing a building that holds 15,000 people is insane, though the United Nations, to be fair, has never been known for competence."
As Ridenour noted, about 30,000 humans-worth of greenhouse gases were blasted into the atmosphere for no good reason. Remember, these are the people who want you to trust them with tracking carbon emissions and carbon offset coupons, not to mention enforcement of such.
Conservative Leaders Urge Rejection of Louis Butler Nomination
12.14.09 @ 3:15PM
Senate Should Reject Nomination of Louis Butler to District Court in Wisconsin
RE: Louis Butler's nomination to be a U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin. On December 3 the Judiciary Committee voted out this controversial nomination on a party-line vote of 12-7, and floor action is expected in the near future. Louis Butler is unfit for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench because his record demonstrates a far-left agenda of personal beliefs and political ideology that he imposes from the bench, and the people of Wisconsin have twice rejected him as undeserving to serve on their highest court.
Continue reading…Flashback: Lieberman Said He Opposed Baucus Bill
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 2:45PM
The White House has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman so that health care legislation could pass, according to the Politico.
Yesterday on CBS' "Face the Nation," here's how Lieberman described his demand:
"You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the Class Act, which was a whole new entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further into deficit. And you’ve got to adopt some of the cost containment provisions that will strengthen cost containment, that all of us favor."
But if Reid were to make all of those changes (a big if, because it would be contingent on his ability to get liberal Senators to cave), there's no garuntee that Lieberman would be on board -- even though he said so yesterday.
Strip out everything Lieberman said he is opposed to, and Democrats will end up with a bill largely along the lines of the "Baucus bill" that passed through the Senate Finance Committee.
Yet back in October, Lieberman told Don Imus that he couldn't get behind the Baucus bill. "I'm afraid that in the end the Baucus bill is actually going to raise the price of insurance for most of the people in the country," he said.
And this is just the headache the White House has in the Senate.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the 80-member House Progressive Caucus, has told ABC that even with the Medicare expansion, the Senate bill would be "irreconcilable" with the legislation that cleared the House.
UPDATE: The White House is now publicly denying that they are pushing for a deal with Lieberman.
Paul Samuelson, RIP
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 12:06PM
The great economist Paul Samuelson passed away yesterday at the age of 94. Samuelson was perhaps the most influential economist of the 20th century, an absolutely towering figure.
The New York Times's long obituary is here.
The Wall Street Journal rounded up some remembrances from prominent economists, including:
Robert Hall, Stanford professor, head of the recession dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, MIT PHd:
“Paul Samuelson created modern economics, in that he brought rigorous thinking to a field that had relied on mostly verbal and graphical analysis up to his time. His book, Foundations of Economic Analysis, was a bible to my generation of economists, trained entirely in the then-new Samuelson mode.
And
MIT economist and National Bureau of Economic Research president James Poterba:
There’s just an enormous amount of what every undergraduate learns that we take for granted that Paul played an absolutely critical role in codifying and uncovering. It’s like trying to envision how did people do mechanics before Newton. The rigor that he introduced has defined the discipline.
The Atlantic had a two-part interview with Samuelson in June that I believe is his last interview. In the interview he discusses the ways in which the intellectual history of the current economic downturn bears on his own personal history. Samuelson was one of the great popularizers of Keynesianism during the postwar period, and when Keynesianism went out of vogue in the late 70s and 80s, it was to some extent a personal affront to Samuelson. But living to age 94 has its benefits, and a full 25-30 years after his macroeconomics were left behind by the mainstream, he was claiming victory anew over the likes of Milton Friedman.
In fact, in a January interview with National Perspectives Quarterly, Samuelson sounded triumphant:
And today we see how utterly mistaken was the Milton Friedman notion that a market system can regulate itself. We see how silly the Ronald Reagan slogan was that government is the problem, not the solution. This prevailing ideology of the last few decades has now been reversed.
Everyone understands now, on the contrary, that there can be no solution without government. The Keynesian idea is once again accepted that fiscal policy and deficit spending has a major role to play in guiding a market economy. I wish Friedman were still alive so he could witness how his extremism led to the defeat of his own ideas.
Samuelson's tone here is understandable, given that for the years of the "Washington Consensus" in economics, he was blamed both for creating the stagflation of the 70s and for misrepresenting Keynes in doing so. Having waited into extreme old age for his vindication, Samuelson wasn't going to savor it without a little dancing on the graves of his detractors.
In fact Samuelson was always fairly polemic, for a long time maintaining a Newsweek column opposite Milton Friedman in which he often sparred with Friedman and others over politics and the economic outlook. He also included in his seminal economic textbook some rhetoric that does not hold up well. Some examples of statements from various editions of his Economics that seem fairly outrageous today:
It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable." [1981]
"What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth." [1985]
"[T]he Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and thrive." [1989]
It's hard for someone on the right not to drag out quotes like these when talking about Samuelson. And they are worth remembering, because although they sound impossibly misguided now, remember that they were written by the economist who dictated the terms of economic debate for half a century. As extreme and extremely wrong as they were, they reflected mainstream academic thought.
Samuelson's influence in this regard is hard to overstate. One example of his dominance in economics from my own experience sticks out. I was an economics student at Notre Dame, which, uniquely, features two economics departments. As economic historian Deirdre McCloskey explains it, the reason for splitting the economics faculty into two is that Notre Dame economists, including some Marxists and post-Keynesians, had departed from "Samuelsonian" economics, the mathematical kind prevalent at MIT, far enough that they were no longer regarded as a real economics department by their peers. So the administration created another department to staff with "Samuelsonian" economists and boost the schools' rankings given by "real" economists. That story is a very rough oversimplification, but the point is that Samuelson, in a tangible sense, defined what academic economics is.
That such a titan of the field could incorporate such profoundly wrong views about socialism and statism into the mainstream is a lesson as valuable as any Samuelson taught in the classroom.
Texas Trouble for Sarah Palin?
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 11:30AM
Over the weekend, I heard a troubling rumor: Sarah Palin is reportedly considering an endorsement (see update below) of Texas Gov. Rick Perry in his GOP primary race against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Hutchison's challenge to Perry -- who succeeded George W. Bush in 2001 and is seeking an unprecedented third term as governor -- is trouble enough for Texas, which has one of the nation's strongest state Republican parties.
A Palin endorsement for Perry might be decisive for the incumbent -- who leads Hutchison 46%-35% in the most recent Rasmussen poll -- but at the expense of Palin being viewed by some Texas Republicans as an outsider interfering in their state's own feud. Unlike the New York 23rd District race, when nearly all conservatives cheered Palin's endorsement of Doug Hoffman, the GOP gubernatorial primary in Texas is not a cut-and-dried match-up between a conservative and a RINO.
Palin's political affinity for Perry are obvious. Like Perry, Palin was governor of a major oil-producing state. Yet Hutchison is strongly supported by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texan whose FreedomWorks organization has been directly involved with the Tea Party movement. Armey actively campaigned for Hoffman in the NY23, and a Palin endorsement of Perry would in effect divide an emerging conservative alliance.
It is also rumored that Palin will endorse former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio in that state's GOP primary. A Rubio endorsement would be a much safer move for Palin, putting her on the side of grassroots conservatives angered by National Republican Senatorial Committee's premature endorsement of GOP Gov. Charlie Crist.
If she gets involved in the GOP feud over the governorship of the Lone Star State, however, Palin could be courting Texas-size trouble.
UPDATE: To clarify, Palin actually endorsed Perry in February. The question is whether Palin will actually campaign in Texas for the governor's re-election.
Poll Finds Dropping Government Plan Would Dampen Dem Turnout in 2010
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 11:18AM
One-third of Democrats would be less likely to vote in the 2010 elections if Democrats do not pass a health care bill that includes a government-run plan, or so-called "public option," according to a new poll.
The poll, posted by Greg Sargent who got an advanced look at the results, was conducted by Research 2000 on behalf of Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America.
It found that 7 percent of Democrats would be more likely to vote if the government plan were dropped, while it would make no difference to 60 percent.
The poll underscores how difficult a spot Democrats are in when it comes to health care.
A CNN poll released last week found that Americans opposed health care legislation by a 61 percent to 36 percent margin. The White House has tried to argue that not passing a bill (and thus weakening the Obama presidency) would be even worse for Democratic prospects in 2010 than killing it. Yet to pass something, Democrats need to get 60 votes in the Senate. But to get those votes, Sen. Joe Lieberman says they need to drop the government plan. Which brings us back to today's poll showing that that dropping the government plan would make a third of Democrats more likely to stay home.
Incidentally, the poll also found that 81 percent of Democrats want Joe Lieberman punished if he filibuster's the health care bill.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 10:48AM
- Obama gives himself a "B+" grade for the job he's done as president. Since Obama went to grade-inflated Harvard, where 50 percent of grades are As, that makes him sub-par (AP)
- Prince Philip makes a tasteless joke about a blinded soldier (news.com.au)
- $500,000 of National Science Foundation funds being used to study how people use Facebook (StateNews.com)
- Eight protesters arrested for breaking into and vandalizing UC Berkeley Chancellor's home in the aftermath of tuition increases (Los Angeles Times)
Joe Holds Back the Socialist Hordes
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 10:32AM
By opposing the government takeover of the healthcare system, Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Independent Democrat from Connecticut, is preventing the destruction of America as we know it.
How weird is that?
Ezra Klein Hastily Dismisses Joe Lieberman's Possible Pro-Slavery Agenda
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 10:20AM
From Klein's Washington Post perch:
At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.
Yawn.
Well, in fairness to Klein, political history does make it tough to tar Lieberman as a racist, illiterate, tea-bagging militiaman, but settling old electoral scores is pretty fey stuff considering the recent expansive liberal palette. Don't get me wrong. I like the he wants to murder hundreds of thousands of people, I just think the motivation needs to be sexed up a bit. Maybe Lieberman is a closet Nazi? It can be done! Remember The Believer?
Milton Friedman: Libertarian Nut
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 9:44AM
Dr. Paul Samuelson, winner of the Nobel Prize and authority on modern Keynesian economics, died yesterday at 94. The Atlantic has an interesting and recent interview of him here. Samuelson was Larry Summers uncle. (Summers is of course, the President's chief economic advisor.) Samuelson said they weren't in touch, but some of their views overlapped.
What has pleasantly surprised me is that because of the Obama political sweep we've got some very rapid interventions beyond anything that the Eccles Federal Reserve even dreamed of in Franklin Roosevelt times, and that's why I think we're a little bit ahead o the European Union in the state of our recovery.
On the other hand, I think the popular view -- if I count noses -- is that by the end of this year even, or by 2010, recovery will have set in. That's a very ambiguous thing. Things could get better -- things could even get better such that the National Bureau committee that officially dates these recessions will say that the recession officially ended in something like December 2010. That could be misleading, because it could be completely consistent with continuing decreases in employability, an adverse balance of payments, and a move of both the consumer section and the investing section towards non-spending -- towards saving and hoarding. I don't think we would enjoy a lost decade, like the two lost decades the Japanese had.
And this nugget (for conservatives it's a nugget anyway) on Milton Friedman:
By the way, he's about as smart a guy as you'll meet. He's as persuasive as you hope not to meet. And to be candid, I should tell you that I stayed on good terms with Milton for more than 60 years. But I didn't do it by telling him exactly everything I thought about him. He was a libertarian to the point of nuttiness. People thought he was joking, but he was against licensing surgeons and so forth. And when I went quarterly to the Federal Reserve meetings, and he was there, we agreed only twice in the course of the business cycle.
Samuelson and Summers may not have been close, and they vary especially on the application of Keynesian economics, but given Obama's current economic solutions, repeated stimulus packages (stimuli?) and so forth, the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree.
Lieberman Throws Monkey Wrench Into Reid's Health Care Plans
Posted by on 12.14.09 @ 9:30AM
Last Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that a compromise had been reached on the "public option." Even though he wouldn't say what it the deal was, and even most Democrats didn't know, the media soon declared that passing a health care bill was inevitable. But less than a week later, the deal has already fallen apart, thanks to Sen. Joe Lieberman -- with an assist from Sen. Ben Nelson.
It was actually pretty comical to watch CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday (video, transcript). Sen. Jay Rockefeller sat there and declared that health care legislation had "tremendous momentum" in the Senate, while accross the table, Sens. Lieberman and Nelson shook their heads and said neither of them could vote for the current bill.
"(T)hey’re not 60 votes for health care reform in the Senate now," Lieberman declared.
And his complaints with the bill weren't limited to the public option: "You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the Class Act, which was a whole new entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further into deficit. And you’ve got to adopt some of the cost containment provisions that will strengthen cost containment, that all of us favor."
But an amendment by Sen. John Thune to strip the the Class Act, a government long-term care insurance program envisioned by Ted Kennedy, came nine votes short of the 60 it needed.
Meanwhile, Sen. Nelson said that in addition to reservations about the Medicare expansion pending the Congressional Budget Office report, he remains concerned about the lack of Stupak-like language on abortion, and didn't seem all that optimistic that a compromise was possible after the defeat of an amendment he sponsored with Sen. Orrin Hatch.
"I can’t support the bill with the -- the abortion language that’s there," Nelson said. "Unfortunately, the Nelson-Hatch failed and -- but I do know that there are some who are, right now, trying to find language that might be compatible with the Stupak language in the House. That’s a tall order for people. And I’m not prescribing ahead what they may be able to do."
By last night, the Huffington Post was reporting that Lieberman told Reid to his face that he could not vote for the bill in its current form, and the left was in full panic mode. Talking Points Memo ran the banner headline, "Health Care Reform in Peril." The Washington Post's liberal health care blogger Ezra Klein accused Lieberman of "just torturing liberals." He wrote that Lieberman is "willing to directly cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score."
The problem is that Reid was in a position where everything would have to go perfectly to be able to pass a health care bill by Christmas, an outcome President Obama predicted on in his interview on "60 Minutes" that aired last night. But now, assuming Lieberman means what he says, that seems increasingly unlikely. Either Reid will have to pull a new compromise out of his hat like magic or get liberals to accept all of Nelson and Lieberman's demands, or this thing is going to spill over into next year, and the whole effort may collapse altogether.
But before you get too excited, just remember that the media was declaring health care legislation "inevitable" last Tuesday, so we shouldn't assume it's doomed today. The story keeps changing.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
HMS Global Warming Takes More Water
Posted by on 12.13.09 @ 8:29PM
ClimateGate is devastating to the global warming industry, as alarmists are admitting if mostly off-the-record and only to sympathetic journalists (but I repeat myself) and bloggers who selectively have aired and shared the despair. On its heels, however, and particularly for those dealing with insistent alarmists whimpering how ClimateGate reveals nothing, this is a must read. In context, it might be just as damning in the eyes of those open to reason.
It comes from an IPCC coordinating lead author who details the IPCC process's inherent corruption -- affirming the details thereof that I also painted after speaking to former lead authors in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism -- and he joins the impressive ranks of actual "leading scientists" cutting their IPCC ties for the same reason. As you read it recall the specific defenses against ClimateGate's meaning.
A compelling angle to this is that it appears to have been written days before ClimateGate documents made their way to select servers and before the admissions were widely known.
Ha-tip Marc Morano at Climate Depot.