‘Actions Speak Louder Than Words’: DADT Dischargee Lt. Dan Choi Called To Service With National Guard
‘Actions Speak Louder Than Words’: DADT Dischargee Lt. Dan Choi Called To Service With National Guard
Lt. Dan Choi
I was heartened though to hear Lt. Choi’s response, when I asked him what he thinks his new voice might be as the repeal of DADT takes shape. He spoke about perhaps helping the military implement a future non-discrimination policy, and advising in issues involving sensitivity trainings on LGBT issues. But the comment that struck me the most was when he said, “Actions speak louder than words.” It made sense all of a sudden, that the sheer act of him rejoining his unit and serving with everyone else, could be his most powerful voice in the debate so far. That seeing an openly gay service member train and fight with his unit, is something that truly does speak louder than words.
Alex Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United, clarifies that Choi has not been re-called or activated for active duty, as some have reported. Rather, “Choi is still in the New York Army National Guard, so he is completing a regularly scheduled drill weekend, which he has continued to do all along.” “This is still significant because he is continuing his regularly scheduled drills with his unit with the full support of his command, peers, and subordinates,” Nicholson wrote in an email. Indeed, Choi’s participation in the drill reaffirms what Choi himself has suspected — soldiers “care about what a person can do for the team. We’re in a time of war. We have bigger things to worry about than people being gay.”
Choi “served as an infantry officer, translator and language instructor in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.” Under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the army “has discharged 59 gay Arabic linguists and nine gay Farsi linguists in the last five years, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defence Network.”
- Comments
- 0
Why Kit Bond’s Medicare Privatization Proposal Is A Bad One
Why Kit Bond’s Medicare Privatization Proposal Is A Bad One
Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO)
In essence, Medicare enrollees would receive a voucher to either purchase traditional coverage in Medicare or buy into a private insurance program. The idea sounds simple enough, but it’s actually fairly radical. Republicans want to transform Medicare from a fixed benefit to a fixed contribution. Beneficiaries would have to make up the difference between the value voucher and the cost of a particular health insurance plan — an amount that will only increase over time as health care costs outpace the value of a income-based voucher. The voucher will buy less coverage every year, forcing seniors to pay more for the same coverage. Essentially, they’re shifting the cost of insurance from the government to the individual.
As one analysis of a voucher proposal concluded, “this approach would undermine the basic protections offered by Medicare as a social insurance program, by relegating lower-income beneficiaries to lower-cost, and possibly lower-quality, plans.”
But that’s only the beginning. If Medicare becomes a fixed premium program, it will be much easier for Washington to control Medicare costs by simply trimming the level of the fixed contribution — undermining the health security of America’s poorest senior citizens.
Chertoff Claims U.S. Might Permanently Import Terrorists By Trying Them In The U.S.
Chertoff Claims U.S. Might Permanently Import Terrorists By Trying Them In The U.S.
Yesterday, at an event at the conservative Hudson Institute, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested that trying terrorists in the U.S. could give them special rights under immigration laws that would prevent the government from deporting them:
Sometimes they [alleged terrorists] raise legal objections to going back and you can’t send them back. Our position was and I believe it to be true, you don’t want to bring them to the United States. Once you bring them into the United States soil, they will have a set of rights under the immigration laws that could well put you in a difficult position of being ordered to release somebody and not being able to deport them. I think the last thing we want to do is import terrorists into the U.S.
Watch it:
The concerns Chertoff has expressed aren’t new amongst Republicans . Back in November, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) drilled Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on whether alleged 9/11 plotters will have an immigration status or be able to apply for asylum if and when they are tried in the U.S. At the time, Holder seemed baffled by Cornyn’s line of interrogation and said that he would get back to him with more information.
It’s unclear whether Holder ever responded to Cornyn’s fear-mongering, however, immigration experts from the National Immigration Law Center informed the Wonk Room that detainees would most likely be brought to the U.S. but kept in custody on criminal charges — without an immigration status. In the extremely unlikely event that they are acquitted, they could still be kept in custody and put in removal proceedings.
It’s even more implausible that suspected 9/11 plotters would be granted asylum — let along a green card — if they are found innocent. Syracuse University further points out that there’s a common misconception that the U.S. asylum system is abused by people who endanger national security. However, “asylum applications are subject to stringent review procedures by adjudicators in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice and to rigorous background and security checks.” Terrorism concerns essentially lead to an automatic disqualification from asylum and immediate deportation.
In fact, a study by Human Rights First showed that immigration law has instead created a situation in which refugee and asylum seekers who pose no risk to the U.S. are unfairly denied U.S. residency due to the “pervasive, unintended consequences of the ‘terrorism’ provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
The Administration’s Middling On Missile Defense
The Administration’s Middling On Missile Defense
Don't play Star Wars
The Ballistic Missile Review talks importantly about not investing in exotic unproven programs designed to protect against threats that may never materialize, which is a direct swipe at missile defense programs focused on stopping long-range inter-continental ballistic missiles. This in many ways builds off the Obama administration’s previous actions on missile defense such as: focusing on more proven theater based systems that protect against short and medium range missiles (such as those held by Iran); abandoning a strategically useless ground-based missile system in Europe, cutting futuristic programs such as the Airborne Laser and the Multiple Kill Vehicles, as well as reducing funds for the fanciful ground based program in the US. All of these are definitely steps in the right direction, and have consequentially irked missile-defense-hugging neoconservatives.
However, despite the nice talk in the recently released review and all the talk of fiscal discipline, the Administration has failed to follow through in its current budget. Fred Kaplan of Slate notes:
There’s a mismatch, however, between Gates’ words and his actions. His proposed missile defense budget for fiscal year 2011 amounts to a staggering $10.4 billion. This is $2 billion less than George W. Bush requested (and received) for missile defense—his most cherished military program—in his last year as president. But it’s $700 million more than Gates himself received in FY 2010. The program is getting more expensive and, in some respects, more exotic—not less.
Kaplan also points out the strategic dissonance of the Administration’s middling approach. By killing off programs that focus on shooting down a missile in its initial boost-phase, such as the Airborne Laser, Gates is essentially cutting off one of the major conceptual legs of Bush’s multi-phased missile defense system. Not only is this a kin to the Administration acknowledging that the whole concept behind the program is deeply unsound, but by removing one of the system’s legs, Kaplan explains, the system simply can’t stand.
But if boost-phase intercept is a vital part of a missile-defense system, if all the ideas for boost-phase intercept have washed out, and if the only thing going for it is a laser-research project that’s not likely to bear fruit for decades, if ever—then the whole vision of a multi-phased missile-defense system is in deep trouble. If that’s the case, and if there’s no way around it, the idea of spending $10.4 billion on a dream system begins to sound like a fool’s errand.
In other words, Gates has effectively determined that the concept behind Bush’s multi-phase system is bunk, yet the Administration is still funding the rest of the system as if it were strategically sound and nothing had changed. Instead of putting the long-range missile program out of its misery and diverting that money to more essential programs – such as paying for the wars we are fighting – the Administration is just middling around the edges on long-range missile defense.
Obama Hopes To ‘Establish Common Facts’ With GOP On Health Reform, Hints At Tort Reform Concessions
Obama Hopes To ‘Establish Common Facts’ With GOP On Health Reform, Hints At Tort Reform Concessions
President Barack Obama hinted that he may incorporate some Republican tort reform proposals into the existing health care reform legislation, but warned that “bipartisanship cannot mean simply that Democrats give up everything they believe in, find the handful of things Republicans have been advocating for and then we do those things.” “There’s gotta be some give and take..and that’s what I hope is accomplished,” Obama said of the forthcoming February 25th health summit:
Let’s establish some common facts. Let’s establish what the issues are, what the problems are and let’s test out, in front of the American people, what ideas work and what ideas don’t. And if we can establish that factual accuracy about how different approaches would work then I think we can make some progress. And it may be that some of the facts that come up, are ones that make my party a little bit uncomfortable.
Watch it:
“If it’s established that by working seriously on malpractice and tort reform, that we can reduce some of those costs, I’ve said from the beginning of this debate, I’d be willing to work on that,” Obama said. “On the other hand, if I’m told that that’s only a faction of the problem and that’s not the biggest driver of health care costs, then I’m also going to insist ‘okay, let’s look at that as one aspect of it, but let’s do what we were going to do,’” Obama added.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has recently estimated that common Republican tort reform proposals — like capping awards for noneconomic damages — could save the federal government $54 billion over 10 years, but some progressives have questioned the budget office’s conclusion. In a letter to CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) argued that the new CBO report reverses years of precedent and relies on academic studies that actually undermine the savings projection. “CBO has repeatedly concluded that cost savings associated with medical malpractice reforms would be minimal and the at evidence concerning defensive medicine is ‘inconsistent,’” Rockefeller wrote, noting that the budget office has previously determined that “the effect of medical malpractice reform “would be relatively small — less than 0.5 percent of total health care spending” and would “save [only] $5.6 billion over 10 years.””
In September, Obama directed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to authorize “demonstration projects in individual states” to test various approaches to tort reform. The Senate health care bill includes money for such demonstrations.
While in the Senate, Obama also co-sponsored “legislation aimed at reducing both medical errors and lawsuits through a program known as Sorry Works, rooted in the idea that injured patients value an apology as much as money.” That legislation would have given physicians who disclosed their errors “certain protections from liability within the context of the program, in order to promote a safe environment for disclosure.“
Corzine Endorses Bank Tax: Banks Should ‘Pay Back’ And ‘Prepare For The Next Financial Crisis’
Corzine Endorses Bank Tax: Banks Should ‘Pay Back’ And ‘Prepare For The Next Financial Crisis’
Last week, Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) announced that Democrats are going to go it alone on financial regulatory reform, as negotiations with the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), were at an “impasse.” One of the sticking points has been the Obama administration’s proposal to levy a $90 billion tax on the largest financial institutions, which Shelby said he opposes outright, adding that if the Democrats were to pursue implementing the tax, they would “risk unravelling much of the bipartisan support already reached.” Republicans as a whole, in fact, have been courting support from the banks, on the grounds that they will block significant regulatory reform.
If ditching a tax on the very biggest banks is the price of bipartisanship, than it was wise for Dodd to move on. After all, the tax is pretty tame, and is only aimed at recouping the money lost on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). I’ve argued that the tax can go further (maybe by making it permanent) and the regulatory reform bill that the House passed in December had a smart provision mandating that banks pay into a fund, which will be used to unwind failing firms without using taxpayer money.
Today on CNBC, former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine said very much the same thing, endorsing the bank tax and likening it to the deposit insurance that commercial banks pay:
Nobody watching this is going to like this, but I basically think the idea, this bank tax, is just another form of FDIC insurance. I think that the industry ought to both pay back but also prepare for the next financial crisis…There was a huge tax to get us out of Long-Term Capital [Management], Goldman Sachs had to put, I can’t even remember, $350 million at the time. This is pay-me-now or pay-me-later. I would rather set up the systems to deal with resolution of the problems over a period of time, which is what the FDIC insurance rates are about.
Watch it:
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) put it similarly in pushing for the House’s version of the tax, saying “let’s create the fund, just like the FDIC, so when we need to resolve [a financial institution], it stands.” And FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair also agreed, saying that “Congress should establish a Financial Company Resolution Fund (FCRF) that is pre-funded by levies on larger financial firms — those with assets of at least $10 billion…We believe that a pre-funded FCRF has significant advantages over an ex post funded system.”
The levy makes sense on a few levels, as it will act to level the playing field a bit between the biggest financial firms and the rest of industry and will ensure that taxpayers do not bear the brunt of future failures. Dodd should listen to those like Corzine, who are correctly characterizing this proposal as a common sense reform that doesn’t place much of a real burden on the firms it will affect.
Top Pelosi Aide Says Reconciliation Process Is ‘The Only Way’ To Save Health Reform
Top Pelosi Aide Says Reconciliation Process Is ‘The Only Way’ To Save Health Reform
This morning, during a panel discussion at the Academy Health National Health Policy Conference, a top Pelosi policy aide said that the reconciliation process was “the only way” for Democrats to salvage health reform in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election. “There is only one way to get it done at this stage of the game and that’s a process that the Speaker has outlined,” Wendell Primus, Pelosi’s legislative director said. Congress would have to pass the Senate health care bill alongside a package of fixes using reconciliation.
“The House would have to take up that first because it would involve revenue changes and then the Senate would pass it and then I think hopefully with the passing of that legislation, the House, only then would take up the Senate bill and pass it.”
“The trick in all of this is that the President would have to sign the Senate bill first and then the reconciliation bill would be signed second and the parts of the reconciliation bill that trump the relevant portions of the first signed bill.” “You would really have to use the fact that a later enacted bill takes precedent over a previously enacted bill to achieve the right outcome.” Primus added. He predicted that the reconciliation package of fixes would have to increase the threshold on the Cadillac tax, include more affordability credits, close the donut hole in the Medicare Part D drug benefit, and eliminate the Cornhusker Kickback.
Other Congressional aides agreed with Primus’ assessment and argued that it would be almost impossible to put together a smaller package that achieves any of the Democrats’ objectives because many provisions are interconnected. The staffers also predicted that if Congress fails to pass health care reform before the budget window closes, it’s unlikely that future administrations would take-up the effort.
Nelson Intends To Support GOP Filibuster Of Labor Board Nominee
Nelson Intends To Support GOP Filibuster Of Labor Board Nominee
Late yesterday, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) announced that he would not vote for cloture on the nomination of former AFL-CIO and SEIU attorney Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), effectively joining a Republican filibuster. Republicans have been using Becker’s nomination as a proxy battle over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — which would level the playing field for workers who want to form a union. And Nelson bought into that frame in his statement against Becker:
Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the Administration. This is of great concern, considering that the Board’s main responsibility is to resolve labor disputes with an even and impartial hand. In addition, the nominee’s statements fly in the face of Nebraska’s Right to Work laws, which have been credited in part with our excellent business climate that has attracted employers and many good jobs to Nebraska.
For one thing, as Michael Whitney pointed out, “Nelson claims that Becker would bring ‘an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB,’ rather than that of the Obama Administration. How does that make any sense, when it’s the Obama administration that nominated him twice?”
Nelson also lists three pieces of evidence as justification for opposing Becker. All of them point to Becker’s academic work asserting that elections for union representation should look more like, well, elections, free from employer interference and without allowing workers to opt-out of representation that the majority has voted for. These are common sense positions that evidence a belief that employees should be able to form unions when they want to, not only when employers deign to allow them.
Now, maybe Nelson doesn’t like these stances, but they don’t seem to justify sustaining a GOP filibuster. As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein pointed out, Nelson had no problem voting to invoke cloture on Bush administration nominees like UN Ambassador John Bolton and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.
Bush’s last nominee to the NLRB — Peter Schauber — was confirmed uncontroversially, along with a boatload of nominees for various positions. But Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) placed a hold on Obama’s NLRB nominees last year, and also called for a hearing on Becker’s nomination, which was the first on an NLRB nominee since 1994 (and even that hearing was for an NLRB chairman).
Confirming Becker (and the other NLRB nominees) is important because for two years now, the NLRB has been crippled. Only two of the board’s five seats are filled, which not only leaves many disputes deadlocked at a 1-1 vote, but also calls into question the validity of any cases on which the two members have agreed. As the New York Times reported, “a pending Supreme Court case could ultimately vacate 80 of the [Board's] decisions,” because the two members do not technically constitute a quorum.
Last week, NLRB chair Wilma Liebman released a statement saying “I am disappointed that we still do not have a fully constituted Board despite the naming of three nominees last summer…I look forward to a time in the near future when the Board is back at full capacity resolving issues vital to American workers and their employers.” By joining a filibuster, Nelson is taking a step toward ensuring that that won’t happen.
What Eric Cantor’s Op-Ed On Iran Can Teach Us About The Health Care Debate
What Eric Cantor’s Op-Ed On Iran Can Teach Us About The Health Care Debate
In October, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) cautioned President Obama against negotiating with Iran. “The unfortunate reality for President Obama is that there is absolutely no evidence that Iran is willing to reach any agreement acceptable on U.S. terms,” Cantor wrote in an editorial for POLITICO. “The key point is that we have been down this road before – and it has reached a dead end.” Obama should demand immediate concessions “No exceptions, no excuses,” Cantor insisted.
But his warning against negotiating with a stubborn partner does not extend to the health care debate. Although Republicans have chosen to demagogue the health care reform for the better part of a year, Cantor is still asking President Obama to abandon the existing legislation. While we’re not comparing the GOP to Iran, if the President were to adopt Cantor’s own policy for engagement, Republicans would be excluded from any further negotiations.
No illusions on Iran Health reform
By REP. ERIC CANTOR
It’s a defining moment for the administration and its new policy of engagement with our enemies Republicans. As Iran Republicans moves inexorably towards becoming a nuclear power obstructionist minority, the U.S. Obama will join Great Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Thursday [February 25th] in Geneva at the Blair House in an effort to prod the Islamic Republic Republicans to change course. The unfortunate reality for President Obama is that there is absolutely no evidence that Iran is Republicans are willing to reach any agreement acceptable on U.S. terms – much less use negotiations for any purpose other than to buy more time for its illicit nuclear enrichment activities obstruction.
Engaging Iran Republicans on the nuclear health care issue is nothing new. Attempts by Great Britain Max Baucus, France Harry Reid and Germany Nancy Pelosi from 2003 to 2005 2009 to 2010 to negotiate a suspension of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program Republican filibusters were an exercise in futility. As both sides talked, IranGOP only stepped up its enrichment activities obstructionism. In the same vein, Iran Republicans rejected a generous U.S.-supported Western Baucus/Gang-of-six package of political and economic concessions offered three years several months ago by the West Democrats in exchange for a stop to Iran’sthe GOP’s nuclear program obstructionism.
The key point is that we have been down this road before – and it has reached a dead end. This time around we simply don’t have the luxury of time.
[...]
That’s why tomorrow on February 25h in Geneva Blair House our bottom line must be an immediate halt to Iran’s nuclear enrichmentGOP obstructionist capabilities. No exceptions, no excuses.
[...]
Yet even as we head into negotiations predestined to fail, the temptation remains to bury our heads in the sand, hope and pray that somehow this time Iran will act differently, and play along with Iran’s the GOP’s stalling game. This is a mistake because it gives Iran the GOP the idea that regardless of what it says or does, the West the Democrats will inevitably come crawling back to the table out of desperation.
President Obama is following through on his controversial pledge for the United States to sit down and talk with Iran Republicans. But in doing so he cannot be afraid to call Iran’s the GOP’s bluff and pursue a different course. [...]
Thiessen Still Defending A Failed Strategy
Thiessen Still Defending A Failed Strategy
Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Mark Thiessen, a former Bush administration speechwriter, has been waging a non-stop partisan political campaign to destroy Americans’ faith that their government can keep them safe. His latest gambit is to question the integrity of a career public servant, John Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA and President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser. The tragic consequences of his efforts will be to undermine the effectiveness of America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies that are protecting all of us, Republicans and Democrats, from future terrorist attacks.
On Meet the Press Sunday, Brennan responded to criticisms from key Congressional Republicans over the administration’s handling of Umar Faroul Abdulmuttalab, the failed Christmas bomber, by pointing out that he had kept them informed:
On Christmas night, I called a number of senior members of Congress. I spoke to Senators McConnell and Bond, I spoke to Representative Boehner and Hoekstra. I explained to them that he was in FBI custody, that Mr. Abdulmutallab was, in fact, talking, that he was cooperating at that point. They knew that “in FBI custody” means that there’s a process then you follow as far as Mirandizing and presenting him in front of a magistrate. None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point.
For that statement, Mark Thiessen, who has either been a speechwriter or a press spokesperson his entire career, called Brennan a liar.
Thiessen’s not claiming that Brennan didn’t call them, or that these four Republicans actually did raise concerns. Thiessen calls Brennan a liar because, according to Thiessen, these four Republicans didn’t know that the FBI Mirandizes people in it detains in the United States. Thiessen bases his theory of Republican confusion about Miranda on a Washington Post story on the Obama administration’s plan to form a High-Value Interrogation Group (HIG) which wouldn’t automatically Mirandize those detainees it interrogated.
Sounds great, except the problem is that the FBI does not have a choice whether to Mirandize people detained in the United States. There is a public emergency exception that allows for questioning without Miranda warnings, which the FBI used to question Abdulmuttalab prior to his entering surgery. The HIG, in contrast, was designed specifically to make sure the CIA stays out of the torture business and is directed at detainees captured outside the United States who may never face the prospect of trial in a U.S. court. It would be bizarre to automatically Mirandize detainees in those circumstances.
None of this matters to Thiessen, though, because this is about politics not policy, and in politics ignorance is strength.
Never mind that because the Obama administration publicly rejected the Bush administration’s use of torture, which Thiessen still defends as necessary, Abdulmutallab’s family agreed to work with the FBI to secure his cooperation. And it’s producing results. Never mind that when the Bush administration tried to do detention the way Thiessen still thinks it should be done, holding Jose Padilla in military custody without access to his family or lawyers, Padilla was still not cooperating after seven months, and never supplied much useful information.
In the Author’s Note of his book, Courting Disaster, Thiessen complains that he shouldn’t really have to write the book at all but irresponsible people have twisted information “to paint our intelligence community as a band of rogue operators who abandoned our ideals in the fight against terror.” Maybe he should check the mirror before he twists information in order to call a career public servant and senior national security official like John Brennan a liar.
We’ve tried detention and interrogation the way Thiessen wants to do it, and it was a spectacular failure. It undercut our international reputation as a defender of human rights. It helped recruit terrorists to Al Qaeda’s cause. It made us less safe. The Obama administration has chosen a path that is working but is facing unrelenting criticism from people like Mark Thiessen. One really gets the sense that Thiessen wants the Obama administration to fail.
Maybe he does. After all, this is the guy who took to the pages on the Washington Post just two days after Obama took office to warn, “if Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible — and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation.” It doesn’t sound like that’s something that would disappoint him.
Boehner And Cantor Ask Obama To Abandon The ‘Legal’ And ‘Ethical’ Reconciliation Process
Boehner And Cantor Ask Obama To Abandon The ‘Legal’ And ‘Ethical’ Reconciliation Process
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) have written a letter to President Obama asking him to abandon the current health care reform bills and eliminate “the possibility of reconciliation” before convening his February 25th health summit:
If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate. Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan way, does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation?
Given the GOP’s reluctance to negotiate on health care reform and the Democrats’ repeated overtures at bipartisanship, Obama shouldn’t abandon a legislative tactic that subjects legislation to a simple majority vote. After all, reconciliation was designed to help bring spending and revenues in line with the fiscal policy and lower the deficit — which health reform would undoubtedly accomplish.
The GOP has repeatedly used the reconciliation process to enact its agenda. In 2001 and 2003, Republicans broke with tradition and used the reconciliation to “enact a large tax cut that greatly increased federal deficits and debt.” During the 1990s, Republicans pushed through key provisions of their signature legislative agenda, the Contract with America, using budget reconciliation.
As rising GOP star Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) pointed out in April, Democrats have the “right” to pass health care reform through the reconciliation process. “It is their right. It is what they can do,” Ryan admitted. In June, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) said of the reconciliation process, “But it’s legal, it’s ethical, you can do it. And it has been suggested and accepted by the administration, pretty directly that if it came down to it, they’re going to drive this thing through a fifty-vote door. ”
He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it.
Republicans Reflexively Dismiss Health Summit As ‘A Hollow PR Blitz’
Republicans Reflexively Dismiss Health Summit As ‘A Hollow PR Blitz’
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)
In other words, break the Olive Branch in half and pretend that the term compromise — which, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions — really requires Democrats to abandon their plans and accept the Republican proposals.
From Price’s priceless statement:
It seems the only play the President knows how to run is a hollow PR blitz. Republicans welcome honest discussion, but this event reeks of political gamesmanship. Throughout this debate, Republicans have been stiff-armed from participating, our plans ignored, and our ideas blatantly misrepresented. It’s quite telling that only now, once the President’s plan is considered to be on political life support, does the White House seek input from Republicans.
The fact that the President has indicated he is still completely wedded to a government takeover of health care demonstrates that despite the rhetoric, he just hasn’t gotten the message from the American people. Americans have no interest in handing personal medical decisions to the government and are sick of Washington’s unchecked growth and power.
The only constructive discussions will start with a blank sheet of paper. The American people have soundly rejected the President’s big-government approach to health care, and tinkering at the margins of it will not bring about bipartisan consensus. Enacting positive health care reform still remains possible, but it will require the President to accept that his plan is a non-starter with the American people.
The truth is, Republicans are lucky to receive any hearing at all. After all, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) attempted to reach a bipartisan health care bill for months, only to produce produce a fairly watered down proposal that every Republican — with the exception of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — abandoned. As Baucus remarked some months later, “we worked very hard to get a bipartisan bill. That side of the aisle started working with us but gradually they began to bleed politically,” Baucus said. They realized “that they would do a better chance in the 2010 elections by just not working with us, but just attack attack attack attack attack and try to score political points to defeat any honest effort to get health care reform.”
This is a take-two for bipartisanship and it’s up to the Republicans to meet the Democrats half way. They can either turn the event into “a hollow PR blitz” that “reeks of political gamesmanship” or abandon all of the government-takeover nonsense and figure out how to make reform work. The summit will be what Republicans make of it.
Rep. Susan Davis Supports ‘Limited Moratorium’ On Third-Party Discharges
Rep. Susan Davis Supports ‘Limited Moratorium’ On Third-Party Discharges
Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA), the chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel, has said that Congress should institute a moratorium on third-party Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) discharges until Congress formally repeals the policy. Davis estimated that outings by a third party make up for 30-40 percent of all DADT discharges and said she hoped to attach the moratorium to the upcoming defense authorization bill. “That would be the really first act of Congress to just put a hold on any discharges,” she said during a radio interview on KPBS San Diego public radio:
I think what’s being suggested here is a kind of limited moratorium. I don’t know whether the language that comes forward would be a total moratorium. I suspect that it might be easier to get this limited moratorium through with more support.
Listen:
During the Davis’ interview, Abe Shragge, professor of history, war and American society at UCSD, compared conservative arguments against repealing DADT to the case put forward by proponents of racial segregation of the military.
“That same argument was offered in the late 1940s, before President Truman integrated the services racially, that this would affect recruitment, it would reflect badly on the readiness of the service. That well qualified people who’d be very uncomfortable if forced to serve with or next to or in close proximity to African Americans would simply have to leave. That didn’t’ happen then. And I would not expect it to happen in any great numbers now.”
Last week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) also suggested that Congress would pass a moratorium and on Saturday Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) promised to add an amend to the budget that would deny “funding to the military for the costs of pursuing inquiries, dismissal proceedings and other procedures associated with enforcing” DADT.
ICE Claims It’s Not Legally Responsible For Immigration Detention Death
ICE Claims It’s Not Legally Responsible For Immigration Detention Death
Last week, Wonk Room reported that a federal judge rejected a U.S. government request to dismiss a lawsuit brought against immigration authorities by a U.S. citizen and military veteran who claims that he was mistakenly detained for seven months. This week, a judge will decide on whether the federal government bears culpability for another immigration detention slip up: the August 2008 death of Chinese immigrant, Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng. ICE is also arguing that this case should be dismissed on grounds that staffers at the jail at which NG died are contractors — not government employees.
After emigrating to the U.S. from China in 1992, Ng became a computer engineer, a husband of a U.S. citizen, and a father to two American-born sons. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, was going into his final interview for a green card when he was swept into immigration detention where he spent the final months of his life. When Ng complained that he was experiencing excruciating back pain while in custody he was allegedly accused of faking symptoms and ultimately pressured by an immigration officer to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation. By the time Ng was finally taken to a hospital, he had terminal cancer and a fractured spine. He died five days later.
Ng’s family has named ICE and about two dozen other defendants in its lawsuit. While ICE has acknowledged that Ng was mistreated, the agency doesn’t think it should be held legally responsible for his death since Ng was under the supervision of contractors, not ICE staff. However, lawyers for the Ng family argue that the government’s defense is a troubling attempt to “punt responsibility and have it both ways.” Steven Brown of the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit, points out:
Only the government has the ability to lock people away, and yet it wants to wash its hands of any responsibility of what happens once people are detained in these facilities…It only increases the severity of the problems because of the total lack of accountability.
To ICE’s credit, the agency did pull all 153 of its immigration detainees from the jail in which Ng died, terminated its contract and issued a report lambasting the detention facility’s staff. Late last year, ICE announced that it was implementing reforms that move away from the “decentralized, jail-oriented approach” of the Bush administration with the goal of bringing “improved medical care, custodial conditions, fiscal prudence, and ICE oversight” to the U.S. detention system. However, while these necessary changes are commendable, they don’t excuse ICE from assuming legal responsibility for the missteps, blunders, and tragedies that developed under its watch.
Rep. McMahon Pushes To Extend All Bush Tax Cuts: Earning $250K ‘Is Barely Making Ends Meet’
Rep. McMahon Pushes To Extend All Bush Tax Cuts: Earning $250K ‘Is Barely Making Ends Meet’
Rep. Mike McMahon (D-NY)
But this line of reasoning is no longer the sole property of conservative commentators. Rep. Mike McMahon (D-NY), who is one of the House Democrats joining the charge to extend all of the Bush cuts, had this to say:
“I think it is a political liability because it’s a [bad] policy right now for the economy and could have a bad impact on jobs,” said McMahon…“A working couple making $250,000 is barely making ends meet,” he said, adding, “If you have a partnership or an S. Corporation you are definitely affected… As professionals or shop owners or restaurant owners, you get hammered.”
Now, to be fair, McMahon’s district — the New York 13 — encompasses parts of Staten Island, where there are sure to be some well-off families. It’s also New York City, so the cost-of-living is one of the highest around. But still, median income in the district is $60,137. So families in his district that are making $250,000 are still doing very well.
In fact, as Daniel Gross pointed out, “$250,000 puts you in pretty fancy company, especially after the collective pratfall the economy took in 2008″:
The Census Bureau last summer reported that real median household income was $50,303 in 2008, down 3.6 percent from 2007. It’s likely that figure fell further in 2009. So a household that’s making $250,000 today is making about five times the median…And even if you look at the wealthiest metropolitan areas — Washington ($85,236), San Francisco ($76,068), Boston ($70,334), and New York ($63,957) — a quarter of a million dollars a year dwarfs the median income.
Less than 2 percent of the country makes more than $250,000, and you literally need to begin looking at individual neighborhoods to find parts of the country where that much money is not going to cut it.
The point here is not to demonize the rich, but to note that, in a time of economic hardship and worrying long-term deficits, we have to look at raising revenue from somewhere, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the very wealthiest makes sense. In fact, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, allowing these cuts to expire “will avert $826 billion in added deficits and debt over the next ten years.”
And as for McMahon’s charge that small business owners will be affected, the numbers haven’t changed: less than 3 percent of Americans who collect any business income at all (whether from a small businesses or a corporation) will see their taxes affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.
Reason To Act: Reform’s Failure Could Lead To More Health Mergers
Reason To Act: Reform’s Failure Could Lead To More Health Mergers
Business analysts are predicting that if Congress fails to pass health care reform, health insurers and providers react to skyrocketing health care costs by merging into ever-larger companies. The industry will “seek its own answers to a push by government and the private sector to rein in costs, said Curtis Lane, senior managing director at MTS Health Partners, a New York-based equity fund.” “An aging U.S. population will spur demand for services and, at the same time, boost pressure to control spending, he said“:
One solution will be increased consolidation, with companies led by WellPoint Inc., the biggest U.S. insurer by enrollment, and Community Health Systems Inc., the largest publicly traded hospital chain, scooping up rivals unable to “spread rising costs across fewer customers,” said Paul Keckley, of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
The health-care market “certainly seems to favor bigger, innovative, scalable companies,” said Keckley, executive director of the Washington-based center, in a phone interview. Drugmakers facing the loss of patent protection on top-selling medicines “were looking at decelerating revenues, with or without reform,” he said.
Of course, it’s unclear that mergers amongst insurers or provider networks will help contain health care costs. We have seen over 400 health care mergers in the last 10 years, while premiums have risen “nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes.” Today, one in six “metropolitan areas in a 2008 study of more than 300 U.S. markets [are already] dominated by a single health insurer that controls at least 70% of consumers enrolled in health maintenance organizations or preferred provider organizations.”
Similarly, in areas where hospitals have “too strong a market presence to be excluded from insurer networks,” they dictate prices to insurers, which in turn, pass on the cost to the beneficiary in the form of higher premiums. And, if an insurer feels like it’s getting squeezed by the provider, it may dump its beneficiaries (by pricing them out of their policies) and take its business elsewhere. Greater provider consolidation will likely accelerate this trend.
So the future looks grim without health care reform. Projections of increased consolidation are just another reason to push Democrats to repeal the insurers’ anti trust exemption and get the job done on health care reform.
Obama’s OMB Continues Bush-Era Interference With Public Health Standards
Obama’s OMB Continues Bush-Era Interference With Public Health Standards
The Obama White House interfered with smog standards at the last minute, preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from properly protecting the health of millions of Americans. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and its subsidiary Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), led by Obama pick Cass Sunstein, oversees regulatory decisions by federal agencies. “The EPA issued a new rule recently on nitrogen dioxide (NO2),” Center for Progressive Reform president Rena Steinzor writes, “but not before it was weakened by OMB. The consequences for the public health are real.” On December 18, the EPA had proposed installing new monitoring stations at all cities with a population of 350,000 or more, but by “the time OIRA completed its review on January 22, the minimum threshold for monitoring stations had been increased to one per 500,000 people.” The Center for Progressive Reform discovered an email from a top EPA official that reveals the agency opposed the White House interference:
The EPA had made its position clear, it turns out. In a January 20th email about the “500,000″ proposal, Lisa Heinzerling, the EPA’s Associate Administrator for policy, wrote, “EPA does not support the alternative threshold described in the email below.”
The new standards “will improve air quality, particularly in communities disproportionately impacted by environmental problems.” However, the last-minute interference unnecessarily leaves millions without the same protection. As Matthew Madia relates at OMB Watch, there was no justification offered for the loosening of the standards:
The final rule claims the threshold was raised “after consideration of public comments,” but EPA provides no evidence that the public opposed the lower threshold. The Clean Air Council asked for an even lower threshold, possibly down to 100,000 people, according to a recap of comments in the final rule. Even Dow Chemical Company, which was pushing for a weaker one-hour standard, called the 350,000 person threshold “reasonable.”
When Cass Sunstein was nominated by Obama to run OIRA, environmental watchdogs raised significant concerns that he may share his predecessors’ antiregulatory zeal.
Ironically, Lisa Heinzerling, a law professor, was one of the sharpest critics of Bush White House interference with environmental rules. When the Bush administration wrote a rule to block the Endangered Species Act from addressing the threat of climate change, she said “rule turns the pit bull into a poodle.” Under Ken Salazar, the Obama Department of the Interior has continued to embrace Bush’s “poodle” rule.
How Will Republicans Treat Obama’s Bipartisan Health Care Summit?
How Will Republicans Treat Obama’s Bipartisan Health Care Summit?
Yesterday, President Obama finally set a course for health care reform and announced a “televised meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders” to find a bipartisan solution to controlling health care costs and extending coverage to the uninsured. White House aides stressed that the President was not scraping the existing health care bills and promised that Obama would move forward with reform with or without Republican support. “This is not starting over,” one White House official said. “Don’t make any mistake about that. We are coming with our plan. They can bring their plan.”
The summit will allow Democrats to scrub clean the process of reform and give Republicans what they’ve been demanding all along — another seat at the health care negotiating table. Here is my prediction: Republicans will repackage their existing health care plans and present them to the President with a TV salesman’s pitch: a common sense approach to fixing the nation’s health care ills, at half the cost of all previous reform efforts. Act now and they’ll throw in a free copy of Going Rogue.
The plan will allow healthier Americans to purchase porous coverage across state lines with government tax credits and push the millions of Americans with chronic conditions into high-cost high-risk pools. Republicans will proclaim that owning one’s own health care policy is the silver bullet to solving the country’s health care crisis and promise to slow Medicare and Medicaid spending by privatizing both programs. With step by step improvements, everyone will have some kind of health insurance, they’ll argue. Eventually.
The President will insist that any health care reform must build on the current employer-based system and rely large risk pools to spread the risks and costs of health care insurance across a large group. He will remind Republicans that the House and Senate health care bills already include many Republican health care ideas like high risk pools, selling policies across state lines (in the form of more regulated compacts), high deductible policies for younger Americans, employer-sponsored wellness programs, tax credits for small businesses, and allowing younger Americans to stay on their parents’ health care plans as dependents.
Republicans will insist that their plan is an all-or-nothing deal; carving out little bits and incorporating it into a larger plan is not their flavor of bipartisanship. The only way they’ll jump on board is if Democrats accept their plan. As Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) has already explained, “unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.” Republicans took a similar approach to Obama’s first health care conference in March 2009, demanding that Democrats abandon the public option before convening any real negotiations.
The President will explain that the House and Senate health care bills regulate insurer competition without eliminating private companies or expanding government control, much like the Massachusetts health care reform. This will trigger Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) effort to awkwardly distance himself from the plan he ran on and still supports. He’ll say that he’s an independent who doesn’t think that Massachusetts should have to pay for other states’ reform efforts. He may even highlight the state’s success in achieving a 98% insurance rate and the popularity of reform, although that would run the risk of suggesting that reform could work without resorting to death panels. Before sitting down, he’ll explain that Massachusetts’ success in expanding health insurance coverage should not be used as a template for the nation because even if it worked there, there is no guarantee that it will work everywhere. He’ll throw his support behind the Republican’s untested health care ownership scheme.
The summit will close with some inspiring remarks from the President, but at the end of the day, it will be up to the Republicans to meet the Democrats half way. Obama would have taken his steps towards bipartisanship, he may even make some concessions on tort reform. But this will be the Republicans’ final opportunity to embrace the rather moderate package of reforms. If they still insist on starting over, they’re effectively taking themselves out of the process and giving the reins to the Democrats. From there, Reid and Pelosi can either build momentum for passing the Senate health care bill alongside a package of fixes, pass a smaller package “around those elements in the package that people agree on” or (less likely) adopt a compromise that resembles Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) health care bill.
The summit will give both sides the opportunity to publicly rehash their health care rhetoric. It’s what Obama chooses to do after February 25th that’s important.
Can The Senate Address The Full Scope Of The Unemployment Problem?
Can The Senate Address The Full Scope Of The Unemployment Problem?
Last month, the unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent (even as 20,000 more jobs were lost in January) and the wider U6 measure of underemployment fell for the first time in months to 16.5 percent. While those numbers do reveal the beginnings of a stabilization in the labor market, according to Kirsten Downey, a former economics reporter at the Washington Post, they also vastly understate the extent of the employment problem, because of who the statistics do not include.
In fact, she wrote, while policymakers are celebrating the avoidance of a second Great Depression, the standard measures of unemployment reveal very little in terms of good comparisons to the 1930’s:
Now, the federal government says we have an estimated 14.8 million unemployed, out of a work force of about 154 million. But that number is artificially lower than in the Great Depression because 33 million senior citizens are on Social Security — and not seeking jobs as they were then. An additional 7.4 million adults receive disability payments under Social Security, and some would also have been seeking work in 1933…We have a far larger standing military than in 1933 — about 1 percent of the work force, or 1.4 million men and women…In other words, 43.4 million people are paid for government employment in the military, or supported through government programs. If added to the jobless numbers, it equals about 58 million people.
Of course, I think it’s kind of silly to throw the military into this pot, because they’re government employees like any other. (Why not include employees of government agencies?) Also, it’s a vindication of the Social Security system that seniors no longer have to be out looking for work.
But the point remains that we have a significant unemployment problem that is not fully explained by the simple unemployment rate. For instance, the unemployment rate for African-Americans is a stunning 24.3 percent. Only two-thirds of adult men have a job at the moment, which is the fewest since World War II. And long-term unemployment hit another record last month, as “over 41 percent of the unemployed have been looking for a job for 27 weeks or more.”
All of which points to the necessity of Congress acting on a new jobs bill quickly. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had hoped to bring legislation to the floor as soon as today, but the snowfall that buried DC has delayed action for now. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), meanwhile, has signaled that the Senate bill could garner some bipartisan support, telling CongressDaily “”I think my colleagues should support it…It’s basically a set of ideas that they can live with.”
But as Rep. George Miller (D-CA) said last week, all of the jobs proposals before Congress at the moment are likely to be “inadequate to the scope of the problem.” Indeed, as David Madland wrote, “to give a sense of how big this jobs hole is, we would need to create 350,000 jobs per month for the next 24 months just to recover what we have lost since the recession began, and that’s not even compensating for population increases.” That’s a big hill to climb, and as of right now, the Senate doesn’t seem willing to step up in a way that will make enough of a difference.
Palin Says Congress Should Not Repeal DADT ‘Right Now’
Palin Says Congress Should Not Repeal DADT ‘Right Now’
During her first appearance on Fox News Sunday, Sarah Palin criticized President Obama for calling for an end to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in his State of the Union address, but did not defend the policy. “There are other things to be worried about right now with the military. I think that kind of on the back burner, is sufficient for now,” Palin said:
PALIN: I don’t think so right now. I’m surprised that the President spent time on that in his State of the Union speech when he spent only about 9 percent of his time in the State of the Union on national security issues. And I say that because there are other things to be worried about right now with the military. I think that kind of on the back burner, is sufficient for now. To put so much time, and effort, and politics into it, unnecessary.
Watch it:
Palin suggested that the policy is working without adopting a more reactionary tone towards gays openly servicing in the armed forces. Unlike her other proclamations, this answer sounded almost reasonable. After all, should the military really alter DADT during a time of war?
It should. It’s particularly during times of war, when the military is stretched thin and is asking its members to fight for freedoms in distant lands that it should grant all of its soldiers the right to be who they are. But the argument against change during wartime also doesn’t work because “there is no end in sight to the war on terror” and endless war cannot be a reason for “permanent stasis in military policy.”
In fact, as historian Mary L. Dudziak points out, wartime has actually “the context for the expansion of equality rights” within the military and civil society. President Truman desegregated the military in the context (and largely because of) the Korean War. Congress passed ‘The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act’ — granting women permanent status in the Regular and Reserve forces of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and the Air Force — in 1948, and President Johnson signed sweeping Civil Rights legislation during the conflict in Vietnam.
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Wonk RoomContact Us
Donate
