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. [...]
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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.
Gillibrand To Propose Spending Freeze For DADT Funding
Gillibrand To Propose Spending Freeze For DADT Funding
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Studies have indicated that the cost of discharging and replacing service members fired because of their sexual orientation during the policy’s first 10 years varied from $190.5 million to $363.8 million (if the high cost of training officers and other factors are considered).
Gilibrand’s amendment also suggests that Congress will begin to chisel away at DADT this year without instituting a full repeal. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) has signaled that Congress might adopt a moratorium on discharges but seemed to accept that Congress would have to wait for the Pentagon to finish its review before reversing the policy. Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen have testified that they would need a year to study DADT and then at least another year to implement a new policy.
Still, the Democrats’ timeline for repeal is unclear. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters that “she’s unsure whether the House will overturn ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ this year” and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated that he would support a moratorium as an interim measure. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday that “by this year’s end, we will have eliminated the policy.”
On Thursday Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) appeared on The Michelangelo Signorile Show to argue that Congress should proceed with the repeal before the review is complete. “By the time the bill can be signed by the President, and it’s going to take a bill and it goes through the House and it goes through the Senate and he has to sign it and it will be 6 to 7 months. As quickly as we can do this, it will be by toward the end of the year.” “So Gates has plenty of time to study whatever the hell it is he thinks he has to study,” Frank said.
Pence: U.S. MidEast Policy Should Be Dictated By Israelis
Pence: U.S. MidEast Policy Should Be Dictated By Israelis
In a Christian Broadcasting Network interview Rep, Mike Pence (R-IN) (who appears to be doing a very good Michael Scott impression) shares his view that the U.S. shouldn’t decide its own policy toward Israel, but rather simply do what Israeli voters want:
PENCE: I have grown increasingly troubled at the mixed signals that this administration is sending to the various parties in the [Middle East] region. It feels for all the world that we are sliding back to the era of the Clinton administration where it was the ambition of the United States to be an honest broker in the region. I take issue with that.
I think President George W. Bush got it right. The United States certainly wants to be honest, but we don’t want to be a broker. A broker doesn’t take sides. A broker negotiates between parties of equals… America’s on the side of Israel. And to send any other message than our unwavering support, that we will stand with what the sovereign government and the people of Israel decide is in their interest, I think represents a departure from where the heart of the American people are at.
Watch it:
Given that Pence is said to have a fairly weak grasp of policy, it’s unsurprising that his recollection of U.S.-Israel relations during the Clinton administration is shaky. The idea that the Clinton era represented some sort of dark age of U.S. pressure on Israel is ridiculous. A number of commentators have suggested that the problem was precisely that Clinton was not acting as an honest broker in negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, but rather, in the words of Clinton’s Middle East adviser Aaron David Miller, as “Israel’s lawyer.” As it turned out, that was bad for Israel. (And horrible for the Palestinians.) More importantly, however, it was bad for the U.S. As Miller noted, it’s only “When we have used our diplomacy wisely and functioned as advocates and lawyers for both sides, we have succeeded.”
It’s interesting that Pence thinks George W. Bush “got it right,” given that the Bush’s and Obama’s policies on Israel are nearly identical. Both presidents have used almost the exact same language in describing the contours of a just resolution to the conflict. The main difference is that Obama, unlike Bush, has actually shown an interest in holding Israel to its commitments and obligations, which some conservative groups have tried, dishonestly, to interpret as Obama being “anti-Israel.”
But what’s most amazing is Pence’s insistence that it’s somehow inappropriate for the United States “to send any other message than our unwavering support” for whatever “the sovereign government and the people of Israel decide is in their interest.” That’s just crazy. There’s no other country in the world of which a politician could say something like this and be taken seriously. The U.S.-Israel “special relationship” means that the U.S. has a special commitment to Israel’s continued existence and security, and that our two governments consult closely in regard to shared concerns. It doesn’t mean that the U.S. has to acquiesce to every Israeli policy decision, even when those policies negatively impact the U.S.’s own security and credibility, as does, for example, Israel’s ongoing attempt to engineer the Jewish ethnic control of East Jerusalem.
But, of course, there’s a rather large lobbying infrastructure in place to make sure that this is exactly how the U.S. interprets the “special relationship,” and which will relentlessly attack and fund-raise against politicians who suggest that certain Israeli policies are bad for the U.S., or that the U.S. actually has interests in the region that might not accord with whatever the current Israeli government wants. And it’s pretty effective.
As GOP Leadership Backs Away, Conservatives Throw Support To Ryan’s Radical Budget
As GOP Leadership Backs Away, Conservatives Throw Support To Ryan’s Radical Budget
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, recently released an updated version of his “Roadmap for America’s Future” — a radical budget proposal that eliminates long-term deficits by essentially privatizing Medicare and Social Security and placing arbitrary, non-specific freezes on all non-discretionary spending.
Yesterday, the Republican House leadership refused to endorse the plan (while not coming up with any substantive objections) but that hasn’t stopped other conservative from lending it their full-throated backing:
– Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), a co-sponsor of the legislation: We have a plan, [Democrats] have nothing.
– Former Congressional Budget Office Director and McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin: It’s commendable and very true to his conservative beliefs. I think it’s fabulous, it’s a great template for everyone that’s not just relying on smoke and mirrors.
– Rep. Tom Price (R-GA): Halting America’s slide into bankruptcy and economic stagnation will require bold solutions like Rep. Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future. The Roadmap uses common sense reforms to improve our health care system and bring Social Security and Medicare into the 21st Century.
While Price is willing to characterize Ryan’s proposal as common sense, the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson wrote that it’s “extremely serious — not as a budget proposal, but as a dystopian parable. It’s like reading 1984 for the next century, but with graphs.”
Ryan’s plan accurately reflects the reality that entitlements — and particularly health care spending — are the drivers of long-term budget deficits. But Ryan deals with those problems by simply dumping health care costs back onto the individual, throwing seniors into the wilds of the private insurance market, and subjecting Social Security to the roulette wheel of the stock market.
“This proposal would take Medicare from costing an expected 14.3 percent of GDP in 2080 to less than 4 percent. That’s trillions of dollars that’s not going to health care for seniors. The audacity is breathtaking,” noted the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. Meanwhile, as I’ve pointed out before, private accounts of the sort Ryan proposes would have cost seniors tens of thousands of dollars in the 2008-2009 market plunge. And while Ryan emphasizes that the account money would only be put into investment funds approved “for soundness and safety,” as the the Cunning Realist has pointed out, failed investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were both “blue chips, the sort of companies that proponents of private accounts insisted any new system would be limited to.”
At the end of the day, everyone approving of this plan is signaling their support for gutting the social safety net as we know it. No wonder the GOP leadership doesn’t want to emphasize that in an election year.
At Behest Of King Coal And Big Ag, Ike Skelton And Collin Peterson Try To Outlaw Global Warming
At Behest Of King Coal And Big Ag, Ike Skelton And Collin Peterson Try To Outlaw Global Warming
Speaking before a gathering of coal-powered executives, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) announced Tuesday that he, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), and Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) were introducing yet another piece of legislation to roll back Clean Air Act action on global warming pollution. Skelton’s Dirty Air Act comes on the heels of similar legislation by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND). At the Missouri Rural Electric Cooperative State Legislative Conference, Skelton argued that because Congressional action on climate has “stalled” in the Senate, he “cannot tolerate turning over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to unelected bureaucrats” at the Environmental Protection Agency:
Simply put, we cannot tolerate turning over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to unelected bureaucrats at EPA. America’s energy and environmental policies should be set by Congress. It appears the clean energy bill moving through Congress is stalled. Let us set that bill aside and pass this scaled-back energy legislation. This bill, which represents a responsible way to move forward on energy legislation, gets the EPA under control, provides good things for American farmers, and builds upon bipartisan objectives that will help curb climate change and make our nation more energy independent.
The attacks on “unelected bureaucrats” are nonsense — the mandate to declare global warming emissions air pollutants came from the U.S. Supreme Court, the finding that global warming threatens the health and welfare of Americans came from independent scientists, and the plans for action have been approved by the Senate-confirmed EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and the duly-elected President of the United States, Barack Obama.
Critically, Skelton’s legislation would forbid defining any greenhouse gas as an “air pollutant” on the “basis of its effect on global climate change,” and prevent the consideration of the effect of ethanol production on land use.
Just as the coal industry has been warring against the science of global warming, the corn ethanol industry has been attacking the science of indirect land use change, which finds that a massive increase in biofuel production can cause farmers around the world to change how they plant crops and encourages the destruction of forests — leading to increased global warming pollution. These secondary effects can lessen or swamp out the global warming benefits of switching from fossil fuels to biofuels. Climate denier Peterson, who inserted pro-ethanol language in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act for the agriculture industry last year in exchange for his vote, has announced he won’t support climate legislation again if it came up for a new vote. Amidst this political morass, the EPA this week incorporated land use effects into its biofuels mandate.
Skelton’s crusade against reality is putting his constituents at deadly risk. Skelton is ignoring the recent series of deadly floods, catastrophic ice storms, killer tornadoes, dangerous heat waves, and drought that have harmed the fourth congressional district of Missouri — all of which will worsen if global warming isn’t held back.
The rural electric cooperatives, though nominally publicly owned, are part of a nationwide network of climate-denying coal-powered companies, who are fighting climate legislation, even though it would lower their customers’ bills and stabilize energy prices. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is a top donor to Skelton, giving him $57,100. Peterson’s top donors include coal-powered American Crystal Sugar, at $84,585 among the $1,745,973 Peterson has received from agribusiness.
Charlie Crist Slams Marco Rubio’s Opposition To Including Immigrants In Census
Charlie Crist Slams Marco Rubio’s Opposition To Including Immigrants In Census
Earlier this week, Florida U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio (R) accused opponent, Gov. Charlie Crist (R), of trying to “dilute the voting power of every American citizen” through his support of including immigrants in this year’s Census count. According to Rubio, “the Census should count legal American citizens only.” Rubio later edited his remarks to clarify that he was only referring to undocumented immigrants, not green card-holders like his mother and father once were. Meanwhile, Crist and many Florida Republicans have accused Rubio of simply trying to score cheap political points and putting Florida’s best interests at stake while doing so.
Crist remarks that Rubio’s “notion that you wouldn’t want to accept federal funding to make a political point is absurd.” A post on Crist’s website points out that, when asked about undocumented immigrants and the Census, Rubio initially said last week that “there’s good arguments on both sides of it,” and that he was not sure and needed to “research it more.” Rubio also allegedly stated that the census should have an “accurate count” in order to know how “bad of an immigration problem we have.” According to Crist’s Senate campaign, Rubio’s change of heart is indicative of a broader flip-flop on the immigration issue.
Crist isn’t the only one attacking Rubio’s position, several Florida Republicans and Latino activists have denounced his remarks. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) stated, “It [not counting undocumented immigrants] would be pretty damaging to Florida. The reality is, whether you like it or not, there are undocumented, illegal people in the state. Pretending they’re not there, not counting them, doesn’t make them go away.” State Rep. Dean Cannon commented that “it’s just important that the count be accurate regardless of their [immigrant] status.” Even Marco Rubio supporter State Rep. Esteban Bovo (R) said, “So much funding is tied to the Census, and to be undercounted could have devastating effects down the line…I really don’t want our community to get shortchanged.”
A 2009 report by the Drum Major Institute (DMI) shows that not counting undocumented immigrants would lead to inaccurate demographic information and result in costly mistakes in infrastructure, education, and healthcare planning. DMI points out that businesses also rely on accurate social, economic and demographic census information so they can make smart investment decisions. DMI further argues that “leaving out undocumented immigrants deprives citizens of political power and political voice.”
Pelosi Promises To Repeal Insurers’ Anti-Trust Exemption Next Week
Pelosi Promises To Repeal Insurers’ Anti-Trust Exemption Next Week
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) announcement that the House will pass legislation repealing health insurers’ exemption from federal anti-trust legislation, elicited a standing ovation this morning at the Democratic National Committee’s Winter Meeting. Language removing the exemption was originally part of the House health care bill and Pelosi hopes that passing the provision separately would recommit the party to health care and narrow the differences with the Senate bill, which did not include the repeal.
“It is time for us to end the unfair advantage insurance companies have over American families an that is why next week the House will act to repeal the special anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies,” Pelosi said.
Watch it:
The legislation will do little to lower costs as a stand alone measure. But combined with the competition created by comprehensive health care reform, removing the exemption would allow the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prevent insurers from engaging in the kind of deceptive and egregious conduct that has contributed to high health care costs.
In other words, the repeal is just the first step in restoring real competition to health insurance markets. Policy makers must pass real health care reform and do more to shift the FTC’s focus towards industries where there is the most consumer harm.
START Exposing Divide Among Conservatives
START Exposing Divide Among Conservatives
Are there any Powell conservatives left in the Senate?
The neocon war on START has heated up. John Bolton has been on the war path as usual. The Washington Times has published three opinion pieces in the past week disparaging START. The Heritage Foundation has produced multiple pieces attacking the treaty. Finally, Keith Payne – “Donald Rumsfeld’s Dr. Strangelove” – essentially argued in the Pittsburgh Tribune that the Senate should only support a treaty if it doesn’t really cut nuclear weapons, which is sort of the entire point of the treaty.
But at the very same time that these forces have mobilized, so has the traditional and more established realist wing of the conservative foreign policy establishment – not just in support of START, but in support of the overall global effort to eliminate nuclear weapons. While the opponents of a START treaty have been on the fringes of past Republican administration’s, these figures contain many of the most prominent conservative foreign policy figures, including Secretaries of State and Defense Colin Powell, George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Frank Carlucci, as well as Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and Condoleezza Rice’s State Department consigliere Philip Zelikow.
At issue here are two competing world views. On the one hand, there are the neocons like Bolton, that insist that the US should actually begin engaging in a new nuclear arms race to stop countries from thinking we are weak, as well as out of a bizarre notion that the Cold War never ended. This warped and hyper-paranoid perspective is the very vision that pushed the US to invade Iraq over fears of that a Saddam-initiated mushroom cloud was imminent. On the other hand, there are the realist conservatives like Powell and Kissinger, that argue that nuclear weapons have become militarily useless and that if nothing is done to eliminate nuclear weapons, the world will move quickly in the opposite direction toward a nuclear tipping point, in which proliferation cascades and which the threat of nuclear terrorism becomes ever more likely.
Hence, the ratification fight over START is not really one between progressives and conservatives. Progressives are in agreement with Republicans like Powell, Kissinger, and Schultz. Instead, the ratification fight is between conservatives. The ratification debate will expose the extent to which conservative politicians have become “neoconized,” as it will clarify where Senate conservatives stand – are they with John Bolton or are they with Colin Powell?
Gibbs On Health Reform Negotiations With Republicans: ‘Nothing Scheduled Right Now’
Gibbs On Health Reform Negotiations With Republicans: ‘Nothing Scheduled Right Now’
Yesterday, President Obama reiterated that the “next step” for health care reform is “a meeting where I’m sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts and let’s just go through these bills.” “Their ideas, our ideas. Let’s just walk through them in a methodical way,” Obama said.
But during today’s press gaggle at the White House, Robert Gibbs said that Democrats have not actually scheduled any meetings with Republicans:
REPORTER: Any meetings in the works with Republicans?
GIBBS: I will point you to what he said with Republicans last Friday and in SOTU “in wanting to hear and see more ideas.” Nothing scheduled right now.
REPORTER: Would he like Pelosi to call for a vote?
GIBBS: They’re still working with Capitol Hill on the best way forward.
Some progressives have argued that the Senate health care bill already represents a compromise between Republican and Democratic ideas. They suggest that Republicans would not be willing to negotiate with Democrats in good faith and believe that passing the Senate health care bill, alongside a package of fixes using reconciliation, represents the best chance for achieving comprehensive health care reform before the end of the year.
On a recent conference call with reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said reconciliation represented the best way forward on reform and refused to discuss a ‘plan B’ for reform. Still, she insisted that “we will get the job done for the American people one way or another.”
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