Gingrich: ‘People Don’t Elect Presidents Who Tell Them To Sacrifice’
Gingrich: ‘People Don’t Elect Presidents Who Tell Them To Sacrifice’
In a November 1st interview with Newsweek, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was asked, “Obama said in one of the debates that Americans need to sacrifice and cut back their energy usage. How do you think that’ll fly as part of the solution?” [Note: Obama didn’t actually say that.] Gingrich responded:
Just as well as it did with Jimmy Carter. People don’t elect presidents who tell them to sacrifice. They elect presidents who solve problems so they don’t have to sacrifice.
If Gingrich is right, it looks like we won’t have a president for the next four years.
On June 21, 2005, McCain said of his global warming legislation:
Does it involve some sacrifice on the part of the American people? Yes. I have to tell you, every time I talk to young Americans and say, Are you willing to make some sacrifice to prevent the occurrences that we see are happening now, these young Americans are more than willing to do so.
On August 8, 2005, McCain said of the American troops serving in the Iraq war:
We must win. We must prevail. And it may require additional service and sacrifice, tragically.
On April 11, 2007, McCain said of the American troops serving in the Iraq war:
In Iraq, hope is a fragile thing, but all the more admirable for the courage and sacrifice necessary to nurture it.
On July 27, 2008, McCain again said of the American troops involved in the Iraq “surge”:
When the crucial time came as to whether we were going to leave Iraq and lose, or stay and do the very unpopular thing of 30,000 additional troops — asking young Americans to make the sacrifice — he was wrong, I was right.
Gingrich is speaking flat nonsense. The American public are not children who require false coddling and empty promises, but are proud adults who elect people who lead by example. As John F. Kennedy concluded his inaugural address:
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.
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Palin Ignores Gender Discrimination: Women Would Benefit From Individual Health Care Plans
Palin Ignores Gender Discrimination: Women Would Benefit From Individual Health Care Plans
Two days after new data from insurance companies and online brokers suggested that women buying health insurance in the individual market pay more for coverage, Sarah Palin argued that Sen. McCain’s plan to push more Americans into the individual heath insurance market would benefit women:
Of course we want and deserve equal pay for equal work. But we also want to be able to afford good health care for our families. John McCain’s plan for the $5,000 tax credit will allow us to make our own decisions, to be able to afford health care, to erase these state lines that prohibit a competitive environment to purchase a good health-care package. . . . That’s an issue that is important to women.”
Palin’s pro-market rhetoric obscures the consequences of exposing health care to a “competitive environment.” In fact, despite Palin’s pro-choice assertions, allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines would eliminate existing consumer protections and increase the costs of insurance.
Insurance companies are already charging women more than men for identical coverage. As the New York Times reported last week, “women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage.” A 30-year-old woman pays “31 percent more than a man of the same age in Denver or Chicago” and in Iowa, “a 30-year-old woman pays $49 a month more than a man of the same age.”
Women pay more because they are more likely to have certain chronic diseases and are expected — as people who bare children — to need more care.
McCain’s plan would give insurance companies even more incentive to discriminate against women. Under his proposal, in order to attract the healthiest risk pool and maximize profits, insurance companies would market bare-bones policies from states that don’t require insurers to finance maternity care or cervical cancer screenings. But an exodus of non-insurance users into bare-bones policies would further fragment the health insurance pool, divide those who don’t use insurance from those who do and force women who require pregnancy check-ups or other health care services to pay more for identical coverage.
The only “choice” McCain’s health care plan would provide women, is the “choice” of paying more for health care. And that’s certainly “an issue that is important to women.”
For more on how McCain’s health care plan would effect women, click here and here.
McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane
McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane
Both presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) have called for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions in the United States. Coal-fired power plants, which produce about 49 percent of U.S. electricity, account for 83 percent of power-sector emissions. Because of the global warming footprint, the cheapness of coal-fired electricity is illusory. Under a cap-and-trade system, the cost of those emissions — now a market externality — would have a dollar cost. In a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama used blunt language to describe how a cap and trade system would change the future of the power sector:
That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.
The right wing has gone insane over these remarks, falsely claiming that Obama said he “will bankrupt the coal industry.” This false claim is the headline of a Newsbusters story — the same right-wing front group that falsely attacked Al Gore using doctored audio clips. This time, the piece is based on an anonymous YouTube video. After being pumped by a top link on the Drudge Report, the right-wing — including the Weekly Standard, Michelle Malkin, and Power Line — went wild and repeated the lie that Obama talked about “bankrupting” the “coal industry.”
In reality, Obama’s statements, while blunt, are neither revelatory nor controversial. At a September 15 townhall meeting in Orlando, FL, McCain warned against building new coal plants:
We’re going to build new plants that generate energy, my friends, we’re going to build them. We’ve got to. There’s an increased demand for it. And it seems to me, it’s going to be coal, which I believe will increase greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, or it’s going to be nuclear, or it’s going to be clean coal technology.
In the San Francisco Chronicle interview , Obama similarly stated that the future of power involves coal:
But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives.
Under either candidate’s cap and trade program, constructing new coal plants that do not employ “clean coal technology” — that is, carbon capture and sequestration technology — would raise costs “dramatically.” Independent analysts have found that new coal plants would “create significant financial risks for shareholders and ratepayers” because of the likely cost of their greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, energy providers will have a financial incentive to pursue alternative energy and energy efficiency. McCain explained the market signal of a cap and trade program in his May 12 speech on climate change:
And the same approach that brought a decline in sulfur dioxide emissions can have an equally dramatic and permanent effect on carbon emissions. Instantly, automakers, coal companies, power plants, and every other enterprise in America would have an incentive to reduce carbon emissions, because when they go under those limits they can sell the balance of permitted emissions for cash. As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy. . . A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. Those who want clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels will have their opportunity through a new market that rewards those and other innovations in clean energy.
McCain emphasized who the winners under a carbon cap-and-trade system are: “clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels.” The market “incentive,” “reward,” or “signal” is a euphemism that the winners will make money because the losers will pay more. And the losers, above all, are traditional coal plants — no matter who is elected president.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll calls Obama’s quotes a “blockbuster story,” the Corner’s Mark Steyn hyperventilates that this was a “****-me story,” and Hugh Hewitt’s Bill Dyer calls it “madness masquerading as policy.” This video from Jed Lewison puts matters into perspective:
McCain’s Medicaid Cuts: $738 Billion Over 10 Years
McCain’s Medicaid Cuts: $738 Billion Over 10 Years
The recent economic downturn is forcing states to “scale back safety-net health-coverage programs,” USA Today is reporting. Medicaid, which eats up 17 percent of state budgets is on the chopping block and millions of low-income adults and children are in danger of losing their health insurance.
Sen. John McCain’s solution is to push even more people off the rolls. As the Wonk Room reported, McCain recently proposed cutting $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid to plug the $1.3 trillion funding gap in his budget-neutral health care plan. And while the campaign has argued that McCain will make up the shortfall by finding trillions of dollars worth of “savings,” most observers disagree.
CAPAF’s very own Peter Harbage, for instance, who conducted the initial analysis of the effects of McCain’s cuts on both Medicare and Medicaid had released a new report documenting the consequences of McCain’s proposed “savings.”
According to Harbage, “the only way for Sen. McCain to achieve his goal is to slow Medicaid growth to 5.5 percent per year –well below what is would take to maintain enrollment growth and match the rising costs of medical care.” To accomplish this, McCain would have to lock in federal spending limits “through so called block grants, which deliver federal funds according to pre-set budget limits rather than on a needs basis, as is now the case.”
In other words, as unemployment creeps up and more Americans lose their health insurance (a 1 percent increase in unemployment resulted in 1 million more people enrolling in Medicaid and SCHIP and another 1.1 million more people uninsured), the federal government will sit on its hands, offering no extra Medicaid funding. Here are the consequences of McCain’s one-size-fits all block grant:
- Total program cut of $738 billion over 10 years
- 29 states could lose more than $5 billion in federal Medicaid spending over 10 years
- Every state could see a reduction of more than $1 billion in total Medicaid spending (federal and state) over 10 years
By limiting average annual growth to 5.5 percent — compared to the estimated 5.9 percent growth rate needed to keep up with medical inflation and Medicaid enrollment growth, states will have to make cutbacks in “program, eligibility and benefits or both.”
What A Waste It Is To Lose One’s Mind
What A Waste It Is To Lose One’s Mind
Commentary’s Abe Greenwald has thought up a cunning defense of the $448,000 that McCain-chaired International Republican Institute gave to Rashid Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies:
McCain’s token gesture was a political quickie aimed at pacifying a noisy party that you’d never really want to get personally involved with… Groups like the CPRS are specifically designed to cloak radical players in the robes of academic respectability.
$440k is a token gesture? I don’t know what kind of sums Greenwald is used to playing around with, but where I come from, half a million dollars is a pretty fair indication of support. Greenwald refers to CPRS as “Khalidi’s front organization,” which implies that CPRS had some other nefarious purpose. What that was, I’m sure Greenwald will tell us very soon. Very, very soon.
If Greenwald’s right, though, about McCain thoughtlessly throwing money around, doesn’t this mean that there could have been all kinds of other dangerous “front organizations” receiving money from IRI when McCain was too busy to do background checks? Shouldn’t someone be looking into this? Because this raises serious questions.
Meanwhile, back in the sane world, this Washington Post editorial, in which they asked Khalidi “whether he wanted to respond to the [McCain] campaign charges against him.”
He answered, via e-mail, that “I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over.” That’s good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign’s increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.
Indeed, in some quarters it never stops. I believe Ezra Klein has hit upon an appropriate response: Buy Khalidi’s excellent book The Iron Cage.
McCain Calls Offshore Drilling ‘Alternative Energy’
McCain Calls Offshore Drilling ‘Alternative Energy’
This morning, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) what his plan was “to create some recovery in the stock market.” McCain replied:
Keep taxes low, cut spending, create jobs with alternative energy including nuclear power plants, including drilling offshore, wind, tide, solar, free us from our sending $700 billion or whatever it is across to countries that don’t like us very much, free up credit.
Watch it:
Even though the term “alternative energy” is vague, under no rational interpretation does the entirely conventional practice of offshore oil drilling qualify. As the ExxonMobil website describes the offshore areas that were formerly covered by the 27-year moratorium lifted this month, those reserves are “conventional“: More »
WATCH: McCain Dances With The Far-Right And The Super-Rich On Economic Policy
WATCH: McCain Dances With The Far-Right And The Super-Rich On Economic Policy
When it comes to taxes and the economy, John McCain has got his dancing shoes on.
In the early 2000s, John McCain eschewed his reputation as a radical tax cutter by opposing the Bush tax cuts because they “came at the expense of middle class Americans.”
But now he’s waltzed all the way back to the far right, proposing not only to extend the Bush tax cuts, but double them by giving away another $300 billion in budget-busting tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy while leaving out 100 million Americans.
In the last month, he’s made overtures to the middle class, promising mortgage relief and a new set of tax cuts for the middle class. But when the details were revealed, they turned out to be just more giveaways to corporations and the wealthy.
Watch him go:
Dancing shoes? Maybe he’ll just add taps to his $520 loafers.
UPDATE: Embeddable code after the jump.
Is There Anything Palin Doesn’t Like ‘Tapping Into’?
Is There Anything Palin Doesn’t Like ‘Tapping Into’?
Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) gave a speech on energy policy at a solar energy company, in her words, “in a manner with much substance.” She repeatedly went off the script of her prepared remarks (as Jed Lewison and Ana Marie Cox have noted), using many of her favorite locutions. One of her most common rogue phrases was a call for tapping into various sources of, well, just about anything. Her approach exposes the conservative ideology that all forms of energy are created equal; that details like cost, pollution, and long-term consequences are immaterial.
Watch it:
For those watching at home, here’s the list:
| Palin’s Top Eight For The Tapping |
|---|
| Solar energy |
| Some technology that will allow our nation to be firmly put on that path towards energy independence |
| Hundreds of trillions of cubic feet [of natural gas] |
| Hungry markets flowing our resources into those hungry markets |
| Energy supplies [safely, ethically] |
| Nucular energy |
| 100 new plants [of nucular energy] |
| American ingenuity |
| Many, many alternative sources |
Of that list, only natural gas is a resource that can be literally “tapped into.” Palin’s use of an oil industry metaphor to describe all forms of energy and innovation is consistent with the mindset of supply-side exploitation, a dangerously simplistic approach to energy policy that only considers the short-term profit interests of energy corporations. Some of her off-script “tapping” remarks had some policy “meat,” such as her attack on solar energy:
We have many many alternative sources that have not yet been tapped into and allowed to become economic and reliable. That’s the key, of course, is the reliability of these alternative sources.
This false attack on the unreliability of renewable energy is one both she and McCain have made before.
McCain Camp: Decrease The Size Of The Pool, Increase The Price Of Insurance Policy
McCain Camp: Decrease The Size Of The Pool, Increase The Price Of Insurance Policy
In the final days of the election, the McCain campaign has significantly altered its health care rhetoric. Initially arguing that McCain’s health care plan would allow voters to abandon their employer-based insurance plans for cheaper options on the individual market, the campaign is now emphasizing the importance of group coverage.
Senior McCain adviser and implosion watch subject Douglas-Holtz Eakin created a firestorm after effectively conceding the inferiority of individual health care plans on Tuesday, and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) is all too eager to follow his lead.
While stumping for McCain’s health care plan, the three-term congressman attempted to combat critics who charge that McCain’s plan “basically blows up the current system“:
Burgess agreed that many workers wouldn’t initially drop employer-sponsored coverage. He said the cost of individual plans would drop if insurers were allowed to offer plans across state lines, as Mr. McCain favors.
“The price for the policy goes down if you increase the size of your pool,” he said.
Progressives have long argued that larger risk pools effectively spread both the risk and cost of health insurance across a wide spectrum of the population, allowing healthier people to subsidize the sick. McCain plan flips this principle on its head, breaking up employer-risk pools and shuttling everyone into an individual plan.
By Burgess’ own definition, if you adopt McCain’s health plan and decrease “the size of your pool,” “the price for the policy” goes up.
It’s Time To End Discrimination In Health Insurance
It’s Time To End Discrimination In Health Insurance
Insurance companies will seize on anything to increase insurance premiums, and gender is no exception. An article in today’s New York Times points out that insurance companies rate-up individual insurance policies for women, forcing us to pay much more than men for identical coverage.
Since the individual market offers a raw deal to those who actually use care, women — who use maternity care and are more likely to have certain chronic diseases — may have a harder time finding affordable coverage than their male counterparts. A 30-year-old woman pays “31 percent more than a man of the same age in Denver or Chicago” and in Iowa, “a 30-year-old woman pays $49 a month more than a man of the same age.”
But Senator John McCain refuses to end this discrimination. McCain’s plan would make it even easier for insurers to cherry-pick the healthiest individuals who use the least amount of care. When asked why he didn’t support leveling the playing field and preventing insurance companies from covering only the healthiest and cheapest Americans, McCain replied that insurance companies should be able to decide who they cover and what they charge:
Q: Why not level the playing field, prevent insurance companies from cherry picking and let them compete on a level playing field?
MCCAIN: Because then I think then we would be mandating what the free enterprise sytem does and that would be, obviously, something I would not approve of.
Watch the ad from Health Care For America Now!:
I have often argued that buying health insurance is not the same as purchasing a refrigerator or a microwave. Health insurance is not another consumer good for which everyone pays the same price. Sick people are more expensive to insure than healthy people, the old accrue more cost than the young. For this reason, Senator John McCain’s belief in the dysfunctional and discriminatory individual market is fundamentally at odds with the point of health insurance, which requires that we share risks and pool costs.
Insurance companies should not be allowed to use a woman’s ability to become pregnant as an excuse to charge women more for health insurance. Unfortunately, by deregulating the individual market, Senator McCain would give insurance companies a free pass to continue charging women more for their health care.
McCain: Slander First
McCain: Slander First
In one of the more shameful episodes in the recent history of campaign flackery, Team McCain sent its blogger/spokesperson Mike Goldfarb out to shovel dirt at Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. After casually conceding that Khalidi received almost half a million dollars from the International Republican Institute back when it was headed by John McCain, Goldfarb proceeds to smear Khalidi as “unsavory” and an “anti-Semite” based on the fact that Khalidi happens to be an American of Palestinian descent and a critic of Israel’s policy of occupation and settlement in the West Bank.
Watch it:
New York University professor Barnett Rubin comes to Khalidi’s defense:
I actually find it demeaning, insulting, and depressing to have to defend Rashid. I could say, I know him, he has been a guest in my home in New York and in my rented house in Provence, he bears absolutely no resemblance to the image these despicable people are trying to project of him, and lot’s more. I could point out that I am Jewish and have VISIBLE JEWISH ARTIFACTS IN MY HOME, which did not appear to alarm Rashid, if he even noticed them, but it is all just so ridiculous I don’t know what to say.
I don’t want to treat these charges with the respect of a refutation. I just want to express my disgust with those who uttered them and my solidarity with my friend, Rashid Khalidi.
Scott Horton also speaks up for Khalidi:
Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights. He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies… He sees education and civic activism as the path to success, and he argues that pervasive military interventionism has historically undermined the Middle East and will continue to do so. Khalidi has also been one of the most articulate critics of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority—calling them repeatedly on their anti-democratic tendencies and their betrayals of their own principles.
A few years ago, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz “offered a large monetary award (payable to the PLO) for anyone who could actually come up with a quote by a prominent pro-Israeli writer who equated mere criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.” Given that Goldfarb is a former writer-editor for a prominent conservative magazine, I think Dershowitz owes the PLO some money.
The First Dude, Snowmobilin’ Mainers, And The Divisive Politics Of Karl Rove
The First Dude, Snowmobilin’ Mainers, And The Divisive Politics Of Karl Rove
Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, director of the documentary “A Snow Mobile for George,” a tour of deregulation in America. He owns a snow mobile.
As Politico’s Jonathan Martin tells us, “Iron Dog champ Todd Palin makes his direct mail debut in a piece aimed straight at the gut of a rural Mainers.” The letter warns snowmobiling Mainers, “Obama’s Extreme Environmental Policies” could make this “The Last Winter To Ride In Our National Parks?” The Maine Republican Party flier includes this edited quote from a Sierra Club blogger Pat Joseph:
In the end, the point that snowmobiles are loud and obnoxious and polluting seems obvious to everyone save perhaps the person actually astraddle the beast. . . . They just don’t have any business in our national parks.
Todd Palin’s flier dives straight into a barrel of red herrings.
In this flier, Palin is attempting to stoke a culture war between freedom-loving snowmobilers and tree-hugging environmentalists. But snowmobilers care about pollution and preserving the outdoors. And environmentalists love having fun. See how the flier edits the Sierra Club quote? Here’s what that dot-dot-dot eliminated from Pat Joseph’s criticism of snowmobiles in National Parks:
They are also fun. No doubt about it, they’re an absolute blast.
Mr. Palin says his wife and Senator McCain will protect snowmobile access with “practical standards.” But they don’t believe in regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, even though global warming has meant the Iron Dog competitors have raced in the rain — and in 2003, the race was even totally cancelled because of the extreme heat. It’s sure hard to protect the fun of snowmobiling if your “standards” mean the end to snow. More »
Note To McCain: It’s ‘A Matter Of History’ That Hoover Cut Federal Spending
Note To McCain: It’s ‘A Matter Of History’ That Hoover Cut Federal Spending
During an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes last night, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), as he is fond of doing, invoked Herbert Hoover to warn against Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) economic plan. “There was a president named Herbert Hoover,” said McCain. “They raised taxes, they practiced protectionism and they went from a serious recession into a deep depression. Now, that’s a matter of history.” Watch it:
However, there is another matter of history that McCain should look at regarding Hoover’s actions. Responding to the recession, and “convinced that a balanced federal budget was essential to restoring business confidence, Hoover sought to cut government spending and raise taxes.”
In fact, before the 1932 election, Hoover was touting his successful push to reduce government spending:
The extension of governmental expenditures beyond the minimum limit necessary to conduct the proper functions of the Government enslaves men to work for the Government….[T]he ordinary expenses of the Government have been reduced upwards of $200 million during the present administration. They will be decidedly further reduced.
Hoover’s approach was clearly unsuccessful, and late in his administration, he tried to recover:
As conditions worsened, Hoover’s administration eventually provided emergency loans to banks and industry, expanded public works, and helped states offer relief. But it was too little, too late.
There is a growing consensus among economists, budget analysts, and lawmakers that the next administration should not subscribe to what Matthew Yglesias has called “Neo-Hooverism” — mass spending reductions as a response to the financial crisis. McCain, however, consistently promises to balance the budget and has advocated a complete spending freeze on everything besides several “vital issues.”
If McCain really wants to use Hoover as an example of what should not be done in response to a recession, he needs to include the entire story, and not cherry-pick the most convenient of Hoover’s actions.
Elizabeth Edwards On High Administrative Costs
Elizabeth Edwards On High Administrative Costs
On Monday, during a discussion about health care policy, CAPAF Senior Fellow Elizabeth Edwards underscored the burden of administrative costs on the health system:
I ran into a woman who had worked in a hospital in Vancouver and she had moved to Boston. I met her in one of the New Hampshire primaries. And she said she worked in the accounting office in the hospital, and went to a hospital in Boston to get a job. Same number of beds in the hospitals. She got a job. She had worked in an accounting office with 6 people, she now worked in an accounting office with 600 people. Your health insurance dollars are being used to pay those 600 people. It is not an efficient use of our money.
Watch it:
Reducing administrative costs should be an important part of any serious cost-containment strategy. Unfortunately, Sen. John McCain’s reliance on the individual market would bolster the health bureaucracy and further grow the size of accounting offices.
That’s because marketing, medical underwriting, rescission, and increased paperwork for individuals leads insurance companies in the individual market to spend 29 percent of premium dollars on administrative costs, more than double the average amount in the group market.
As McCain adviser and individual market-proponent Douglas Holtz-Eakin admitted, employer based coverage “is way better” than a comparable plan in the individual market because the latter charges more for identical coverage. In fact, according to a study published in Health Affairs, higher administrative costs, along with other factors, increase the cost of an individual plan by an estimated $2,000.
So McCain’s push to get more Americans into the individual market, will have you paying more for less. As Peter Harbage points out, “shifting coverage from the group coverage market to the individual insurance market could generate as much as $20 billion in new administrative costs—which represents an increase of more than 20 percent in 2007 dollars.”
The Prepared Text For Sarah Palin’s Love Letter To Big Oil [Updated]
The Prepared Text For Sarah Palin’s Love Letter To Big Oil [Updated]
UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm notes that Palin’s prepared remarks make it unambiguous that McCain won’t regulate global warming pollution.
UPDATE II: We’ve updated the text with her speech as delivered. Jed Lewison notes one of her more amusing revisions. Gristmill’s David Roberts calls the speech “bizarre.” Ana Marie Cox describes the travails of the teleprompter operator.
UPDATE III: Former vice president Al Gore will be delivering a true energy policy speech tonight, in a live webcast at 8:30 PM as part of the Energy Action Coalition’s Power Vote campaign for youth climate activism.
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) just completed a “major” speech on energy policy, in which she offered no new policy, nor recognized the existence of global warming. She delivered her speech at the headquarters of the Xunlight Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, a producer of flexible thin-film photovoltaic solar panels — despite her earlier mockery of such technology:
Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.
This hypocritical choice is just following the lead of her running mate. In May, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on global warming at the U.S. headquarters of a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, after decades of opposition to the domestic renewable energy industry.
Below is the text of her prepared remarks — a half-hour love letter to Big Oil. Please note, however, that Palin went off-script repeatedly, throwing in such catchphrases from the campaign as “Drill, baby, drill,” “He’s got the scars to prove it,” “Maverick of the Senate,” and several digs at journalists.
UPDATE: Palin’s off-script remarks are in red.
Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of Xunlight Energy, and all the people of Toledo. The folks at Xunlight are doing great work for this community and our country. I’m so excited about this, Thank you for your hospitality, again doctor, thank you. Good, good things being said about this corporation as you’re progressing with the solar panels and understanding alternative energy sources. So necessary as a piece of the puzzle that we’re working on. I know my state of Alaska is certainly working on this. All that we can do to put the pieces together to allow our nation to become energy secure.
Inflating The Numbers: McCain’s Plan Boosts Coverage By Redefining ‘Insurance’
Inflating The Numbers: McCain’s Plan Boosts Coverage By Redefining ‘Insurance’
After the Lewin Group released its analysis of Sen. John McCain’s health care plan, the McCain campaign and even some in the media, have used the report to argue that McCain’s plan would cover about 20 million uninsured Americans and save millions:
- Jay Khosla, McCain policy adviser: But our internal estimate all along had been that we would cover anywhere between 25 million to 30 million uninsured. Lewin said it’s about 21 million. [Kaiser Foundation Webchat, 10/16/2008]
- Maria Bartiromo, host of Wall Street Journal Reports: According to a recent study by the independent Lewin Group, both candidates plans would reduce the total number of uninsured by the year 2010. Obama’s plan mandates coverage for children under 19. In the 55 to 64 age range, Senator McCain would reduce the number of uninsured by 25 percent, compared with the 52 percent under Obama’s plan. [CNBC, 10/19/2008]
- McCain campaign: “A recent Lewin Group study estimated savings of more than $1,400 per American family – almost three times the savings as under the Obama plan.” [JohnMcCain.com]
- Robert Carroll, Tax Foundation: “The Lewin Group, a respected private health-care research outfit, recently estimated that the McCain credit would increase the number of insured by as much as 21 million.” [WSJ, 10/27/2008]
But as the Wonk Room argued earlier this month, Lewin’s conclusion that McCain’s health care plan would reduce the number of uninsured by 21.1 million and cost $2.05 trillion dollars is More ». In fact, their conclusion paints a more favorable picture of McCain’s proposal precisely because it ignores the consequences of opening the health insurance market to unfettered market competition, overstates the purchasing power of McCain’s health credit and the quality of individual health insurance plans.
Yesterday, Len Berman of the Tax Policy Center, which conducted its own analysis of McCain’s plan, similarly argued that Lewin produced its favorable numbers by “ignoring the campaign’s statements and supplying their own assumptions.
Holtz-Eakin Implosion Watch: Admits Inferiority Of Individual Health Care Plans…Again
Holtz-Eakin Implosion Watch: Admits Inferiority Of Individual Health Care Plans…Again
Earlier this month — after previously maintaining that Sen. John McCain’s health care proposal would lower costs by allowing healthier Americans to find cheaper coverage in the individual market — McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin argued that “younger and healthier employees with the McCain health care tax credit will have a bigger incentive to stay with the employers“ because employers offer better coverage than individual health care plans.
At the time, the Wonk Room considered Holtz-Eakin’s remark an unfortunate, if somewhat desperate argument, which betrayed a disorganized campaign frantic to convince voters that they won’t lose their employer-sponsored coverage.
But as the days passed and the campaign moved into its home stretch, Holtz-Eakin’s comments ranged from the bizarre to the truthful:
- On CNBC, Holtz-Eakin asserted that “you can’t cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people, if just under 50 percent aren’t paying taxes” and then claimed that McCain would cut taxes for “everybody.”
- Last week, during a segment on Bloomberg television, Holtz-Eakin finally admitted that temporarily cutting the capital gains tax would overwhelmingly benefit millionaires
- On Bloomberg, Holtz-Eakin conceded that McCain’s health care tax credit wouldn’t cover the entire cost of a comprehensive health plan and would only allow some Americans to buy insurance in the individual market.
- On Face the Nation this Sunday, Holtz-Eakin seemed to argue that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
And so it is with great fanfare and anticipation that the Wonk Room unveils The Holtz-Eakin Implosion Watch, a semi-regular series chronicling Holtz-Eakin’s truthiest moments in the waning days of the campaign.
Today, Holtz-Eakin again strays off message, telling CNN, “younger, healthier workers likely wouldn’t abandon their company-sponsored plans“:
“Why would they leave?” said Holtz-Eakin. “What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit.”
Hotlz-Eakin argues that “under McCain’s plan, employer-funded care will generally be preferable to the tax credit alone — since it’s the tax credit plus the employer contribution — but that the tax credit alone will be a huge step up for people who have nothing at all.” In other words, in the individual market, without the employer contribution, Americans would have to pay more for less…and less as McCain’s tax credit does not keep up with medical inflation.
In fact, high deductible plans typically lead to higher out-of-pocket expenses, resulting in “a one-time shift in spending from premiums to patient out-of-pocket outlays.” As Holtz-Eakin himself points out:
McCain’s would leave them better off than they are now, but still with something less than complete coverage, unless they reach into their pockets to supplement the tax credit.
Oddly enough, Holtz-Eakin is now arguing that under McCain’s health care plan (which pushes about 20 million Americans out of the employer market and into the unregulated individual market), Americans would receive sub-prime health care coverage.
Media Amplify The McCain Campaign’s ‘Socialism’ Charge
Media Amplify The McCain Campaign’s ‘Socialism’ Charge
On the stump recently, both Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) have been calling Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) economic plans “socialism” because he wants to “spread the wealth” by raising rates on the top two federal income tax brackets back to the level at which they were under President Clinton.
The Tax Policy Center noted that “sharing the wealth, as McCain puts it, is what government does.” But this hasn’t stopped the media from amplifying the McCain message by questioning if Obama’s plan amounts to socialism or even Marxism.
The most egregious example was put forth by WFTV Orlando’s Barbara West, who asked Sen, Joe Biden (D-DE) “how is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?” But the media haven’t stopped there. Watch a compilation:
As the New Yorker pointed out yesterday, “the principle that Obama evinced, which most economists would regard as unexceptionable, can be traced to Adam Smith.” In The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
Furthermore, a new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice found that only 2.5 percent of Americans would lose any of their Bush tax cuts under the Obama plan.
Not only should those in the media point out that McCain’s charge is false, but they should note that McCain also plans to redistribute wealth. He just wants to redistribute wealth to the already wealthy.
Currently, the United States’ income concentration is at its highest level since 1928. McCain, though, has embraced the Bush economic agenda, proposing to make all of the Bush tax cuts permanent. From this, the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would only see 12 percent of the benefit. Meanwhile, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers would see a $1 million tax cut under McCain’s plan.
As Ben Armbruster noted on ThinkProgress, “Seeing that McCain’s policies have little to offer the average American, it seems he is now forced to acquiesce to the fringe right wing talking point that Obama just might be a Marxist.” But this doesn’t mean that the media need to follow suit.
McCain On Science: ‘Blah, Blah, Blah,’ ‘Foolishness,’ ‘Waste Of Money’
McCain On Science: ‘Blah, Blah, Blah,’ ‘Foolishness,’ ‘Waste Of Money’
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) earns great applause when he mocks science, and he does so often. This weekend, he added a new riff to his list of hits, summing up his concern for the dangers of nuclear waste:
Blah, blah, blah.
At this, McCain’s audience erupted into hoots and cheers. Watch it:
What else has McCain mocked?
BIOLOGY & ECOLOGY. The five-year, $4.8 million Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project used DNA analysis of hair samples to peg the population size, distribution, and genetic diversity of grizzly bears in northwestern Montana, finding that their population and range has increased. The Washington Post hailed it as “an astonishingly ambitious research project.” The New York Times described the project as “a prerequisite for sensible administration of the Endangered Species Act.”
McCain’s take: “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or criminal, but it was a waste of money.”
ASTRONOMY & SCIENCE EDUCATION. The Adler Planetarium in Chicago is the first planetarium theater in the Western Hemisphere, built 78 years ago. The planetarium’s Zeiss Mark VI projector — the planetarium’s second — is nearly 40 years old, and parts and manufacturer service are no longer available. To upgrade the planetarium will take $10 million. As Adler Planetarium officials argue, “Science literacy is an urgent issue in the United States. To remain competitive and ensure national security, it is vital that we educate and inspire the next generation of explorers to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.” Planetarium officials requested a $3 million earmark in federal funding, but the request was rejected.
McCain described this multimillion-dollar instrument as an “overhead projector” and “foolishness.”
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) is happy to join her running mate’s example. Scientific research with fruit flies has led to valuable discoveries that have boosted autism research. Yet last week, Palin derided “fruit fly research” as having “little or nothing to do with the public good” — contrasting it, ironically, with support for autistic children.
(Video from Raw Story.)
UPDATE: Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder responds:
McCain is showing an alarming lack of respect for the very real risks that come with nuclear power. There have been a string of safety incidents at U.S. and international reactors, there is nowhere to store the 100,000 shipments of waste we’ve already generated, and nuclear plants are, as the FBI director has stated, “target rich” environments for terrorists. The fact that McCain so readily dismisses these very real concerns with a “blah, blah, blah,” is disconcerting to say the least. It appears that McCain’s absolute support for nuclear power has more to do with ideology than facts, and underscores the risky nature of his candidacy. He just doesn’t get it.
McCain’s Series Of Flaccid Stimulus Proposals
McCain’s Series Of Flaccid Stimulus Proposals
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) held a roundtable with some of his economic advisers, including former Governor Mitt Romney, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), and former Housing Secretary Jack Kemp.
In a statement following the roundtable, McCain ripped the idea of an economic stimulus package, calling it a “$300 billion spending spree,” and said “I would rather give the great American middle class additional tax cuts and let you keep that money and invest it in your future.” Watch it:
McCain has been consistently cold to the idea of an economic stimulus package, saying various other proposals are better for energizing the economy. Last week, the campaign released a statement saying “we do not believe that a national crisis should be taken as a license for wasteful spending or earmarked projects,” and advocating McCain’s American Homeownership Resurgence Plan as “the best kind of stimulus.”
McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday that “keeping American households spending” is “the greatest stimulus of all“:
[T]he idea that somehow tough economic times are license to spend money on anything you can think of is something you want to look at very carefully. […] There is no greater stimulus than keeping American households spending. They’re 70 percent of the economy. And so focusing on them, keeping them in jobs, creating new jobs, that’s the greatest stimulus of all.
However, there is a growing consensus towards an economic stimulus package aimed at infrastructure investment. The proposal has been endorsed by myriad economists and budget analysts, including Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. In fact, Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition - which McCain said he would rely on for economic policy advice - recently said that “it’s appropriate…to loosen fiscal policy, so long as it is done on a targeted and temporary basis.”
Furthermore, it is odd that McCain is touting tax cuts for “the great American middle class” as an adequate stimulus package, since his economic plan gives no benefit to over 100 million middle class households. And his job creation plan doesn’t even keep pace with new workers entering the workforce, so it’s difficult to see how it would provide any economic stimulus.
As Krugman noted, “there’s a lot the federal government can do for the economy.” Relying on tax cuts and an ineffective job creation plan is not enough.
The True Consequences Of So-Called Consumer Driven Health Care
The True Consequences Of So-Called Consumer Driven Health Care
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Robert Carroll lays out the conservative philosophy for health care reform. Like Sen. John McCain, Carroll believes that the employer-insurance subsidy contributes to higher health care costs by encouraging overutlilization of care. “The subsidy encourages people to buy bigger policies that cover more, and leads to greater health-care spending,” Caroll argues.
Eliminating the income-tax exclusion “should reduce private health-care spending; to the extent this reduced the cost of health care, it should also put downward pressure on the growth of Medicare and Medicaid costs.”
But in shrilling for McCain’s plan to dismantle the employer-based system and push Americans into high-deductible plans in the individual market, Carroll gets the consequences of leaving individuals responsible for financing their own health care entirely backwards.
According to a Commonwealth study, for instance, the major effect of a high deductible is likely to be “a one-time shift in spending from premiums to patient out-of-pocket outlays.” Premiums to employers and workers would be reduced by 10 to 15 percent, “but most of that reduction would be a reduction in covered medical outlays and a shift to out-of-pocket expenses for which patients would be responsible,” a Commonwealth study concluded.
Shifting the risk and cost of health insurance onto the individual will increase medical debt and discourage preventive care utilization. In fact, adults enrolled in high-deductible insurance plans (with deductibles of $1,000 or more) reported one of four cost-related access problems:
- because of cost did not fill a prescription- did not see a specialist when needed
- skipped a recommended test treatment, or follow-up
- had a medical problem but did not see a doctor
Encouraging more people to skimp on preventive care, could fuel growth in health care spending, not reduce it. In fact, advocates of so-called consumer driven health care plans, miss the forest for the trees. The sickest 20 percent of Americans account for 80 percent of health care costs. Yet consumer plans would do little to lower the costs of their care and may actually add to their ranks.
Carroll proclaims that “Almost Everyone Would Do Better Under the McCain Health Plan.” In truth, it’s difficult to think of anyone — the not-yet sick or the already sick — who would benefit from punting needed care because of higher cost.
Contrary To McCain’s Assertions, Tax Cuts Do Not Spur Business Growth
Contrary To McCain’s Assertions, Tax Cuts Do Not Spur Business Growth
Recently, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been criticizing Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for his plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire on the top two federal income brackets. McCain claims that this will hurt small businesses, and cause them to cut jobs:
[H]is tax increase would impact 50 percent of small business income in this country, and the jobs of 16 million middle class Americans who work for those small businesses. My opponent’s massive new tax increase is exactly the wrong approach in an economic slowdown.
McCain’s economic plan centers on making the Bush tax cuts permanent and cutting corporate taxes. However, as Princeton professor Uwe E. Reinhardt points out in the New York Times, business investment actually rose following President Clinton’s tax increases and fell following the Reagan and Bush tax cuts.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “only 1.9 percent of filers with any small-business income are projected to face either of the top two income tax rates in 2009,” and thus the effects of Obama’s tax increases on small businesses would be almost negligible. Furthermore, as Reinhardt pointed out, even rich business owners won’t expand their businesses if no one has money to spend:
Specifically, I would challenge supply-siders to explain why the owners of small businesses — say, restaurants — would expand the capacity of their establishments or build new restaurants at a time when customers stay home, even if they were given a tax cut on the income from their restaurants.
Echoing a slew of prominent economists - including Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman - Reinhardt advocates domestic stimulus “