The Congressional Budget Office concluded this week that the GOP health care reform proposal would end up adding about 6 million people to the ranks of the uninsured. By 2019, 52 million people would be uninsured (up from 46 million today). In comparison, the CBO determined that the Democrats’ bill would leave about 18 million uninsured. The Democrats’ bill also would reduce the deficit more than the Republican plan, the CBO calculated. “The only thing worse than having no health care reform plan is releasing a bad one, getting thrashed by CBO and making the House Democrats look good in comparison,” wrote Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.
Abortion remains a sticking point in health care reform legislation. The House version of the bill would allow people to use federal subsidies to buy private insurance that covers abortion, but only if the federal funds don’t go toward paying for an abortion. In other words, the insurance companies would have to use money from other sources, such as private employer insurance premiums, to pay for the coverage. But some House Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, want a complete ban, and may have enough votes to derail the bill.
It’s troubling that Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, reportedly is under investigation by two ethics panels for steering federal funds to clients of a lobbying firm that made donations to his campaign. Tiahrt secured $5 million and helped steer another $2 million in earmarks to clients of the PMA Group between 2001 and 2008, while receiving $21,250 in campaign donations from PMA Group during that period. The Center for Public Integrity also complained this year that Tiahrt directed earmarks to a company represented by a former Tiahrt aide. It included Tiahrt among other House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee members “in circles of relationships fraught with potential conflicts of interest, involving former congressional staffers-turned lobbyists, earmarks and campaign cash.”
UPDATE: Tiahrt issued a statement this afternoon saying that the Office of Congressional Ethics asked about the process his office followed for submitting defense-related project requests to the House Appropriations Committee, and that he had fully complied with the request. But he had “no reason whatsoever to believe that we are subject to a House Ethics Committee investigation.” Tiahrt said he takes “pride in our professional and ethical process for reviewing requests made to my office — a process that we undertake to ensure the highest level of integrity is part of all our conduct.”
A public health insurance plan appeared dead two weeks ago, but both House and Senate Democratic leaders announced this week that their reform bills would include the option. The comeback may be fueled by opinion polls showing that a majority of the public wants a public option. Fifty-seven percent of Americans favor a public insurance option, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Support among doctors is even higher — 63 percent favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance, according to a survey released last month. Overall, however, the public is still divided on the health care reform bills in Congress, with 45 percent favoring the broad outlines of the proposals and 48 percent opposed.
It takes a strong spine (or a hard heart) to criticize President Obama’s idea of sending a $250 check to every Social Security recipient — something he wants to do because the cost of living doesn’t entitle seniors to a cost-of-living increase for next year. New York Times economics columnist David Leonhardt noted that because overall prices have dropped 2.1 percent this year but Social Security benefits won’t drop accordingly, “recipients are already set to receive an effective raise.” And seniors may be sympathetic, but they’re better off than some demographics. “The real median income of over-65 households rose 3 percent from 2000 to 2008,” he wrote. “For households headed by somebody age 25 to 44, it fell about 7 percent.”
The whole episode does not bode well for the prospects that Obama and Congress will do something substantive about the unsustainability of Social Security and Medicare. “If the long-term issue is entitlement reform,” said Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan economist, “the fact that the political system cannot say no to $250 checks to elderly people is a bad sign.”
If President Obama is disappointed in his point-woman in the House, he wasn’t showing it Monday at a Democratic fundraiser in Miami Beach. “I don’t think people quite understand. Nancy Pelosi is not simply the first woman speaker of the House,” he told the crowd. “I think she’s going to go down as one of the greatest speakers of all time. And she’s very nice and she’s very friendly, but, boy, she is tough. And that’s what you need when you’re putting up with all the criticism and the carping and the griping — and that’s from the Democrats. I mean, you should see what she has to put up with — from the Republicans. So I could not have a better partner in trying to move the country than Nancy Pelosi.”
Reactions to any White House initiative tend to stay within party lines. So it was surprising to see how Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., regarded the Obama administration’s decision to restrict compensation for top executives at the biggest bailed-out banks. “I have no problem with greed being curtailed,” McCain said.
Apparently Sen. Pat Roberts (in photo), R-Kan., does: “It’s a bad precedent. You have government determining the pay of a company that may be in the business of trying to get the best employees they can to save the company. It’s very competitive out there. I’m not waving flags for people to get excessive pay or golden parachutes — what I object to is the government making that decision.”
Moderate Democratic lawmakers are pushing to tie a vote on raising the government’s debt-ceiling to the creation of deficit-reduction commission. The commission, which would be similar to military base-closing commissions, would make proposals that Congress would have to accept or reject as a package with no amendments. Columnist David Broder supports the commission, though he thinks the odds are against its creation. “Because such a commission is likely to propose both cuts in popular entitlement programs and tax increases whenever the country comes out of the current recession,” he wrote, “those members on the ballot next November, including Reid and Pelosi, would much rather avoid any discussion of such steps.”
“If ever there was a time for the unanimous passing of an amendment, the Franken anti-government contractor rape liability bill would seem to be that,” said Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” Stewart’s bit highlighted the 30 GOP male senators, including Kansas’ Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, who recently voted not to bar federal contracts to defense contractors if they prevent their employees from taking workplace sexual assault and discrimination cases to court. Among the 68 votes that carried the amendment to passage were the only four women Republicans in the chamber: Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“I have five grandchildren. I look in their eyes, and I see the potential of their lives and all of these other children who are out there. You know what? We are going to waterboard them. That is what we are going to do. We are going to waterboard them. We are going to flood them with debt. We are going to shackle their opportunities. We are going to limit their possibilities because we don’t have the courage to make the difference for their future.” — Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., arguing against federal funding for political science
“Markets may be troubled, but that’s no reason to stop teaching our children. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing,” wrote columnist Paul Krugman, noting that 29,000 jobs in state and local education were among the 273,000 jobs lost nationally last month. He blasted centrist senators for having trimmed from the stimulus bill more state aid that might have mitigated public education cuts, and he called on Congress to approve more aid for state government now. “Beyond that,” Krugman concluded, “we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.”
Health care reform received a significant boost Wednesday with the release of a Congressional Budget Office analysis concluding that the Senate Finance Committee bill actually would reduce the federal deficit by $81 billion over the next 10 years. It also was aided by former Sen. Bob Dole, who called for passage of health care reform (though he opposes the public option). Dole also said that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told him not to say that he supported reform, and Dole said that the public was the loser when Congress couldn’t agree on reform when President Clinton proposed it (and he took partial blame for that failure).
It sounds like a fine idea — getting members of Congress to take a pledge to read “every word” of every bill before voting on it. But the Read to Vote “proposal would bring government to a standstill,” the Washington Post editorialized. Reading all 1,427 pages of the Waxman-Markey energy bill would take at least 12 hours. Realize that the House handled 7,441 bills and joint resolutions during the 110th Congress, and you can see the problem, especially if legislators also are expected to go to hearings, meet with constituents, help craft bills and conduct other business. Though big bills should not be rushed to a vote without time for review, the editorial argued, members of Congress need not be “shuttered for half of every workday just to read through ‘every word’ of every bill that might come to a vote. At some point, it’s fine for members of Congress to rely on expert staff members.” To their credit, though, Kansas Republican Reps. Todd Tiahrt, Jerry Moran and Lynn Jenkins are among the 118 members of Congress who’ve taken a separate pledge to read any health care reform legislation before they vote on it.
As proof of how they aren’t just sitting on the sidelines and saying “no” to health care reform, GOP lawmakers point to all the amendments they have offered, and how Democratic lawmakers aren’t interested in making the bills more bipartisan. But Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported that many of the GOP amendments are aimed at playing to the GOP base or some special-interest concern. For example, Sen. Orrin Hatch (in photo), R-Utah, offered an amendment, apparently facetiously, that would have added “transition relief for the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans for any state with a name that begins with the letter ‘U.’” Rep. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, offered an amendment that Milbank said sounded like a GOP parody: It would eliminate fees charged to private health insurance companies and make up the shortfall by reducing benefits to poor people. The amendment was defeated on a party-line vote.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., argued that a 72-hour delay between the Senate Finance Committee’s markup and vote on a health care reform bill was needed to give time for “the people that the providers have hired to keep up with all of the legislation that we pass around here, and the regulations that we pass around here, to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Have you considered this?’” That’s a reasonable suggestion, as lobbyists are an important part of the legislative process.
But the Democratic National Committee produced an ad claiming Roberts’ comments revealed how the GOP is protecting the health insurance industry. The “Colbert Report” on Comedy Central lampooned Roberts’ “bold admission” that the delay is really about giving time for health care lobbyists to change the bill. Host Stephen Colbert congratulated Roberts for coming “out of the closet” about his committed relationship with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, noting the campaign donations Roberts has received from both groups. “I say, ‘Good for you, sir,” Colbert said of Roberts. “The truth shall set you free.”
ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the past 15 years — an average of $3.5 million per year. Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the past year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street. Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. So with this massive pillaging of America’s economic security and its control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America’s intense economic anxiety being directed? To a nonprofit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America’s poverty line. Apparently, the problem is not that taxpayer dollars are going to prop up billionaires, oligarchs and their corrupt industries. It’s that America’s impoverished — a group that is growing rapidly — is getting too much, has too much power and too little accountability. — Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com
The Census Bureau recently severed ties with the advocacy group ACORN, and the Senate voted to deny it access to federal housing funds. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that it took this long and hidden-camera video footage of ACORN workers apparently advising others to commit crimes before officials would act. Allegations of fraud have dogged ACORN for years, sometimes resulting in convictions. Florida authorities recently arrested 11 ACORN workers and charged them with submitting fake voter-registration papers. The videos, which were made by self-described conservative activists, show ACORN employees exhibiting disdain for the law. In one, a couple posing as a prostitute and her pimp are given advice on how to open a brothel and launder the ill-gotten earnings. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., called on Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate ACORN. That’s a good start, but the videos suggest that a Justice Department criminal investigation is also needed. — Wall Street Journal editorial
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was among the GOP lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee who rejected out of hand the health care reform compromise offered by committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. Roberts said he had no confidence that the compromises ultimately would be honored. “All indications are that this bill will be pulled increasingly toward more cost, more regulations and more rationing as it continues through this process,” Roberts said Tuesday. He also downplayed the size of the health insurance problem, saying that the reforms would “gain insurance coverage for a relatively small number of uninsured Americans” and that “in Kansas and throughout this country, people largely just want to be left the heck alone.”
An Opinion Line contributor wondered why Rep. Todd Tiahrt and Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback hadn’t commented on Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” cry at President Obama last week. Well, Tiahrt, R-Goddard, and the other Kansans in the House did weigh in Tuesday, with their votes on a House-passed resolution of disapproval against Wilson’s outburst. Tiahrt voted “no,” as did Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, and Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, and 164 other Republicans and 12 Democrats. Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa, voted “yes,” as did 232 other Democrats and seven Republicans.
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., wants to have it both ways. He issued a statement last week saying that his yelling “You lie!” at President Obama was “inappropriate.” But then he let it be known that he issued the apology because House GOP leaders told him to, and he has been happy to receive campaign donations from people who applauded his outburst. Over the weekend, Wilson tried to play the victim, refusing to apologize to the House for violating its rules of conduct. “The American people are fed up with the political games in Washington,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, columnist Michael Kinsley noted the foolishness of House members for demanding that Wilson apologize. “The more times he is required to write ‘I will not call the president a liar’ on a special blackboard set up in the well of the House, the bigger hero he will become to a large chunk of the population,” Kinsley wrote. “And, of course, forcing him to grovel will not help to convince him or his supporters that the president is not a liar.”
Columnist David Brooks noted how President Obama “threw out enough rhetorical chum to keep the liberals happy” during his speech to Congress. But Brooks also noted how Obama staked out ground in the center on nearly every substantive issue, including the deficit. Brooks wrote: “Obama rested the credibility of his presidency on what you might call the Dime Standard. He was flexible about many things, but not this: ‘I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period.’ This sound bite kills the House health care bill. That bill would add $220 billion (that’s 2.2 trillion dimes) to the deficit over the first 10 years and another $1 trillion (10 trillion dimes) to the deficit over the next 10 years. There is no way to get from the House bill to deficit neutrality. The president’s speech guarantees that the more moderate Senate Finance Committee bill will be the basis for the negotiations to come.”
Some GOP lawmakers apparently learned something from the August town hall meetings: how to be disrespectful and disruptive. During President Obama’s speech to Congress on health care Wednesday night, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled “You lie” when Obama refuted the false claim that the reform proposals would provide benefits to illegal immigrants. Such an outburst could draw a formal reprimand if delivered at a routine session of the House, let alone a joint session with the president. Other lawmakers yelled “not true” and hissed or laughed during Obama’s address, which, ironically, called for civil conversations and made significant policy concessions to Republicans.
Public discontent has taken a toll on the momentum to reform health care. But there’s another agent of no change at work — the health insurance industry, which, noted columnist Paul Krugman, “has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.” Krugman foresees corporate influence, helped along by the GOP, thwarting other meaningful action on climate change and fiscal balance. He concluded: “True transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.”
One of Florida Sen. Mel Martinez’s (in photo) last acts before resigning his Senate post in August was voting among only nine Republicans for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, after giving a long floor speech defending her against GOP critics. The Cuban-American’s departure “could leave no Hispanic Republicans in the Senate and three in the House — compared to 21 Democrats in Congress — and a sense that the national GOP is at a major crossroads with the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group,” noted an Associated Press analysis. Especially after some Republicans’ harsh comments about illegal immigration, the party needs work on its outreach to Hispanics. “Republicans have to be able to get the Hispanic community to focus on issues where Republicans have the right solutions — and these are critical issues: the economy being No. 1,” said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla.
Were the “liberal” media to blame for health reform’s stumble last month? The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne thinks so. “I’ve spoken with Democratic House members, most from highly contested districts, about what happened in their town halls,” he wrote. “None would deny polls showing that the health-reform cause lost ground last month, but little of the probing civility that characterized so many of their forums was ever seen on television.” Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, told Dionne he viewed the shouters at his meetings as taking “the Ron Paul libertarian position that represents 2 to 5 percent of the country.”
