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.”
Mike Pompeo, a GOP candidate for Congress in 2010, correctly applauds Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback in a commentary on today’s Opinion page for opposing funding for an alternative F-35 plane engine that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other defense officials say is not wanted or needed. But he neglects to mention that Roberts and Brownback also voted to continue the production of F-22 fighter planes that Gates, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and top Air Force leaders say they also don’t want or need. Deficit concerns apparently only go so far when Kansas companies have a piece of the pie.
The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy has highlighted the comparative scarcity of great dealmakers on Capitol Hill. Former senators such as Democrats Patrick Moynihan and Lloyd Bentsen and Republicans Howard Baker, Warren Rudman and Bob Dole “were, like Sen. Kennedy, revered for their skill at knowing when the partisan arguments had exhausted themselves and that it was time to seek the possible rather than the perfect. They knew how to find the compromise that would work,” wrote Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal.
These days the pressure is relentless from outside groups to toe the party line or else. “When you campaign you try to destroy your opponent. And that’s become the legislative process now as well,” Kenneth Duberstein, who was White House chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan.
If CIA interrogators engaged in torture, the blame extends to Congress, which has lacked “the courage and the energy to actually enact clear statutes on torture,” argues Salon’s Juan Cole. He calls the McCain anti-torture amendment of 2005 “watered down” and “easily interpreted away,” and noted that President Bush vetoed the most recent legislation in 2008. “The Democrats may only have a brief window through November of 2010 to get effective and unambiguous legislation on the books, and now we have a president who won’t veto it,” Cole writes.
Even many who had no use for the liberal politics of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., had to admire his peerless legislative skills during a Senate career lasting 47 years. Kennedy, who died of brain cancer Tuesday night at age 77, not only represented his constituents and priorities with uncommon zeal but understood the value of working across the aisle in order to get things done. Even conservatives, including President Bush and his No Child Left Behind bill, regarded Kennedy as the go-to guy. The statement of Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said it well: “The Senate has lost the lion’s roar of the left. . . . There were two Teds, one was personable and kind to those he met regardless of party affiliation, and the other was what we saw on the Senate floor, a passionate and fiery advocate for the cause.” It will be strange to see the Senate without a member of the Kennedy clan. And it’s hard not to wonder how health reform might be playing out now if Kennedy were leading the charge on what was a signature issue.
Putting off health reform will only compound the system’s problems. Yet Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., made some sense Sunday in calling for President Obama to focus first on the economy and perhaps narrow his health care agenda to “cost health delivery reform and insurance market reforms.” Lieberman also warned against Senate Democrats’ use of a procedural maneuver to push through a health reform bill with fewer than 60 votes. “I think it’s a real mistake to try to jam through the total health insurance reform, health care reform plan, that the public is either opposed to or of very, very passionate mixed minds about,” he said.
Characterizing the U.S. economy as “out of the emergency room,” Warren Buffett shared his latest worries in a New York Times commentary, suggesting that with the annual deficit expected to rise to about 13 percent of gross domestic product this fiscal year, “we are in uncharted territory.” The Berkshire Hathaway CEO went on: “With government expenditures now running 185 percent of receipts, truly major changes in both taxes and outlays will be required.” And he called on Congress to “end the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio and keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources.”
Buffett concluded: “The dollar’s destiny lies with Congress.”
“I’m proposing something that will be paid for and they signed into law something that wasn’t, and they had no problem with it. Same people, same folks. And they say with a straight face how we’ve got to be fiscally responsible.” — President Barack Obama at a health reform town hall meeting Tuesday, about GOP lawmakers who added prescription drug coverage to Medicare without a plan to pay for it
A New York Times article tracks down the origin of the false claim that a government “death panel” will decide whether the elderly or disabled live or die. It determined that the claim emanated “months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of the Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement.” It reported that “over the course of the past few months, early, stated fears from anti-abortion conservatives that Mr. Obama would pursue a pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda, combined with twisted accounts of actual legislative proposals that would provide financing for optional consultations with doctors about hospice care and other ‘end of life’ services, fed the rumor to the point where it overcame the debate.”
Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa, isn’t holding town hall meetings on health care reform because of threats he has received. Meanwhile, other Democratic lawmakers continue to be shouted down at town hall meetings. An angry Pennsylvania man (see photo) warned Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., this week that “one day God’s going to stand before you, and he’s going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill.”
But columnist David Broder wonders whether such outbursts will end up backfiring. “What doesn’t make the news is what the reaction is among the larger population of voters whose views will ultimately influence the fate of health care legislation,” he wrote. Broder noted that some Republicans are starting to worry about this, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who last week called the reform plan “downright evil” but this week called for civil discourse.
Columnist Froma Harrop predicts the latest of the GOP’s “red-faced crusades” will hurt the party, pointing to how Republicans lost seats in Congress after impeaching President Clinton in 1998 and after trying to meddle in the Elian Gonzalez case in 2000 and the Terri Schiavo tragedy in 2005. She concludes: “Other factors influenced these outcomes, of course. But politicians now facing the wrath of enraged right-wingers should note that similar unruly outbursts in the past probably worked against the Grand Old Party. Come November 2010, voters are not going to punish Democrats or the Republicans who work with them on health reform, if the product is well designed.”
Congressional testimony and e-mail messages released Tuesday showed that Bush administration political adviser Karl Rove and other senior aides played an early and active role in the 2006 firings of a number of federal prosecutors, the New York Times reported. “This basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons,” said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
Maybe Americans are having trouble trusting Congress’ overhaul of health care because they don’t trust Congress. Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib pointed to a summer Gallup poll: “Some 36 percent expressed confidence in the medical system, ranking it in the middle of the broad range of American institutions that were tested. But a mere 17 percent said they have confidence in Congress, which is where any health overhaul would be created.”
Democrats are capitalizing on some ugly protests at town hall meetings to portray opponents of health reform legislation as part of an orchestrated effort to intimidate lawmakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., wrote in USA Today that “it is now evident that an ugly campaign is under way not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue.” They wrote that “these disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”
The only suspense about today’s Senate vote on the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor was how many Republicans might join the Democratic majority in supporting her. In the final 68-31 vote, nine Republicans did so — not including Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback. Some acknowledged her unprecedented 17 years of experience as a federal judge, that her decisions have been within the legal mainstream, and that the power to pick justices comes with winning a presidential election. In replacing retiring Justice David Souter, Sotomayor brings needed ethnic and gender diversity to the bench. Seeing her confirmed already puts Obama ahead of President Carter, whose presidency didn’t see a high court opening. If Obama has additional seats to fill, the ideological fight is sure to be even more fierce.
It took four years, but former Rep. William “Cold Cash” Jefferson was finally convicted Wednesday of charges that included accepting bribes and engaging in money laundering. The Louisiana Democrat could get more than 20 years in prison, though he is still free on bail pending an appeal. Jefferson was filmed in 2005 taking $100,000 in bribes from a government informant, and FBI agents found $90,000 in marked bills in his freezer.
“Cash for clunkers” was so successful that a program that was meant to take until November achieved its goals in a week or two. Thousands of cars were sold, helping dealerships and car companies to move toward recovery. Thousands of gas-guzzlers were scrapped, helping the country move toward improved energy efficiency. Just as it starts to become clear that the government has a winner on its hands, we start to see reports in the conservative media that call the program a failure. The lesson they all teach is this failure shows what will happen if we pass health care reform. Draw your own lessons. Was a program that wildly overachieved its goals, stimulated the economy, improved the country’s fuel efficiency and brought a great price for a new car to tens of thousands of Americans a success or not? I say it was, and I say it shows why we want a public option choice in the health care reform. — Dave Johnson, Huffington Post
What the clunker policy really proves is that Americans aren’t stupid and will let some other taxpayer buy them a free lunch if given the chance. It’s hardly surprising that Peter is willing to use a donation from his neighbor Paul, midwifed by Uncle Sugar, to class up his driveway. On the other hand, this is crackpot economics. The subsidy won’t add to net national wealth, since it merely transfers money to one taxpayer’s pocket from someone else’s, and merely pays that taxpayer to destroy a perfectly serviceable asset in return for something he might have bought anyway. By this logic, everyone should burn the sofa and dining room set and refurnish the homestead every couple of years. Since money is no object, let’s give everyone a $4,500 voucher for other consumer goods. As long as everyone thinks we can conjure wealth out of $4,500 giveaways, let’s go all the way. — Wall Street Journal editorial
Protests of health care reform organized by Americans for Prosperity and other conservative groups have turned a bit ugly. At a town hall meeting Sunday in Pennsylvania, some audience members heckled and booed Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Other members of Congress have had meetings ambushed by chanting crowds. Americans for Prosperity is disavowing such disruptions and is urging its protesters to act in a civil and courteous manner. “We never condone disruptive behavior,” wrote AFP president Tim Phillips. “It is disappointing to hear reports of some individuals acting inappropriately at some of the congressional events.”
For all the howling about how dumb the “cash for clunkers” bill was, it’s certainly been a hit with the public, stirring dealership business by offering federal subsidies of up to $4,500 each for those who trade in old gas-guzzlers for fuel-efficient newer models. The House voted 316-109 today to replenish its funds with $2 billion more stimulus money. But how well is it working on the government’s end? “I’ve got dealers who have submitted the paperwork three times and have gotten three rejections,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich. “What is a dealer supposed to do?”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., subjected Judge Sonia Sotomayor (in photo) to quite a grilling during her confirmation hearings. Yet he ended up the only Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to support her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 13-6 vote expected to lead to a full Senate vote next week. “I’m deciding to vote for a woman I would not have chosen,” Graham said. But it’s a “big deal” for President Obama to have nominated the first-ever Latina to the high court, he said, and “America has changed for the better with her selection.” There’s no suspense about how Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback will vote; they announced in May and June, respectively, that they would vote against her.
It’s an old, sarcastic argument but an interesting one, especially considering how ubiquitous metal detectors and purse searches are throughout Washington, D.C., and how many friends the National Rifle Association has in Congress: Why should Second Amendment rights stop at the Capitol steps? “Congress seems to think that gun restrictions are for wimps,” wrote Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. “It voted this year to allow people to bring their weapons into national parks, and pro-gun legislators have pushed for the right to carry in taverns, colleges and workplaces. Shouldn’t Congress set an example in its own workplace?”
Kansas Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts voted Tuesday for an amendment to continue production of F-22 fighter planes. That put them at odds not only with the Democratic president but also Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is a Republican. The vote was a perfect demonstration of how, when it comes to defense spending, parochialism trumps partisanship and deficit concerns. The nation already has 187 F-22s, which haven’t been used in any recent wars. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and top Air Force leaders support Gates on the F-22. But the plane’s contracts extend to companies in 46 states. In successfully arguing against building more jets, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., suggested President Eisenhower’s warning of the “military-industrial complex” be updated to “military-industrial-congressional complex.” Still, the Senate position must be reconciled with a House bill with $369 million toward building 12 more F-22s.
Watching Congress, and especially moderate Democrats, find reasons to leave health care unfixed has Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson wondering whether the Hurricane Katrina response was no fluke and the country has lost its “can-do” spirit. “Every other nation with an advanced economy long ago secured universal health care for its citizens — an achievement that the United States alone finds beyond the capacities of mortal man,” Meyerson wrote. And there’s more incoherence: “How to explain, for instance, the widespread congressional support for a bill that would require General Motors and Chrysler to keep all their dealerships open? This legislation is co-sponsored by numerous Republican conservatives who actually opposed the administration’s efforts to keep General Motors and Chrysler in business. ‘Distribution, si; production, no!’ is by any standard a loony battle cry.”
