Jobs bill

By Creature

That doesn't create jobs and fills the pockets of those who's pockets need no filling. All with the president's backing. Awesome.

Update: Harry Reid kills the lard-laden Baucus jobs bill. Now that's awesome. As for the actual bill, without the lard, eh.

No joy in healthcare reform land

By Creature

The votes are in, the Senate bill will be passed. I fully support those pushing to make this bill better in conference, but with Nelson and Baucus making threats against changes I don't hold out much hope. A decision has been made to build universality on the backs of private insurance, except they forgot about the regulation part. This is the American way. Profit over good policy. Profit over people. I have no excitement over the passage of this bill, I only hope those like Paul Krugman know what they are talking about when they express their support. He usually does, it's the only comfort left.

Senate Finance Committee to vote

By Creature

Now can we stop paying attention to Senate Majority Leader Max Baucus? Please.

The public option has stalled. So what now?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sen. Tom Harkin thinks he has the votes to pass a health-care reform package that includes a so-called "public option," and he may very well be right -- it's possible, if (and it's a huge if) Democrats pull together to break an expected Republican filibuster) -- but, as of right now, the public option has stalled in the Senate Finance Committee, which, despite a Democratic majority voted today against two separate proposals put forward by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockefeller. The problem is not so much that the Republicans all voted against them (including Schumer's compromise), it's that so many Democrats did, including Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who delusionally continues to push for a bipartisan package (without a public option) even with almost all Republicans clearly opposed to any and all compromise. (As Steve Benen notes, the Republican arguments against the public option were predictably stupid.)

We have long known that the Republicans are against meaningful health-care reform. What is so annoying now, though, is that the main obstacle is Democratic opposition in the Senate, from Baucus and Kent Conrad and so on. It is a small bloc of centrists, but it is a bloc that could side with the GOP on a filibuster (in refusing to break it, even against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of fellow Democrats).

So what now?

Well, Democrats could, and should, still push for the inclusion of a robust public option in any reform package. All it not lost yet.

And yet, as many health-care experts have pointed out, quite persuasively, you may not need a public option to achieve some of key goals of reform. And there is one country, as TNR's Jonathan Cohn writes, that is a model of how to do it: The Netherlands:

Liberals, understandably, are in agony. But they can take at least some comfort in looking overseas -- where one tiny country has managed to build a popular and successful universal health care program based entirely on private insurance. That country is the Netherlands, which several years ago overhauled its health care system and achieved most of the goals the liberal reform movement holds dear: near-universal coverage, affordable insurance, and quality health care.

Under the new system, the Dutch government has required that everybody gets insurance; in return, it makes sure insurance is available to everybody, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions or income. Although the government finances long-term care through a public program, it has turned over the job of providing basic medical coverage exclusively to private insurers, including some for-profit companies. Surveys show that the Dutch are happier with their health care than are Americans -- or the people of any other developed country, for that matter.

The "catch," as Cohn notes, is that health care in the Netherlands, however private, "operates more or less like a public utility."

Read the whole piece. It's an interesting model, and a viable alternative, though perhaps unworkable in the U.S., given the general reluctance to reform industry as vigorously as would be required. Still, with the public option in trouble, and with the distinct possibility that whatever reform package is passed will not include it, it may be time to start looking for next-best approaches, if we haven't already, that would, at the very least, be steps in the right direction and that could, eventually, lead to the sort of universal public system many of us desire.

Bracing for disappointment

By Creature

With the public option up for a vote today in the Senate Finance Committee I'm ready to be disappointed, but hoping to be pleasantly surprised. If Max Baucus can pull himself away from his health industry base just long enough, the public option stands a chance.

And, hopefully, ads like this will make a difference:

A short lesson in finance

By Carl

Stocks are priced based on a gamble that future earnings will rise. The more likely that is to occur, the higher a stock price generally goes.

The actual price itself is an estimate of the value now of those future income flows.

OK, so with that said, explain how this new insurance "plan" from Max Baucus makes sense for the average American?

In an important victory for the insurance industry, Senator Max Baucus’s legislative proposal does not call for a government-run health plan that would directly compete with private insurers. Insurance stocks rose on that news Wednesday.

Although that exclusion had been expected, its confirmation Wednesday meant that the insurance companies “ducked a bullet,” said Erik Gordon, a business professor and industry analyst at the University of Michigan.

The Baucus proposal is “a lower dose of poison than the other proposals,” he said in an e-mail message. Other bills circulating in Congress call for a government-run public insurance option.

Ironically, this is the bill closest to the vision of one Barack Obama, President of these here Yoonited States, even without a public option.

Many have written, far more eloquently and knowledgably than I, reminding Obama and Congress about the need for a public option to compete with private plans, thus reining in healthcare costs, or at least mitigating their startling inflation.

So when a key senator, one of the Group of Six bipartisan panel trying to write a bill that everyone can be happy with, presents this, without any Republican support whatsoever, one has to question the commitment of the Democratic party to truly reforming healthcare.

Not health insurance: health care. Yes, I have in the past advocated baby steps, and this bill is a small step towards the ultimate goal of universal coverage under a single payer plan, like every other intelligent, civilized nation on this planet has.

But there are baby steps and there are baby steps, and this is less a step than a crawl. And all the evidence you need for this is the fact that the stock prices of insurance companies, the gauge of how much profit they will earn in the future, spiked higher on this announcement.

If Wall Street, which does many things badly but does price stocks on earnings with remarkable efficiency, buys into the notion that Baucus' bill is good for the insurance industry, already burning holes in its pockets with all the money it's earning, then how goddamned good can it be for you and me, huh?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

What's Obama's take on the Baucus debacle?

By Creature

I've been doing my best to ignore the crap that is the Baucus Bill, but, for as much I have that luxury, President Obama does not. It will be interesting to see what he has to say about it. If history is any measure he will continue on his maddening high road. He will praise Baucus and his efforts, but will he praise a bill that is nothing but a gift to the Health Insurance industry? I sure hope not, but I'm ready to be disappointed.

Hey, Max Baucus, what's the point?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

That's right, what's the point of Sen. Max Baucus's health-care reform proposal? Is it to win bipartisan support? Yes, probably, given that Baucus all along has been trying to work with the few Republicans who have shown a slight (if hollow) interest in reform -- namely, the GOP members of the Gang of Six. Not surprisingly, though, the Republicans in question, notably Sens. Charles Grassley and Mike Enzi, have already come out against Baucus's proposal. And it's not like Baucus's compromise appeals to pro-reform Democrats either. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, for example, has decisively, and admirably, said "no way": if there is no public option, and there isn't in Baucus's proposal, it's a non-starter. This is the position all Democrats ought to be taking.

(Baucus's proposal is actually pretty atrocious. As one former Big Insurance executive has put it, it's "an absolute gift" to the insurance industry. Though, it would seem, even an absolute gift isn't good enough for Republicans.)

Meanwhile, even moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe has stated that she won't be supporting the Senate Finance Committee's bill. Which is to say, no Republican senator will be supporting it -- or any other reform bill that includes a public option, or, for that matter, any reform bill at all.

As I've said before, it's time, long past time, for the Democrats to go it alone on health-care reform. Republicans have been obstructionist to the point where even genuine compromise is impossible -- if it was ever possible, and I suspect it wasn't. What they want is not just concessions that would render reform meaningless but no reform at all.

Republicans have shown their cards. Democrats must now pull together and do what is right for America.

The WaPo, as fair and balanced as ever

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A lot that appears in the pages of the increasingly right-leaning Washington Post infuriates me, including this awful piece on Obama's upcoming speech by staff writers Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery. The bias is clear from the start: What is needed is "broad consensus" on health-care reform, that is, Republican support. But, of course, there is no Republican support for it. The piece neglects to mention that each Democratic overture has been met with resistance and opposition, and obstructionism, highlighting instead the recent achievements of Max Baucus, which essentially amount to crafting a compromise bill that no one likes, including especially the GOPers in the Gang of Six. The piece eventually turns its attention to Obama, but, by then, the point has been made, and it's just the sort of point you'd expect from a media outlet that, on this issue especially, seems to have become an organ of the Republican Party.

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"So what I'm saying here is that it's very disappointing, to put it as mildly as possible, that it took Baucus more than a year to formulate a plan that amounts to capitulating to every Republican demand, and then adding a heaping pile of political suicide on top of it. Thanks, Max! Great plan. Glad we waited. Now STFU." -- David Waldman on Senator Baucus's newly unveiled health-care reform plan.

Chasing rabbits

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, a member of the Finance Committee, says that the so-called "public option" is dead. Given that, in his view, there just aren't the votes for it -- 60, to override a Republican filibuster -- it doesn't make sense to "chase that rabbit" anymore. He may very well be right -- and he has an interest in seeing it fail. He is one of the handful of Democrats pushing a bipartisan bill, after all, an alternative to "ObamaCare." (Instead of a "public option," with the government ensuring that people aren't shut out by the insurance industry (and ensuring that people have at least a choice with respect to their health-care coverage, Conrad proposes the creation of non-profit cooperatives that would negotiate insurance coverage for their members.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The time for bipartisanship, if there ever was one, is over, and it is simply appalling that a minority of senators would be able to block any reform bill it doesn't like. I understand that the rules of the Senate allow for filibustering, but there is also something to be said for majority rule, as well as for the rule that ends a filibuster (cloture) and allows for the passage of legislation with a simple majority (reconciliation). If Republicans want to play hardball, why should the Democrats?

The fact is, Republicans have never been serious about bipartisanship. What they support, insofar as Grassley et al. support anything other than the status quo, is not so much compromise but obstructionism. They want to water the bill down so much that it would hardly be reform at all -- so it would either be passed as not-reform "reform" or not passed at all because it would lose the support of liberal Democrats who support more substantive reform, including a "public option." In other words, bipartisanism plays right into the hands of Republicans, an effort, with the support of Democrats like Conrad and Baucus, to split the Democrats and give Republicans either the reform they want or no reform at all, which is what most of them prefer.

Some Democrats, like Harry Reid, are talking tough, but will it be enough. As Jon Cohn put it at The Treatment the other day:

As it happens, Reid's tough talk could (that's "could," not "will") end up making a bipartisan bill more likely. The more that Republicans believe Democrats are wliling to pass reform on their own -- either by maintaining enough party discipline to break a filibuster or by trying to use the budget reconciliation process, in which legislation can pass with a simple majority vote -- the more likely Republicans are to compromise. It's possible Reid's show of pique could actually strengthen Baucus's hand for dealing with Grassley, while also strengthening the hand of those on the right -- be they individual lawmakers or special interest groups -- who would prefer a modestly unacceptable bill to one they really hate.

I hope that's right. Democrats are in the majority, with a large majority, and they need to act like it. It's bad enough that Republicans are winning the spin war with their fearmongering propaganda. Will they now lose the legislative war -- the one that really matters -- because they lacked the resolve to do what they needed to do to get meaningful reform passed?

Looking for an outlet

By Creature

So, if this healthcare reform bill turns out as shitty as the Blue Dogs and Baucus (and maybe even Obama) want it to be, you think the Teabaggers would accept me? I may need to vent too.

The best healthcare a lobbyist can buy

By Creature

Let's be clear, the healthcare bill coming out of The Max Baucus Committee will be the best bipartisan bill a lobbyist money can buy.  Hopefully the rest of America's interests can be reconciled with it once Baucus and his five greedy friends get their hands off of it.  I'm not optimistic.

Campaign finance reform

By Creature

It's the only way we can stop our elected representatives from taking bribes. Yes, bribes.  And, yes, Senator Baucus, I'm talking to you.  Someone needs to take the healthcare-reform keys from this man before he sells us a lemon and buys himself a Lamborghini.   

Forget bipartisanship. Democrats need to do what is right on health-care reform.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Roll Call:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday strongly urged Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.

Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama is to deliver on his promise of enacting health care reform this year, offered the directive to Baucus through an intermediary after consulting with Senate Democratic leaders during Tuesday morning’s regularly scheduled leadership meeting. Baucus met with Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday afternoon to relay the information.

According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus that several in the Conference had serious concerns and that it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.

This is certainly reassuring -- not least because it's coming from Reid, with whom many of the more liberal Democrats have had their problems in the past.

The whole 60-vote thing is being overblown, of course, as it's unlikely that the Democrats will be able to secure unanimity on something as controversial as health-care reform, but I do think it's time for the Democrats to stop trying to win over Republican support. The fact is, Republicans aren't serious about reform, or at least not in the sort of reform that the American people actually need, which is a robust public system, and it boggles the mind why a majority party with 60 votes should need to kowtow before an obstructionist, ideologically rigid minority party that has no interest in real change. Republicans wouldn't do it, so why should Democrats?

Let the Republicans come out against a public option that would fill the gap to ensure coverage for all Americans. Let them run on that.

It's time for the Democrats, long past time, to do what needs to be done. Republicans aren't into bipartisanship -- and Democrats should just move on.

**********

Reid's push is also reassuring given the ongoing questions surrounding the White House's commitment to a public option. Rahm Emanuel opened the door the other day to the possibility of dropping it, whereupon Obama may or may not have pushed back the other way.

Open Left's Adam Green thinks that Emanuel "just went with his natural gut instinct -- to be weak, and cave to Republicans," and that the subsequent comment from Obama was "a great step."

Actually, though, Emanuel's comment may have been not so much instinctual as planned, allowing Obama to look like the good guy to pro-reform liberals and progresives. Slate's John Dickerson notes that Obama's rebuttal was vague enough to allow him to go either way on the public option depending on the circumstances down the road. It's an Obama-Emanuel good-cop-bad-cop routine that we've seen before.

While I think that Obama himself would prefer a robust public option, I'm just not sure how committed he is to it, given his pragmatism and apparent lack of unwavering principle. And that's where the worry comes in: Will Obama compromise to the point where, in order to achieve reform, a reform bill is actually more Republican than Democratic?

Or is this just Obama being Obama, pushing compromise and conciliation (just as he does diplomacy with Iran), only to take a harder line (as he likely will with Iran) when bipartisan outreach fails, turning the other side's refusal to negotiate or compromise in good faith against it, using that refusal to secure even greater popular support? Here's hoping.

Geithner, the Tax Man, and the Treasury

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Oh, how the right is salivating over Treasury nominee Tim Geithner and his tax problems, specifically, his failure to pay almost $43,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes over several years earlier this decade.

Appearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, Geithner explained, according to the Post, that the "mistakes on his tax returns early this decade were unintentional and that he has since paid back the $42,702 he owed, including interest... [H]e mistakenly believed that his employer at the time, the International Monetary Fund, was deducting those taxes from his paycheck." Democratic committee chairman Max Baucus called his mistake "serious," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is withholding judgement, and two other Republicans, Jim Bunning and Jon Kyl, are temporarily delaying his confirmation, but, of all people, Orrin Hatch, one of the most conservative and most partisan of Republicans, came to his defence: "I still support him. I have no problem. He's a very, very competent guy."

But then there are those who are making much ado, such as the Politico's Roger Simon, a noted conservative, who asks today, "What if I didn't pay taxes?" Which isn't fair, of course, because Geithner still paid most of his taxes, he just neglected to pay certain taxes that he thought were already being deducted." It an incredibly and typically idiotic piece.

Then there's The Wall Street Journal, a right-wing rag (in editorial terms), which facetiously calls for "a Geithner tax amnesty." But Geithner didn't "forget" to pay his taxes, it was just an oversight on his part -- a serious one, to be sure, but it's not like he was engaging in tax fraud or otherwise simply refusing to pay his taxes.

And it isn't just the right. Even The New York Times (which is actually far more rightist than most people realize) editorialized that "the disclosures cannot be dismissed so easily, or papered over," that "Geithner must be questioned forcefully about these matters at the hearing next week, and his explanations must be credible."

As the Times reports elsewhere, though, "several tax experts" say that "it is an easy mistake for an employee of an international organization to make." Even the Politico admits this: "Should the U.S. treasury secretary know how to do his own taxes? Maybe not, say payroll lawyers, accountants and tax professors, who consider Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay four years of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes to be a fairly common mistake — even for a top economist chosen to run the Treasury Department, including the Internal Revenue Service."

And while media outlets like CNN are similarly making much ado and focusing on all the supposed opposition to Geithner, Republicans, with few exceptions, are pretty much on Geithner's side, dismissing the tax oversight and stressing his abilities and qualifications.

Now, this is not to say that I myself am fully behind Geithner. I have my reservations, but they have nothing to do with his taxes. Rather, they have to do with the fact that he once worked for Henry Kissinger (I'd like to know more about what he did for Kissinger & Associates), that he's another Rubin-Summers (who were both enablers of the banking crisis back when they were at the Treasury in the '90s under Clinton), that he has been very much part of the problem with respect to the financial meltdown, and that he's an enthusiastic cheerleader for the ever-growing financial bailout.

Still, I'm not against him -- I trust Obama on this -- and, despite these concerns, I do not necessarily oppose his confirmation. Indeed, as Robert Kuttner (via Benen) noted last September, Geithner is actually quite progressive with respect to regulatory policy. And Paul Krugman likes him, which is, for me, very much in his favour, even if Frank Rich makes a strong and persuasive case against him for being "no less tardy [than Rubin] in discovering the reckless, wholesale gambling that went on in Wall Street's big casinos, all of which cratered while at least nominally under his regulatory watch."

Regardless, it looks like he'll be confirmed. Thankfully, the stupid matter of his taxes won't be his undoing.