New frontiers in Senate Republican obstructionism

Have they run through all possible tricks for generalized procedural obstructionism? Far from it. It's amazing what you can accomplish by manipulating Senate rules if you're single-mindedly determined to gum up the works--and have no sense of shame or embarrassment, as well as no fear of suffering any political consequences.

The Republicans seem to be responding to the passage of health care and likely passage of the reconciliation measure by invoking little-known rules to slow everything down. Senate Republicans have used a rare tactic during the opening of Senate business to cancel or postpone committee hearings. [....]

Senate Democrats are decrying the tactic -- used yesterday to stop a subcommittee hearing on bark beetles and then today to slow a hearing on police training contracts in Afghanistan and cancel a Judiciary hearing on nominees -- as obstructionism beyond the pale. [....]

Further explanation and elaboration here.

=> In what has become their characteristically indiscriminate style, the Republicans had no qualms about blocking a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Chair of the committee, Sen. Carl Levin, was appropriately indignant:

"It is astounding to me that Republicans have taken a step of such pointless, blind obstructionism. It cannot achieve their goal of obstructing health care reform. Instead, they are obstructing a hearing that has nothing to do with the health care debate and everything to do with the defense of our nation. And they have disrupted the schedules of senior commanders who in two cases have traveled thousands of miles from their troops, and who would be providing the Senate with information on pressing national security topics such as North Korea's nuclear program, Chinese military capability and the threat of cyber-warfare. Our national security should not be held hostage to Republican pique over health care."

Well, it may be astounding, but by now it shouldn't be surprising. (In December 2009, for example, the Republicans were willing to filibuster the military funding bill in order to bring the Senate's business to a halt and prevent a vote on health care reform.) It's going to be a long year.

--Jeff Weintraub

Most laughable threat of the week

A tough competition. But I think John McCain is the winner:

Democrats shouldn't expect much cooperation from Republicans the rest of this year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned Monday.

Unlike last year?

"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate.

Well, why did they need to ask John McCain? I could have told them that.

"They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."

Tentative translation: They've hurt our feelings--imagine, they actually had the gall to pass legislation we didn't like, just because they won the last election and had a majority!--so now we'll just sulk for the rest of the year, and let the country go to hell. (Or, to put it another way, "Country first.")

There must be a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not sure I get it.

--Jeff Weintraub

Political culture in Iran and the US

I just happened to see this cartoon from the summer of 2009 by Matt Bors. (Clicking on the cartoon will expand it.)

(For irony-challenged readers: No, of course the two situations weren't precisely the same. It's a satirical cartoon.)

--Jeff Weintraub

What change looks like - More mysteries of public opinion polling

According to House Republican Leader John Boehner (or almost any other Congressional Republican picked at random, since they all repeat the same talking-points):

Instead of continuing to push a government takeover of health care that the American people have soundly rejected, the President and Democratic Leaders on Capitol Hill should scrap their plan and start over [etc.]

A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on Monday, the day after the House voted for health care reform, got the following response to this question:

As you may know, yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that restructures the nation’s healthcare system. All in all, do you think it is a good thing or a bad thing that Congress passed this bill?

Good thing 49%
Bad thing 40%
Don’t know 11%

Furthermore:

The largest single group, 48%, calls the bill "a good first step" that should be followed by more action on health care. An additional 4% also have a favorable view, saying the bill makes the most important changes needed in the nation's health care system.

Of course, this is just one poll, and that upward bump in support for the bill may turn out to be a passing blip. Maybe Americans just like a winner? Maybe they don't want to hear another word about health care reform? I suspect this means more than that, but who knows for sure?

But that's really the key point. Public opinion polls are often fickle, and the public response to this health care reform effort, as measured by polls, has been extremely fluid, complicated, and ambivalent. If the Republicans do run their 2010 election campaign on a promise to repeal this bill, they may be in for a surprise.

--Jeff Weintraub

Lessons from HCR - Time to repeal the 17th & 19th amendments?

Back in February, when it looked as though health care reform might be dead as a doornail, Jonathan Chait predicted that if it passed after all, the right-wing freakout would be "something to behold." My guess is that the next few months will confirm that prediction in a big way.

Meanwhile, the reaction of Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas, who is always good for political comic relief, may be an early straw in the wind.

In the wake of the passage of health care reform, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) has decided enough is enough and it's time to repeal the 17th Amendment which ended the appointment of senators by state legislatures in favor of direct election by the people.

That would help restore states' rights, for sure. But would that be enough? David Kurtz suggests an alternative, or perhaps supplementary, approach:

But why go all the way back to 1913? You could just freeze time in 1920 by repealing the 19th Amendment. There's no way we'd have health care reform without women voting and a female speaker of the House. So there's your real culprit.

--Jeff Weintraub

Obama: "This is what change looks like."

Nobody needs me to provide a news service. But this is genuinely historic. From Christina Bellantoni at TPM:

With much fanfare, dozens of pens and members of Congress beaming at his side, President Obama signed a sweeping health care reform bill this morning. "Today after almost a century of trying; today after a year of debate; today after all the votes have been tallied health, insurance reform becomes" the law of the land in America, Obama said in the White House East Room.

The next step is for the Senate to pass the "reconciliation" measure with its various fixes, corrections, and adjustments. Assuming that works out OK, this health care reform package will be complete.

As Obama said in his speech on Sunday night, after the House vote:

So this isn't radical reform. But it is major reform. This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what change looks like.

(Or, to quote Joe Biden: "This is a big fucking deal.")

--Jeff Weintraub

Some Senate Republicans begin to concede defeat on "reconciliation"

The Senate version of the health care reform bill, approved by the House on Sunday, will be signed into law by President Obama later this morning. To complete the health care reform package, the House also passed a bundle of fixes, patches, and revisions (together with a long-overdue reform of the federal student loan program). This now needs to be passed by the Senate as well. As everyone should now be aware, this measure will be voted on using the procedural device of "budget reconciliation," which circumvents a Republican filibuster and allows the bill to be passed by simple majority vote.

Senate Republicans have promised a final crescendo of procedural obstructionism to block this measure, but the consensus of informed opinion seems to be that this will fail, and that they probably can't delay final passage for more than a day or so. Even some Republican die-hards are beginning to concede this.

Republicans are unlikely to force major changes to the measure making final tweaks to healthcare legislation, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Monday night. [....]

"No," Coburn said during an appearance on CNBC when asked if the GOP would be able to stop many elements of the reconciliation bill. "We'll put a few holes in it, but basically it's going to come through here because they've done a good job crafting it." [....]

Senate Republicans have said they plan to raise a series of objections and points of order against the bill, leading some to say they are "virtually certain" they could force changes that would send the reconciliation measure back to the House for another vote.

Those efforts were dealt a blow Monday night, though, when the Senate's parliamentarian dismissed a GOP challenge that claimed the bill should have been dismissed for touching on Social Security revenues.

Instead, Coburn sketched out some elements of the long-term propaganda war that will follow enactment of this health care reform package. This was in a sympathetic TV conversation with the outspoken market-fanatic, anti-tax, pro-plutocratic right-wing economic commentator/propagandist Lawrence Kudlow on Kudlow's CNBC show. It's worth listening to the video clip from their exchange down at the bottom of this piece, since it offers a partial foretaste of what we'll be hearing from the Republican side for the rest of 2010 ... and beyond. (And a few of Coburn's remarks are even, in their own tendentious way, perceptive.)

--Jeff Weintraub

Mitt Romney now pledged to run against his own record

Alex Massie, writing in the conservative British Spectator, perceptively captures this somewhat peculiar situation in a piece aptly titled: "Obamacare = Romneycare = Mitt's the Biggest Loser?"

Jon Chait loves a good fight so I'm not surprised he's in I Told You So mood today. I kinda, sorta, less confidently, told you so too even after Massachusetts when the prospect for HCR were pretty bleak and Fred Barnes was saying it was dead, dead, dead.

Well, we all get things wrong and sometimes perhaps we get a little lucky. The chap with the most to lose from last night's vote - in terms of politics and 2012 if nothing else - is our old chum Mitt Romney. No wonder Romney released this statement:

America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation [...] His health-care bill is unhealthy for America. It raises taxes, slashes the more private side of Medicare, installs price controls, and puts a new federal bureaucracy in charge of health care. [...]

Blah, blah, blah ... etc.

Massie cuts through all this verbiage and zeroes in on what it actually means:

In other words, Romney is now pledged to running against his own record. This is an unusual strategy but one forced upon him by a) his actual record and b) the temper of the Republican party and conservative movement. All this trouble over one tiny bill he signed when Governor of Massachusetts!

[JW: I apologize for belaboring the obvious, but I know some readers will miss the fact that Massie's formulation here is ironic.]

Because Obamacre is, in the view of plenty of sensible observers, merely a souped-up version of the Romneycare Mitt signed into law in Boston - and that he boasted about during the 2008 campaign. Back then it was a case of "I can fix health care because I've done it in the Bay State". How times change

Now, of course, he must disavow this and pretend it never happened. In a sense, mind you, this merely shows that, for all that the MA reforms may not have been perfect and for all that they may not scale to the national level, the ideas behind Obamacare were hardly revolutionary. The detail may, for sure, be another matter. Still, in outline, Governor Romney could be proud of this sort of thing; Candidate Romney must disavow his own past.

In fact, Romney already began to do that in 2008, so it won't be a new experience. Time will tell how successfully he can get away with it.

=> Meanwhile, what should we make of all the whining by Romney and other Republicans about the Democrats' "unconscionable abuse of power", their "totalitarian tactics", and the rest of this nonsense that we're sure to be hearing ad nauseam for the rest of 2010? Massie says pretty much all that needs to be said:

The legislative process may have been, to put it mildly, untidy but the President and the Congressional leadership had a mandate to produce these reforms. Complaining that they've done what they said they would do and howling that it's not fair and a big Democrat took the ball and ran away is neither dignified nor persuasive.

--Jeff Weintraub

The House passes the reconciliation bill ...

... by 220-211 votes. Now it goes to the Senate. In all probability, the health care reform package will soon be complete.

Back at 4:39 p.m., when the announcement of by Stupak and the other anti-abortion Democrats that they would vote for health care reform made it clear that it would almost certainly pass, Paul Krugman put it this way:

There is, as always, a tunnel at the end of the tunnel: we’ll spend years if not decades fixing this thing. But kudos to all involved, with special praise for Nancy Pelosi, who is now a Speaker for the ages.

--Jeff Weintraub

The House approves the Senate HCR bill

They did it! TPM:

By a razor thin margin of 219-212, the House of Representatives tonight passed far-reaching legislation that will lead to near-universal health care coverage in the United States -- a goal that has eluded Presidents and Congresses for a century.

The vote concluded at 10:48 p.m., almost 10 hours after Democrats gavelled the chamber into session, confident the vote would be there. The bulk of reform will now be enrolled and signed into law, while a separate, smaller package is expected to go to the Senate, where Democrats are expected to muster the 51 votes needed to pass it. [....]

The health care reform bill, in the version passed by the Senate in December 2009, has now been passed by Congress, and will become law when signed by the President. That's done.

The House is now moving toward a vote on the reconciliation measure that will complete the health care reform package. At this moment, Rep. Bart Stupak, no less, is speaking against Republican efforts to sabotage it by re-introducing his own previous anti-abortion amendment.

--Jeff Weintraub

Congressman Jim Cooper does the right thing

Brad DeLong has been doing a series of posts today that started out being headed "As RomneyCare Moves Toward Possible Final Passage..." (an appropriate title, since the final Democratic plan closely resembles the system enacted in Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was Governor, though Romney tries to pretend otherwise) and have gradually shifted to "As RomneyCare Approaches Near-Certain Final Passage...".

Some of these posts have been about wavering Congressional Democrats who decided, at the Very Last Moment, to vote for health care reform. Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee described his decision to do that with a statement that deserves noting:

I woke up this Sunday morning, said my prayers, and finally decided that I will vote YES on health care reform.

Having heard from tens of thousands of Middle Tennesseans on all sides of the issue (including the flood of messages in the last few days and hours), and having spent months studying the various bills, I know that America must improve its health care system because it is unsustainable. This legislation will make it better.

Any decision of this magnitude must be made very carefully, after weighing every concern. We Nashvillians are proud of our outstanding health care community that makes us “the nation’s health care industry capital.” Given our community’s expertise, it is interesting to note that:

· Every Nashville hospital strongly supports the legislation, whether it’s St. Thomas, Vanderbilt (both University and Hospital), Centennial, Meharry Medical School, Nashville General, Summit, Skyline, or Southern Hills.

· A majority of physicians who contacted me support the legislation and, although the Tennessee Medical Association opposes it, the TMA’s national organization, the conservative American Medical Association, supports it.

· A majority of local nurses support the legislation, along with the American Nurses Association.

· Despite media controversy regarding abortion, the Catholic Health Association, Catholics United, and groups representing 59,000 Catholic Sisters support the legislation.

· The largest Nashville and national senior organization, AARP, supports the legislation.

It means a lot to me that so many local people who know so much about health care agree with my decision. [....]

The bottom line is that this legislation offers the only realistic hope that most Americans have for getting a fair deal in today’s private health insurance markets. [....] No matter what your insurance company is, most Tennesseans are only one illness away, one pink slip away, or one premium hike away from being mistreated by current insurance practices: discrimination against pre-existing conditions, arbitrary premium pricing, and last-minute rescission of coverage when you need it most. This legislation will cover 32 million hardworking, middle-class Americans who are left out in the cold by today’s insurance practices. Rival legislation only attempts to cover 3 million uninsured people, or less than 10% of the problem. America can, and must, do better. [....]

Regardless of what happens to this legislation today, America cannot afford to ignore the growing crisis in financing today’s medical system. In the future, we need to focus on these issues every year, not every 15 years. Passage of this legislation is absolutely certain to do that. Flaws will need to be corrected, adjustments made, new ideas explored. I have a list ready. [....]

I am well aware of the fact that this is a big vote, and perhaps a career-limiting decision. But I think most folks back home want me to do what is right, not just what’s temporarily popular. [....]

You can read the rest here.

Brad's reaction:

Put a ring on his finger! Dress him in a fine robe and put sandals on his feet!! Slaughter the fatted calf!!! Let there be music and dancing!!!! For our brother who was dead is now alive!!!!! He who was lost now is found!!!!!!

Makes sense to me.

--Jeff Weintraub

Republicans start to concede defeat on HCR

The latest from TPM:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) tells MSNBC: "Now that Bart and these other pro-life Democrats have switched, they're gonna be able to pass this bill."

And David Frum, who has been trying to serve as the Voice of Reason on the right tweets:

if HCR prevails, Republicans need an accountability moment. Jim DeMint/ Rush / Beck etc. [l]ed us to Waterloo all right . Ours.

Let's hope so.

--Jeff Weintraub

Breaking news: The Stupak anti-abortion Democrats agree to vote for health care reform

I think this puts health care reform over the top.

As reported by TPM:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) has reached a deal with House Democratic leadership on the abortion language in the health care reform bill.

Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, was one of the key holdouts on the bill, and as late as this morning told reporters that he controlled eight of the votes.

He just announced that he and the leadership have reached a deal on the bill's abortion language, and he and "eight or nine" house Democrats will now vote "yes." [....]

Part of this deal was an agreement with the White House that the President "will be issuing an executive order after the passage of the health insurance reform law that will reaffirm its consistency with longstanding restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion." For the text of that executive order, see here.

At first glance, the promised executive order doesn't change the provisions in the existing health care package, but merely confirms them. However, that will be a matter for more extended interpretation.

More immediately, however, what this agreement almost certainly means is that the health care reform package will pass the House today. Doing that will require 216 votes. Stupak: "We're well past 216." And: "The real winner is really the American people,"

--Jeff Weintraub

Live TV coverage of today's House showdown on health care reform

Following today's talking and voting in the House of Representatives may or may not be something you crave. But anyone who's interested can do it below (or here).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I see from TPM's Countdown To Reform Wire that "Both parties have called all of their members to the floor during the entirety of the debate." In either house of the US Congress, that's highly unusual.

From Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office: "The Republican Leadership has instructed their Members to remain on the Floor today during debate on Health care Reform. We expect Republican procedural delay tactics during the day. Members' presence is requested on the Floor throughout the day."

Republicans have indeed promised to do whatever they can to stop this health reform package from passing, so if it does clear the House today, then we can expect a climactic extravaganza of obstructionism in the Senate. House rules make obstructionism more difficult, but there are always possibilities. When CNN's Candy Crowley asked Republican Mike Pence what the House Republicans planned to do today, he apparently responded: "Well, stay tuned, Candy. It's going to be an interesting day."

Even for people who aren't fascinated by procedural maneuvers, legislative trench warfare, and the endless repetition of misleading partisan talking-points (all of which, if truth be told, often look pretty dull to outsiders), the final votes will definitely make this a very interesting day.

--Jeff Weintraub

Health care reform after all? - Gail Collins becomes giddy with anticipation

It looks as though today really is the moment of truth in the year-long political struggle over health care reform. So what is this all about?

In her column in yesterday's New York Times, Gail Collins warmed up by tossing out some mildly sarcastic remarks about the process leading up to this moment--which really does have many grimly amusing aspects. Then she got a bit more soberly factual, though only up to a point:

On Sunday, the House is expected to finally vote on the bill that the Senate approved on Christmas Eve after a debate so endless that the wiped-out majority leader, Harry Reid, initially voted “no” by mistake. If it passes, it theoretically goes to the president. In the real Congressional world, there are still major complications involving a second bill making changes in the first one, under parliamentary procedures so abstract that they verge on the metaphysical. [JW: In the real world, these procedures look so "abstract" and "metaphysical" only to inattentive journalists, Republican propagandists, and people determined to be confused. But OK.]

That would bounce back to the Senate, where the Republicans are vowing to find some way to stretch the process out even longer. (Friday was also the feast of St. Pancharius, a Roman senator who was beheaded by the emperor in 303. No matter how bad it gets, this is not the sort of thing we want to encourage.) [JW: I'm not so sure.]

=> And then Collins abruptly zeroed in on the real heart of the matter. This is what it's about:

Nevertheless, Sunday feels as if it’s going to be the critical moment, and if the House votes yes, it will be kind of incredible.

We live in an era in which the power of the new hypermedia is so intense and politics so rabid that it’s almost impossible for Congress to do anything more difficult than tax cuts or highway construction. Yet, here’s this huge, complicated, controversial reform — bigger than any domestic program in decades.

If it passes, the short-term political consequences are unknowable. But in 10 years, people will look back in amazement that we once lived in a time when Americans couldn’t get health care coverage if they were sick, when insurance companies could cut off your benefits for being sick, and when run-of-the-mill serious illnesses routinely destroyed families’ financial security.

Or, if this whole year-long effort ends in failure today, no one will touch comprehensive health care reform again for decades, and the whole situation will continue to get worse. Stay tuned ...

--Jeff Weintraub

The student loan reform

As Jonathan Chait pointed out yesterday:

If health care reform weren't such an enormous deal, people would be paying more attention to the sweeping student loan reform that's being attached to it and could pass on the same vote.

This is a straightforward and unquestionably sensible reform, which can easily save billions of dollars currently being wasted for no good reason and make them available to help students go to college, but it has has nevertheless been steadily blocked for more than a decade and a half by a coalition of Republicans, bankers and other special interests, and some Congressional Democrats beholden to them. Now it looks as though this reform might actually pass, since a reconciliation vote--requiring only a majority of Senators-- means it can't be killed by filibuster.

Chait is right that this story has been been developing largely under the radar, and most people seem to be unaware of it, so it's worth reading his explanation of what this is all about: "The Other Huge Reform At Stake Sunday"

For a compact introduction or, if you prefer, a condensed version, Ezra Klein has boiled this down to two clear and concise paragraphs:

Attached to the health-care reconciliation bill is a major reform of the student loan program. The easy way to explain this is that the current student loan program is both about education loans and corporate welfare. To keep rates down, the government guarantees these loans, which means that lenders get paid back even if the students default. Which means that the lenders aren't really serving any purpose.

Cutting them out will save taxpayers more than $60 billion over the next 10 years, with most of that money slated to go to Pell grants. Past attempts to reform this program have been blocked by a mixture of Republicans and Democrats with big lender companies in their states. But as Jon Chait says, "the fact that this is a straight majority vote means the usual coalition of every Republican plus a couple Democratic shills won't be enough to stop it. This would be a major advance for the cause of good government reform."

As Chait also says, the fact that this reform has been attached to the budget reconciliation resolution means that "a big vote has gotten even bigger". It's white-knuckle time now.

--Jeff Weintraub

How cynical inside-dopesterism masquerades as political "journalism"

The provocation for this Gawker piece by Alex Pareene is an article in Politico that his headline describes as "The Most Cynical Political Story Ever Written". Of course, that headline (which may well be an editor's, not Pareene's) is a wild exaggeration. Even the competition for "most cynical political story written in Washington this week" is fierce enough that this story might get lost in the pack.

But once we get past the headline, this is a great piece--not least because the kinds of journalistic pathology it identifies are not exceptional, but typical. It does a great job of bringing out the ways in which too many political "journalists" in the US confuse cynicism with sophistication. More than a half-century ago, in The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman and his co-authors nailed this perspective as that of the cynical inside-dopester, the guy whose pride lies in not getting fooled like the rubes because he knows that everyone's 'real' motives are always sordid, selfish, manipulative, and deceptively camouflaged. That's often part of the story, even a significant part; the illusion lies in believing that it's always the whole story, or the most important part of the story. Understanding social and political reality requires more than just debunking people's motives, real or imagined.

It's true that a touch of cynicism can often be useful for making sense of politics. But there is a difference between a critical perspective and a merely cynical one. When cynicism drives out everything else, the results are not really that insightful and illuminating. Instead, cynical inside-dopesterism easily becomes superficial and misleadingly reductive, and when it's pervasive it tends to corrupt and poison public discourse.

All that may be a slightly abstract introduction to a nicely concrete outburst. Some highlights:

When the Future Robot Death Panels ask you to show them one article that explains exactly how narrow-minded, cynical, amoral, and borderline sociopathic the Washington press was in the time of Freedom, you may want to consider this Politico story. ["The Drama Queen Caucus"]

[....] It is ostensibly "about" Democratic members of congress who have announced that they are undecided about voting for health care reform legislation. As Politico stories go, it's not bad and destructive and evil in the way that their Dick Cheney interviews are. It's just a piece of writing that only a man who doesn't have any sense of morality or principle could possibly understand. It's proof that the Politico model is to take everything bad and off-putting about Washington journalism, amplify the worst qualities, and strip out anything edifying, instructive, or redeeming.

The thesis is that everyone who announced that they had any problem, substantive or not, with the health care bill, did so purely and solely for the purpose of boosting their status or name recognition among the sort of people who write and edit Politico. It posits a world where everyone thinks "a Sunday talk show invitation" is a goal worth taking a stand on. [....]

For Representative Luis Gutierrez, for example, "immigration" is a "pet issue." In the Politico mindset, Gutierrez harping on this "pet issue" is purely a way to get himself some attention. The idea that "immigration" is an "issue" that he actually cares about because it is actually about real-life people facing real-life problems that require government intervention, and that he may have trouble supporting this bill because while it is probably a net positive it also fails to address the problems facing those people he may theoretically actually care about, does not occur to anyone. [....]

But this article comes from an insider mindset so corroded by cynicism that it cannot fathom a world where any political actor does anything for any reason other than naked self-promotion. Is it really so naive of me to believe that Dick Cheney keeps arguing for an all-powerful executive unencumbered by the Constitution, the courts, or congress because he misguidedly believes that would keep us safe, and not simply because he wants to be on TV? It's a repulsive mindset, and one that shouldn't be treated as sensible and mainstream by the press, but I think it's heartfelt!

Alas, too true. And here is a point worth pondering:

There is also an important a marked difference between these hypothetical members jockeying for bowling trips with the president and those holding out until the legislation is altered in some fashion—-the ones who want the legislation altered actually seem to grasp that legislation does stuff. To Politico, the purpose of legislating seems to be to go on Meet the Press, or get yourself elected governor.

Yes, legislation does stuff (even if it's not always, or not precisely, what it's intended to do). But to understand what it might or might not do requires something more than political gossip and drama criticism.

--Jeff Weintraub

==============================
Gawker
Saturday, March 20, 2010
The Most Cynical Political Story Ever Written
By Alex Pareene (alexp@gawker.com)



When the Future Robot Death Panels ask you to show them one article that explains exactly how narrow-minded, cynical, amoral, and borderline sociopathic the Washington press was in the time of Freedom, you may want to consider this Politico story.

The headline is "The Drama Queen Caucus." The author is Jonathan Martin. It is ostensibly "about" Democratic members of congress who have announced that they are undecided about voting for health care reform legislation. As Politico stories go, it's not bad and destructive and evil in the way that their Dick Cheney interviews are. It's just a piece of writing that only a man who doesn't have any sense of morality or principle could possibly understand. It's proof that the Politico model is to take everything bad and off-putting about Washington journalism, amplify the worst qualities, and strip out anything edifying, instructive, or redeeming.

The thesis is that everyone who announced that they had any problem, substantive or not, with the health care bill, did so purely and solely for the purpose of boosting their status or name recognition among the sort of people who write and edit Politico. It posits a world where everyone thinks "a Sunday talk show invitation" is a goal worth taking a stand on.

Call it the Drama Queen Caucus - members of Congress who labor mostly in obscurity, lucky to get a daytime cable hit, let alone a Sunday talk show invitation, until the big vote nears. And then they engage in an oh-so-public exercise deliberating over how they will vote or go to extraordinary ends demonstrating how strongly they feel about the way they have already decided to vote.

For Representative Luis Gutierrez, for example, "immigration" is a "pet issue." In the Politico mindset, Gutierrez harping on this "pet issue" is purely a way to get himself some attention. The idea that "immigration" is an "issue" that he actually cares about because it is actually about real-life people facing real-life problems that require government intervention, and that he may have trouble supporting this bill because while it is probably a net positive it also fails to address the problems facing those people he may theoretically actually care about, does not occur to anyone.

The idea is also that Dennis Kucinich didn't support the bill because he wanted to be on TV and talk to the President. And he changed his mind because he wanted more attention, and not because people convinced him that the bill the best possible bill we'd get in the current political climate.

Most politicians are vain. Many of them are stupid. Cynicism is easy and often justified. Plenty of people in congress and elsewhere truly do do the things they do for reasons more or less like the ones described in this piece.

But this article comes from an insider mindset so corroded by cynicism that it cannot fathom a world where any political actor does anything for any reason other than naked self-promotion. Is it really so naive of me to believe that Dick Cheney keeps arguing for an all-powerful executive unencumbered by the Constitution, the courts, or congress because he misguidedly believes that would keep us safe, and not simply because he wants to be on TV? It's a repulsive mindset, and one that shouldn't be treated as sensible and mainstream by the press, but I think it's heartfelt!

(There is also an important a marked difference between these hypothetical members jockeying for bowling trips with the president and those holding out until the legislation is altered in some fashion—the ones who want the legislation altered actually seem to grasp that legislation does stuff. To Politico, the purpose of legislating seems to be to go on Meet the Press, or get yourself elected governor.)

Self-preservation actually provides our lawmakers with a halfway decent incentive to do the popular thing, if not always the right thing, and people make political decisions based on a lotta bullshit like tribal identification and prejudice and fear, but sometimes people support or don't support things for the reasons that they say, and not simply for the sake of saying something to a camera.

Health care showdown - One side is about to freak out big-time

The moment of truth may arrive on Sunday, in the form of a House vote. It has been clear for a while that the legislative strategy would involve a two-part operation in which the House approved the Senate version of the health care reform bill, which already passed the Senate in December with a 60-vote supermajority, and both Houses passed set of fixes negotiated to harmonize the House and Senate bills, using the device of budget "reconciliation" to circumvent a Republican filibuster. For the final text of the overall package, plus an "easy-to-read, essential-for-understanding breakdown" of what it contains , see here. For a nice procedural overview of how this drama will (probably) unfold this weekend, see here.

If this package passes the House, then most analysts seem to think it will almost certainly pass the Senate, too. If it fails to pass the House, then the game is over.

=> On Thursday the chances of passage got a big boost when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released its estimates of the bill's long-term cost and impact. Among other things, the CBO concluded that this final package would extend coverage to 95% of all legal residents of the US by 2019 and would reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next decade. Whether or not those estimates prove to be correct (serious people find them plausible, but making such projections is not an exact science), those deficit reduction figures are politically very significant. They can help reassure wavering Democrats who want to think of themselves as "fiscally conservative," or at least provide them with some political cover, and they appear to guarantee that the amendments can be passed in the Senate using "reconciliation" (which can only be used for measures projected to reduce the deficit).

In addition, over the past few days the health care reform bill was emphatically re-endorsed by both the AMA and the AARP. It also picked up unexpected endorsements from the Catholic Health Association and from a group of nuns representing a wide range of Catholic women's religious orders--the CHA endorsement, in particular, being a fairly dramatic public break with the condemnation of the bill by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Again, these are the kinds of factors that might have at least some marginal effect on wavering Congressional Democrats--along with the fact that health insurance premiums have been going up substantially and conspicuously across the country.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, whose skill at political counting is regarded with universal respect, concluded Thursday that passage now looks probable, though not certain.

It's sure starting to look like both the momentum and the math favor the Democrats and that something will have to go wrong to prevent them from getting to 216 votes on health care.

On the other hand, various things could still go wrong (Silver also explains some of the reasons why that might happen). So this remains a cliffhanger. We'll just have to see how it turns out.

=> Meanwhile, we can look ahead to some likely consequences The Day After. The odds are that one side is about to freak out big-time.

If the Democrats fail to pass this bill, then that will constitute a political debacle of the first order. Back in January, after the Democrats lost their nominal 60-vote majority in the Senate, Obama and the Congressional Democratic leadership could, hypothetically, have decided to abandon the whole effort to enact health care reform, whether or not they admitted this explicitly. Instead, they decided to make a full-scale push to finish passing it, and have effectively staked everything on getting that done. If they fail, then--quite aside from the fact that this will be a disaster in substantive policy terms-- the resulting demoralization among Democrats will almost certainly dwarf their reaction in January, when they went into a complete panic and spent weeks running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. The more long-term after-effects will probably include legislative paralysis for the rest of 2010 and a greatly increased chance of a crushing defeat in the November elections.

On the other hand, if the bill passes ... then I suspect we will see the result foretold on February 20 by Jonathan Chait, who looked ahead to the prospect of "The Coming Conservative Health Care Freakout". In retrospect, Chait's analysis looks very prescient, so it's worth revisiting some of of the highlights:

Ever since Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley, conservatives, with very few exceptions, have been convinced that health care reform is dead. [....]

Some of us realized all along that there was no rational reason that the Massachusetts election had to kill health care reform. Fundamentally, the main barrier -- getting sixty votes in the Senate -- had already been crossed. [....] All the Democrats needed to do was have the House pass the Senate bill. If they insisted on changes, most of those could easily be made through reconciliation, which only requires a majority vote in the Senate. Most conservatives paid no attention to this basic reality, though they did indulge in some gloating mockery of those of us who pointed it out. [....]

But the mustache-twirling bonhomie has started to give way to the realization that the legislative door to health care reform is wide open, and Democrats simply need to walk through it. By no means is it clear that they'll succeed. But I've been waiting for conservatives, filled with hubris at having swept liberalism into the dustbin of history, to wake up to the fact that health care reform is very far from dead, and start to freak out. [....]

You can imagine how this feels to conservatives. They've already run off the field, sprayed themselves with champagne and taunted the losing team's fans. And now the other team is saying the game is still on and they have a good chance to win. There may be nothing wrong at all with the process, but it's certainly going to feel like some kind of crime to the right-wing. The Democrats may not win, but I'm pretty sure they're going to try. The conservative freakout is going to be something to behold.

We've already been seeing some of that right-wing freakout (I wouldn't call a lot of these guys "conservatives") over the past month. But if health care reform passes, then the freakout will really be "something to behold." Stay tuned ....

--Jeff Weintraub

Public support for health care reform continues to grow ...

... though the polling trends hardly show a decisive shift in favor.

Of course, it would be a mistake to get too fixated on the mysterious fluctuations of public opinion polling, but it might be OK to think speculatively about some intriguing recent patterns.

=> As of a week ago, the composite results of the major polls (leaving out the Rasmussen Poll, which has a record of tilting misleadingly to the right) showed that the gap between opponents and supporters of the Democratic health care bill, which opened up about 9 months ago and has continued to fluctuate in size ever since, had practically disappeared.



Obama's decision to get more publicly and directly engaged in this struggle may be having some slight influence in moving public opinion. (Polls continue to show that, by wide margins, more people like and trust Obama than either the Congressional Republicans or the Congressional Democrats.) Or possibly this trend has something to do with the fact that health insurance companies have been raising their rates all over the country recently? Who knows?

=> At all events, the latest polls suggest that this really is a bit of a trend, and not just a passing blip. Yesterday's NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, jointly conducted by Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff, shows the public evenly split on this issue. In fact, supporters number a statistically insignificant one percentage point more than opponents.

On health care, 46 percent say it would be better to pass the president’s plan and make changes to the nation’s health care system, versus 45 percent who would prefer not to pass it and keep the system as it is now.

So at least it can't be said that the polls show a clear majority opposing the bill.

=> But before supporters of health care reform get too giddy about this, it's important to note that the rest of the results from this poll suggest that members of the public continue to be highly confused and ambivalent about the whole question. And that goes beyond the fact that, for most of the past year, many people who tell pollsters that they oppose the bill actually support most of its main components when asked about them separately. Consider this, for example:

Thirty-six percent believe Obama’s plan is a good idea, versus 48 percent who think it’s a bad idea. That’s a slight (but statistically insignificant) change from January, when 31 percent said it was a good idea and 46 percent said it was a bad one.

Huh? More respondents still think it's a bad idea, but some of those favor passing it anyway. Either they're just sick of the whole topic, and want Congress to just get it over with and be done with it ... or they're still very skeptical, but they're willing to see the bill get passed and then hope for the best.

So how should wavering Congressional Democrats vote?

If their representative votes with Republicans to defeat the bill, 34 percent say they would be less likely to re-elect that member, 31 percent say they would be more likely to vote for the member, and 34 percent say it makes no difference.

OK, on balance that seems to add up to slight incentive to vote in favor of passing the bill. No, not exactly.

But if their member of Congress votes with Democrats to pass the legislation, 36 percent say they would be less likely to re-elect that member, 28 percent say they would be more likely to vote for the member, and 34 percent say it makes no difference.

That does look like a double bind.

=> According to McInturff, the Republican pollster, the basic implication for politicians is that "There is no easy place right now in the health care debate."

Hart, the Democratic pollster, draws a slightly different lesson:

Democratic respondents are overwhelmingly supportive of Obama’s health care plan -- they think it’s a good idea by a 64-16 percent margin, according to the poll. Hart argues that such strong support from the base will ultimately make a "yes" vote an easier sell for Democrats who are on the fence.

The key concern for these lawmakers isn’t losing some voters in the middle, he says. "It is alienating the base."

=> Well, since the public opinion polls aren't giving the Democrats a clear message about which vote would be most likely to give them an electoral boost, they should just go ahead and do the right thing: Pass the damn bill.

--Jeff Weintraub

P.S. Meanwhile, on other subjects, respondents did

overwhelmingly agree on this: The nation is on the wrong track, the economy has negatively affected the country, and Congress is broken.

Cranky!

Pass the damn bill (#12) - The Catholic Health Association & Catholic nuns representing a range of socially active religious orders

An interesting development reported in the Wall Street Journal and Talking Points Memo:

A group of Catholic nuns has written a letter, sent to every member of Congress, urging them to pass health care reform. The support is a rare break from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has publicly opposed the bill over its abortion language.

The nuns, who are the heads of organizations representing a total of 59,000 Catholic sisters, wrote, in part, that the Senate bill will "make historic new investments -- $250 million -- in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."

That last quotation comes at the end of the following paragraph in their statement:

The health care bill that has been passed by the Senate and that will be voted on by the House will expand coverage to over 30 million uninsured Americans. While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all. It will invest in preventative care. It will bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children. And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.

I have no way of knowing how broadly representative the viewpoint expressed by this statement is among members of Catholic women's religious orders, not to mention Catholics more generally. But the statement unquestionably does accord with at least some important elements of official, mainstream Catholic social doctrine. (Even the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposes the Senate version of the health care bill on anti-abortion grounds, has repeatedly affirmed the principle that "for the Catholic Church, health care is a basic human right.") The fact that this might surprise some people is probably sufficient reason to read Sisters' letter in full (below); but I think the letter also makes a good case in substantive terms.

=> It is probably significant that the release of this letter comes a few days after the head of the Catholic Health Association, the national association of Catholic hospitals and other medical service organizations, announced support for the Senate version of the Democratic health care reform bill--an event emphasized in the letter's first paragraph. Of course, it is also sociologically significant (and might also surprise some people) that the President of the CHA is a nun, Sister Carol Keehan. Keehan's statement endorsing the bill, "The time is now for health reform", called the bill

an historic opportunity to make great improvements in the lives of so many Americans. Is it perfect? No. Does it cover everyone? No. But is it a major first step? Yes.

The insurance reforms will make the lives of millions more secure, and their coverage more affordable. The reforms will eventually make affordable health insurance available to 31 million of the 47 million Americans currently without coverage.

Of course,

CHA has a major concern on life issues. We said there could not be any federal funding for abortions and there had to be strong funding for maternity care, especially for vulnerable women.

But with respect to abortion, the compromise solution written into the Senate bill strikes her as acceptable:

The bill now being considered allows people buying insurance through an exchange to use federal dollars in the form of tax credits and their own dollars to buy a policy that covers their health care. If they choose a policy with abortion coverage, then they must write a separate personal check for the cost of that coverage. [....]

My non-expert impression is that the CHA's endorsement of the Senate bill is probably a Big Deal, if only because it could provide political cover for wavering members of Congress who are Catholic and/or have Catholic constituents if they vote for the current health care reform package. (As things now stand, moving even a few Congressional votes, or keeping even a few vulnerable Congresspeople from being defeated on this issue in November, would matter a lot.) And although the Sisters' letter is probably less politically potent in itself than the CHA endorsement, it's a significant attention-getting follow-up.

=> Although I'm not sure the Sisters would put it in quite these terms, the message is clear: Pass the damn bill.

--Jeff Weintraub

UPDATE: For another significant follow-up, see the May 18 editorial in the National Catholic Reporter: "Congress, and its Catholics, should say yes to health care reform."

==============================
Catholic Sisters Support Passage of Healthcare Bill
March 17, 2010

This is the text of the letter being sent to all Members of Congress:

Dear Members of Congress:

We write to urge you to cast a life-affirming “yes” vote when the Senate health care bill (H.R. 3590) comes to the floor of the House for a vote as early as this week. We join the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA), which represents 1,200 Catholic sponsors, systems, facilities and related organizations, in saying: the time is now for health reform AND the Senate bill is a good way forward.

As the heads of major Catholic women’s religious order in the United States, we represent 59,000 Catholic Sisters in the United States who respond to needs of people in many ways. Among our other ministries we are responsible for running many of our nation’s hospital systems as well as free clinics throughout the country.

We have witnessed firsthand the impact of our national health care crisis, particularly its impact on women, children and people who are poor. We see the toll on families who have delayed seeking care due to a lack of health insurance coverage or lack of funds with which to pay high deductibles and co-pays. We have counseled and prayed with men, women and children who have been denied health care coverage by insurance companies. We have witnessed early and avoidable deaths because of delayed medical treatment.

The health care bill that has been passed by the Senate and that will be voted on by the House will expand coverage to over 30 million uninsured Americans. While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all. It will invest in preventative care. It will bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children. And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.

Congress must act. We are asking every member of our community to contact their congressional representatives this week. In this Lenten time, we have launched nationwide prayer vigils for health care reform. We are praying for those who currently lack health care. We are praying for the nearly 45,000 who will lose their lives this year if Congress fails to act. We are also praying for you and your fellow Members of Congress as you complete your work in the coming days. For us, this health care reform is a faith mandate for life and dignity of all of our people.

We urge you to vote “yes” for life by voting yes for health care reform in H.R. 3590.

Sincerely,

Marlene Weisenbeck, FSPA
LCWR President
Leadership Conference of Women Religious

Joan Chittister, OSB
Co-Chair Global Peace Initiative of Women
Erie, PA

Sr. Mary Persico, IHM
President
Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Scranton, PA

Sr. Susan Hadzima, IHM
Councilor for Missioning and Community Life
Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Scranton, PA

Mary Genino (RSHM)
Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary
Western American Province.

Nancy Conway CSJ
Congregation Leadership Team
The Congregation of St. Joseph

Debra M. Sciano, SSND
Provincial Leader
Milwaukee Province, School Sisters of Notre Dame

Josephine Gaugier, OP
Adrian Dominican Sisters
Holy Rosary Mission Chapter Prioress
Adrian, MI

Kathleen Nolan, OP
Adrian Dominican Sisters
Office of the General Council

Marlene Weisenbeck, FSPA
President
Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration
La Crosse, WI

Corinne Weiss
Servants of Jesus Leadership Team
Saginaw MI

Adrian Dover OP
Prioress
Dominican Sisters of Houston, Texas

Rose Mary Dowling, FSM
President
Franciscan Sisters of Mary

Leadership Team
Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(from Mary Martens, BVM, Administrative Assistant)

Beatrice Haines, OLVM
President, Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters
Huntington IN

Joan Saalfeld, SNJM, Provincial
Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary
U.S.-Ontario Province

Jo'Ann De Quattro, SNJM
Sisters of the Holy Names
U.S.-Ontario Province Leadership Team

Sharon Simon, OP
President
Racine Dominicans

Maryann A. McMahon, O.P.
Vice President
Dominican Sisters of Racine, WI

Agnes Johnson, OP
Vice President
Racine Dominicans

Pat Mulcahey, OP
Prioress of Sinsinawa Dominicans

Pam Chiesa, PBVM
President
Sisters of the Presentation, San Francisco

Patricia Anne Cloherty, PBVM
Leadership Team, Sisters of the Presentation, San Francisco

Gloria Inés Loya
Leadership Team
Sisters of the Presentation, San Francisco

Gloria Marie Jones, OP
Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose
Congregational Prioress and Council

Mary Litell
Provincial Councilor
Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity St. Francis Province

Theresa Sandok, OSM
Servants of Mary (Servite Sisters)
Ladysmith, Wisconsin

Sr Claire Graham SSS
General Director
Sisters of Social Service
Encino CA

Margaret Byrne CSJP - Congregation Leader
Teresa Donohue CSJP - Assistant Congregation Leader
Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace

Sr. Carmelita Latiolais, S.E.C.
Sisters of the Eucharistic Covenant

Joan Mumaw, IHM – Vice President
On behalf of the Leadership Council
Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Monroe, Michigan

Sister Clare of Assisi Pierre, SSF
Sisters of the Holy Family
New Orleans, LA

Sister Marla Monahan, SND
Provincial
Sisters of Notre Dame
(St. Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead, KY
and St. Charles Care Center in Covington, KY)

Vivien Linkhauer, SC
Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, United States Province
Greensburg, PA

Dolores Maguire
Sisters of the Holy Faith
Northern California LCWR Region XIV

Sr. Mary Elizabeth Schweiger, OSB
Subprioress
Mount St. Scholastica
Atchison, KS

Marianites of Holy Cross
Sr. Suellen Tennyson, MSC
Congregational Leader

Barbara Hagedorn, SC
Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati
Mt. St. Joseph, Ohio

Francine Schwarzenberger OP
Dominican Sisters of Peace
Denver, Colorado

Sister Maureen McCarthy
School Sisters of St. Francis
U.S. Provincial Team
Milwaukee, WI

Eileen C. Reid, RJM
Provincial Superior
Religious of Jesus and Mary
Washington DC

Sister Cecilia Dwyer, O.S.B.
Prioress
Benedictine Sisters of Virginia

The Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes
Sister Joann Sambs, CSA
General Superior

Sisters of St. Francis
Tiffin, Ohio
from Sr. Mary Kuhlman)

Sr. Helen McDonald, SHCJ
Province Leader
Society of the Holy Child Jesus

Leadership Team
Sisters of the Precious Blood
Dayton, OH<

The Leadership Team of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis
Sister Jane Blabolil, SSJ-TOSF
Sister Michelle Wronkowski, SSJ-TOSF
Sister Dorothy Pagosa, SSJ-TOSF
Sister Linda Szocik, SSJ-TOSF

Sr. Gladys Guenther SHF
Sisters of the Holy Family
Congregational President
Fremont, CA

Sr. Dorothy Maxwell, Councilor
Sisters of St. Dominic
Blauvelt New York

Sheral Marshall, OSF
Provincial Councilor
Sisters of St Francis

Marilyn Kerber, SNDdeN
Canonical Representative, Ohio Province

Sisters of St. Louis, California Region
(from Sr. Michele Harnett, SSL)

Ruth Goodwin, OSF
Sisters of ST. Francis of Philadelphia

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Leadership Team

Sr. Joanne Buckman, OSU
Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland

Pass the damn bill (#11) - Matt Yglesias

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who has been insisting that he would vote against the health care reform bill because it doesn't meet his tests of ultra-"progressive" ideological purity, has decided that he doesn't want to wind up playing the role that Ralph Nader played in the 2000 Presidential election. Whatever processes of reasoning and persuasion may have led Kucinich to this conclusion, it's good news. These days, every vote counts.

Matt Yglesias used this news as the occasion for a concise and cogent summation of the reasons why Passing the damn bill is the right thing to do now, despite its flaws, gaps, and half-measures:

Compared to the health care system I would like to see, this bill doesn’t cover enough people, doesn’t do enough to control costs, doesn’t do enough to emphasize prevention and public health, and is too soft on the health care industry. But relative to the status quo, this bill covers a lot of people, helps to control costs, emphasizing prevention and public health, and [reins] in the health care industry. The reasons to be disappointed with this bill are all reasons to be disappointed with the status quo, and the disappointing nature of the status quo is a reason to be enthusiastic about this bill. What’s more, if the bill passes you can pass more bills in the future! If it fails, politicians won’t want to touch health care again for decades.

--Jeff Weintraub

The latest hypocritical nonsense about Senate procedures from the Republicans

Back during the 1990s, UN inspectors in Iraq had a joke about how you could tell when the Iraqi government officials they were dealing with were lying: "Their mustaches are moving."

Well, most current Congressional Republicans don't have mustaches. So if we want to know these days when the things they say about the health care reform are dishonest--in ways that range from outright lies to misleading prevarication and shameless hypocrisy--we can just check to see whether their lips are moving.

The Republicans and the larger right-wing propaganda machine do keep banging on about the alleged novelty and iniquity of using "reconciliation" to help pass major legislation, even though all their claims have repeatedly been shown to be false and/or hypocritical. (The two are not precisely the same, since an argument might have some substantive validity even if the person making it is being hypocritical, but in the noise wars over "reconciliation" the Republicans and their media echo-chamber are generally making claims that are false and hypocritical.)

But now, on top of that, a new variant in this hypocritical whining has emerged. This time it's about the possibility that the House Democrats might use a procedural maneuver that the Republicans themselves used repeatedly and enthusiastically when they controlled Congress, and even defended in court against a legal challenge, the "self-executing rule." (To try to pretend that this is something new and unprecedented, Republicans are calling this maneuver the "Slaughter Solution" or the "Slaughter Rule," after House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter--and, as usual, are getting many alleged political "journalists" to repeat this sloganeering uncritically. For a quick dose of reality, see here.)

=> All this is nicely captured by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute:

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

Clearly not.

=> In the long run, of course, routine use of government by loophole to pass important legislation, a tendency that has been escalated primarily though not exclusively by the Republicans over the past several decades, is not the best way to run a serious political system. I think Ornstein is right about that. But changing this would require an agreement on serious and genuine reform, not simply unilateral disarmament by the Democrats.

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub

Harry Reid throws down the gauntlet on health care reform

On Thursday the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, sent the Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, an open letter telling him that the Democratic leadership is determined to go ahead and finish passing the health care reform bill--and that they're willing to use budget reconciliation to help do that, despite Republican whining. In a way, none of this is news. But if there were any remaining doubts about whether the health care reform fight is headed for a final showdown, this public commitment by Reid should dispel them.

So Reid's letter is worth reading (not least because it's clear, straightforward, and factually accurate). It was widely noticed that the tone of the letter is notably firm, unambiguous, and even undiplomatic. I am inclined to agree with people who have surmised that this tone was probably intended to send a message to House Democrats as much as to Senate Republicans.

Ezra Klein reproduced the main substance of Reid's letter (below). Now we'll see what happens next.

--Jeff Weintraub
==============================
Washington Post (On-Line)
March 11, 2010 - 2:01 PM ET
Reid to McConnell: Reconcile this
By Ezra Klein

Harry Reid just sent Mitch McConnell a letter expressing his intention to move forward with reconciliation, and telling the Republicans to, well, read for yourself:

Though we have tried to engage in a serious discussion, our efforts have been met by repeatedly debunked myths and outright lies. At the same time, Republicans have resorted to extraordinary legislative maneuvers in an effort not to improve the bill, but to delay and kill it. After watching these tactics for nearly a year, there is only one conclusion an objective observer could make: these Republican maneuvers are rooted less in substantive policy concerns and more in a partisan desire to discredit Democrats, bolster Republicans, and protect the status quo on behalf of the insurance industry.[...]

60 Senators voted to pass historic reform that will make health insurance more affordable, make health insurance companies more accountable and reduce our deficit by roughly a trillion dollars. The House passed a similar bill. However, many Republicans now are demanding that we simply ignore the progress we’ve made, the extensive debate and negotiations we’ve held, the amendments we’ve added (including more than 100 from Republicans) and the votes of a supermajority in favor of a bill whose contents the American people unambiguously support. We will not. We will finish the job. We will do so by revising individual elements of the bills both Houses of Congress passed last year, and we plan to use the regular budget reconciliation process that the Republican caucus has used many times.

I know that many Republicans have expressed concerns with our use of the existing Senate rules, but their argument is unjustified. There is nothing unusual or extraordinary about the use of reconciliation. As one of the most senior Senators in your caucus, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, said in explaining the use of this very same option, “Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so.” Similarly, as non-partisan congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein said in this Sunday’s New York Times, our proposal is “compatible with the law, Senate rules and the framers’ intent.”

Reconciliation is designed to deal with budget-related matters, and some have expressed doubt that it could be used for comprehensive health care reform that includes many policies with no budget implications. But the reconciliation bill now under consideration would not be the vehicle for comprehensive reform – that bill already passed outside of reconciliation with 60 votes. Instead, reconciliation would be used to make a modest number of changes to the original legislation, all of which would be budget-related. There is nothing inappropriate about this. Reconciliation has been used many times for a variety of health-related matters, including the establishment of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and COBRA benefits, and many changes to Medicare and Medicaid.

As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by Republican Congresses and signed into law by Republican Presidents – including President Bush’s massive, budget-busting tax breaks for multi-millionaires. Given this history, one might conclude that Republicans believe a majority vote is sufficient to increase the deficit and benefit the super-rich, but not to reduce the deficit and benefit the middle class. Alternatively, perhaps Republicans believe a majority vote is appropriate only when Republicans are in the majority. Either way, we disagree. Keep in mind that reconciliation will not exclude Republicans from the legislative process. You will continue to have an opportunity to offer amendments and change the shape of the legislation. In addition, at the end of the process, the bill can pass only if it wins a democratic, up-or-down majority vote. If Republicans want to vote against a bill that reduces health care costs, fills the prescription drug “donut hole” for seniors and reduces the deficit, you will have every right to do so.

Read the rest here. I wonder if this makes any House Democrats feel more certain about Reid's intentions?

Glenn Beck exposes a major threat to America

This is funny, in the sense of grimly amusing, if you're in the right mood.

Click HERE ... and when a window pops up asking you to "Personalize your video | Connect with Facebook" ... just type in your name ... or, if you prefer, you can type in: Jeff Weintraub.

Some propagandists and apologists for theocratic authoritarianism in Iran

I've been a little slow about posting this, but unfortunately it's still timely.

The website Observing Iran has compiled a useful, though incomplete, overview of conspicuous Anglophone apologists, propagandists, and cheerleaders for the Khamenei/Revolutionary Guards/Ahmadinejad regime in Iran. The number and range of these people is illuminating. I was alerted to this round-up by the always enlightening BobFromBrockley (see below), who reproduced it along with some further relevant information (and, I was pleased to notice, a link to an earlier post of mine).

I do want to add a clarification and a caveat. All the individuals and organizations included in Observing Iran's "List of Islamic Republic apologists" (with one exception I will mention in a moment) have combined blatant and persistent apologetics for the Iranian regime with efforts to dismiss or smear the democratic opposition. But they cover a wide spectrum, and it's important to emphasize that they fall into a range of different categories which should not be conflated, including:

(a) people who actively sympathize with the Iranian regime on ideological grounds, whether those are based on theocratic authoritarianism, pseudo-progressive anti-"imperialism", or some combination of the two;

(b) actual paid employees of the regime's propaganda organs, such as PressTV; and

(c) self-styled foreign-policy "realists" whose whitewashing of and apologetics for the Iranian regime are not based on ideological sympathies (except, in some but not all cases, shared hostility toward Israel and toward real or alleged "Zionists"), but who merely regard the democratic opposition in Iran as a complicating irritation and wish it would just go away.

My caveat applies to the original Observing Iran list, but not to BobFromBrockley's post. Since I've mentioned this Observing Iran list, it seems proper to add that one person whose inclusion there I think is genuinely unfair, and who doesn't belong in any of the categories I've just outlined, is Ray Tayekh, It's true that, over the years, Tayekh has often been the kind of foreign-policy "realist" who has, at the very least, bent over backward to be sympathetic to the perspective of the Khamenei/IRCG/Ahmadinejad regime. But even at his worst, he was never in the same class as, say, the appalling duo of Flynt Leverett & Hilary Mann Leverett. More to the point, the fraudulent election in June 2009 and the Green Wave of opposition it provoked have had a genuine effect on Tayekh's thinking, and everything he's written about Iran since then has had a new tone (e.g., see here & here & here). Unlike the Leveretts, he has been unmistakably sympathetic, not hostile, to the democratic opposition, and he's been increasingly critical of the regime. One still might not find his position entirely satisfactory, but I don't think it's appropriate to include him in a list of that sort.

=> BobFromBrockley also mentions some other people who have worked for the Iranian regime's TV station, PressTV. A number of them have acted as explicit apologists for the regime (and thus have appropriately turned up on Observing Iran's list). But it is worth making clear, just to avoid any possible misunderstanding, that a few of them have not--for example, Tariq Ramadan.

Nevertheless, I think BobFromBrockley is correct to indicate that even those exceptions (or semi-exceptions) should be ashamed of their paid association with the regime's propaganda apparatus, which--at the very least--can only help lend it a veneer of respectability.

--Jeff Weintraub

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BobFromBrockley
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Press TV

Jeff Weintraub reminds us of what a disgrace Press TV is. Looking at their Iran news, the reader would have no idea that there is anything going on, let alone an uprising. This is the only inkling, which talks about "post-election unrest". Press TV is evidence for the totalitarian nature of the Iranian state.

Incidentally, among its paid employees are George Galloway, Yvonne Ridley, Tariq Ramadan, Afshin Rattansi, Greenwich's own Andrew Gilligan, and, at least until recently, Derek Conway MP. The William Joyces of the 21st century?

Complain!

(More on Gilligan. More on Ridley. More on Galloway.

Full list of Iran regime apologists from Observing Iran:
Abbas Barzegar
Abbas Edalat
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Ardeshir Ommani
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
CASMII
Darius Guppy
Elaheh Rostami-Povey
Flynt Leverett
George Galloway
Haleh Afshar
Hamid Molana
Hooman Majd
James Petras
John Rees
Just Foreign Policy
Kaveh L. Afrasiabi
Ken Ballen
Leon Kuhn
Matthew Richardson
Mazda Majidi
Mehri Honarbin-Holliday
Nader Mokhtari
Nima Shirazi
Patrick Doherty
Phil Wilayto
Roshan Muhammed Salih
Seumas Milne
Socialist Unity
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
Stop the War Coalition
World Socialist Web Site
Yvonne Ridley)

For accurate news on Iran, turn to the blogosphere:Iran Solidarity, Azarmehr, Neo-Resistance, HOPI, Maryam Namazie, Entdinglichung, Airforce Amazons.

Previous: Galloway and the tyrants; Ahmadinejad's British stooges; Ridley and Galloway; Press TV and Nicholas Kollerstrom at Wikipedia.

Where does federal spending go? - Perceptions vs. realities

Paul Waldman at TAPPED, the American Prospect blog, points to an important fact about American politics that I used to think was well known but which I now suspect is probably under-appreciated:

[T]he public is massively misinformed about what tax money goes toward, and in a particular way: They tend to overestimate the amount of money spent on programs they don't like. For instance, lots of people believe that much of the federal budget goes for welfare or for foreign aid (neither very popular), when the actual amount spent on each of those items is less than 1 percent of the budget.

(So what? You can read Waldman's proposal here.)

=> And now, to get a bit more speculative, here's a follow-up that many people might find surprising:

And when you give them the opportunity to say how they'd like their tax money spent, they give very progressive answers: Cut defense spending, but increase spending on education, medical research, and renewable energy.

Making due allowances for the complexities, uncertainties, and other mysteries of public opinion polling--including the fact that respondents often wind up expressing preferences that are mutually contradictory--that seems to be broadly right.

What's even more intriguing is that this pattern holds, to a considerable extent, even for survey respondents who describe themselves as "conservative" or "very conservative." We all know that these constituencies, along with many other Americans, say they would like to see less federal spending in general. But John Sides alerts us to a 2008 survey by the American National Election Study (ANES) that asked respondents to indicate, with respect to specific types of government programs, whether they would like to increase federal spending, decrease it, or keep it about the same. The graph below covers responses by self-described conservatives. When they were asked whether they wanted to cut back federal spending for specific types of programs, only two categories registered over 25%. (Guess which ones.) In all other categories ... well, look at the results. (To expand the graph, click here.)



(By the way, I can't help noticing that very few of these conservative respondents wanted to cut "aid to the poor"--which may reflect well on their sense of decency-- but considerably more wanted to reduce spending on "welfare". This disparity does not surprise me.)

Again, we should bear in mind that the implications of poll results are uncertain and often mysterious. But these may be worth puzzling over. Kevin Drum interpreted these results as suggesting that, in real-world terms, most self-identified conservatives "aren't actually in favor of cutting spending on much of anything." Maybe.

--Jeff Weintraub