Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) speaks on campaign finance and the Fair Elections Now Act at an event held by the Progressive Policy Institute and Americans for Campaign Reform last week on Capitol Hill.
Durbin on the Supreme Court ruling:
Durbin on changing the political dynamic:
The next steps:
Back on February 12, a CNN/New York Times poll gave us our first good look at the Tea Party Movement, and it didn’t confirm the media stereotype of angry average citizens who were somewhere in the “middle” on issues and equally disdained the two parties. Instead it showed the Tea Party folk to be, basically, very conservative Republicans determined to pressure the GOP to move to the right or suffer the consequences — in other words, a radicalized GOP base.
A new poll from Quinnipiac confirms that impression, and it’s really getting to the point where any other interpretation of the Tea Party Movement is probably spin (e.g., among Tea Party leaders who want to maintain their leverage over Republicans by pretending to be more independent than they actually are).
The alternative explanation has been that the Tea Partiers represent independent voters who are fed up with government and will join with Republicans to create a stable majority in this “center-right nation” if and only if Republicans stop talking about cultural issues and focus on lower taxes, smaller government and the economy. Nothing in the Quinnipiac poll supports that proposition. On question after question, self-identified Tea Partiers (13 percent of the total sample) are much closer in their views to self-identified Republicans than to self-identified independents. Most notably, the approval/disapproval rating for the Republican Party is 60/20 among Tea Partiers and 28/42 among indies. Among those voting in 2008, Tea Partiers went for McCain by a margin of 77/15; indies split down the middle (going for McCain 46/42). Tea Partiers have a favorable view of Sarah Palin by a 72/14 margin (significantly higher than among Republicans), while indies have an unfavorable view of her by a 49/34 margin. Tea Partiers self-identify as Republicans or Republican-leaners by a 74/16 margin. These are not the same people by any stretch of the imagination.
The poll doesn’t ask enough questions to get at the details of Tea Party ideology, but it also doesn’t supply any ammunition to the common perception that Tea Partiers are libertarians at heart, and/or that they are displacing the Christian Right within the conservative coalition. Actually, 21 percent of self-identified white “born-again” evangelicals consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement, well above the 13 percent figure for all voters. And the the two categories of voters share a rare positive attachment to Sarah Palin (white “born-agains” approve of her by a 55/29 margin, Tea Partiers by a 72/14 margin).
At some point, the more questionable assumptions that pundits are making about the Tea Folk — they are right-trending independents, they are hostile to the Christian Right — need to yield to empirical evidence. Now would be a good time to start.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Channeling my inner Rahm: never waste a good crisis. The earthquake in Haiti was, and continues to be, tragic. However, at least one entrepreneur sees an opportunity to rebuild a critical part of Haiti’s infrastructure and probably make a few bucks in the meantime:
John Stanton, founder of Voice Stream and former chief executive of T-Mobile USA, wants the Haitian government to forget about rebuilding its copper wire communications network. Instead, he thinks Haiti should go mobile. … Stanton called for the Haitian government to create an all-wireless nation with more robust networks for the population of nearly 10 million and to build an economy centered on mobile technology.
Should Haiti choose to open up some wireless bandwidth, Stanton claims that he’ll put up $100 million of his company’s money. While the idea has merit, implementation involves a few caveats, one of which comes from PPI-alum Rob Atkinson, now president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. He notes, “This could be a good strategy for as long as 20 years even, but I just don’t see it as an ultimate strategy because at a certain point you need fixed wire for services that require more bandwidth.”
Furthermore, there’s a question about competition — Stanton is angling for the first-mover advantage and trying to seize the initiative where he sees opportunity. But as with any government contract (even Haitian ones after a massive natural disaster), there’s the worry that a single-source supplier will distort the upside while dragging its heels on the outputs.
But on the whole, the idea tracks closely with what Mike Derham and I advocated in a PPI Policy Memo on Haitian reconstruction. We said that Haiti should embrace cell phone technology as a vital tool in facilitating capital flow:
Sub-Saharan Africa has adopted programs like M-PESA to allow people to use their cell phones as checking accounts. The time and effort necessary to establish a similar system in Haiti would be worthwhile. Credit can be transferred to individual phone numbers — including from overseas — and that credit can then be used for purchases from other phone owners who have a similar plan (including prepaid) from their provider. Cell coverage is one of the few institutions that covers all of Haiti. It is also an institution that has worked through the crisis, and that the American military is working to make sure stays running.
Wireless technology should a vital institution in Haiti, and Stanton’s offer should be evaluated seriously with that in mind.
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ifrc/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
If you need a pet story to follow over the next year, Google and China is it. The issues at hand — freedom, human rights, censorship, and the almighty dollar — define, in a microcosm, China’s internal struggle to shape a coherent, enduring image on the world stage. Can China have its cake and eat it too — censorship and repression on one hand, and Western companies that help foster economic growth on the other? The long-term fallout from this story could set precedent for decades to come.
Here’s a quick recap: Google, whose slogan is “Don’t Be Evil”, January revealed that it — along with 22 other companies– was the victim of a cyberattack sponsored by Beijing. As part of China’s intrusion, the Google email accounts of prominent human rights activists were hacked. Here was the company’s conclusion at the time, from Google’s blog:
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
After some additional research, the hammer just dropped yesterday:
We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered — combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger — had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.
So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services — Google Search, Google News, and Google Images — on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk.
It is highly likely that Beijing will attempt to censor Google.com.hk, and their efforts will likely test the limits of what has become known as the Great Firewall of China. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of a tech-geek to know how feasible this is, but we’ll soon find out.
But the precedents that Google’s move sets will be far-reaching, and define American internet companies’ role in China for years. Will American corporations join Google, or attempt to replace it? Secretary of State Clinton spoke passionately that American businesses’ refusal “to support politically motivated censorship will become a trademark characteristic of American technology companies. It should be part of our national brand.” But is it too tempting for Yahoo.cn (which exists) and Bing.cn (which doesn’t… yet) to vacuum up the market share Google’s departure leaves hanging out there? And what about slightly more ambiguous cases, like Amazon.cn, which aren’t in the search engine business, but do exist and do provide Chinese with access to information?
And what would be necessary for Beijing to give way? Is there a conceivable scenario under which China might eventually permit unfettered searches of its internet content? And does this spat extend to companies beyond the information sector? Should it? Will the Obama adminstration bring pressure to bear on U.S. companies to, in turn, help pressure Beijing? Will non-information sector American companies abandon China in a mass protest against censorship? It is difficult to imagine any scenario where a major non-censored U.S. corporation forsakes its access to a market of 1.3 billion people, right? But Google’s decision is astounding and could create waves.
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/shekharsahu/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Amazing what a little history-making legislation can do for your image. As others have already pointed out, the media narrative of the Obama presidency has undergone a wholesale revision in the wake of the House’s passage of health care reform legislation. Gone are the accounts of a flailing presidency and a Democratic Party headed for doom in November. In their place are breathless stories about an administration pulled back from the brink, and a presidency on its way to becoming one of the most consequential in the nation’s history.
It’s far too early to make a judgment of Obama’s legacy, of course. But the stories of triumphant Democrats are all too real and affirm what those who’ve been advocating for reform have been saying: winning does a party good. November may still look ugly for Democrats – historically, the out party has gained seats in a new president’s first midterm election – but passing their top domestic priority will rally the base and give them a fighting chance to keep losses to a minimum.
More than firing up a disillusioned base for the election, the passage of health reform also gives the American public an image of a triumphant Democratic Party. And if there’s one thing Americans like, it’s winners. Before the passage of health care reform, polls showed a majority viewing it unfavorably. In the wake of Sunday’s historic win – and, no less important, headline after headline about that historic win – the first Gallup poll to come out on health care now has the numbers flipped: 49 percent now call reform a “good thing,” versus 40 percent saying it was a “bad thing.” As the president is poised to go on the road to do some more barnstorming for the plan, expect those numbers to inch up some more.
One of the healthiest effects health care’s passage will have on Democrats politically is that it will likely give President Obama’s approval rating a boost. According to Nate Silver’s analysis, the correlation between a president’s approval rating prior to the midterms and his party’s performance at the polls is actually very strong. Today, President Obama’s approval-disapproval rating on Gallup’s daily tracking poll sits at 51 percent-43 percent; just a few days ago, it was at 46 percent-47 percent.
It’s early yet, of course, and capricious as the CW machine is, the narrative could change at any time. The bounce may prove to be evanescent. But compared to where the Democrats were before Sunday, it’s fair to say that health care reform was not just good policy but good politics as well.
Republicans have been gnashing their teeth and rending their garments, lamenting the landmark passage of health care reform late Sunday night. The Tea Party wing of the party has been vowing that this isn’t the end of the fight over healthcare — it’s just the beginning.
While House Minority Leader John Boehner’s response to the health care bill (not least its tax hike on tanning salons) has been a “hell no,” the more pragmatic thinkers on the other side of the aisle have been bemoaning the GOP’s Waterloo. David “Axis of Evil” Frum, who coined the “Waterloo” phrase, has laid out some constructive responses Republicans can take up on health care — and he’s making more sense than most in the party of Lincoln.
Frum outlines four ideas that Republicans should get behind:
1) One of the worst things about the Democrats’ plan is the method of financing: an increase in tax on high-income earners. At first that tax bites only a very small number, but the new taxes will surely be applied to larger and larger portions of the American population over time.
Republicans champion lower taxes and faster economic growth. We need to start thinking now about how to get rid of these new taxes on work, saving and investment — if necessary by finding other sources of revenue, including carbon taxes.
2) We should quit defending employment-based health care. The leading Republican spokesman in the House on these issues, Rep. Paul Ryan, repeatedly complained during floor debate that the Obama plan would “dump” people out of employer-provided care into the exchanges. He said that as if it were a bad thing.
Yet free-market economists from Milton Friedman onward have identified employer-provided care as the original sin of American health care. Employers choose different policies for employees than those employees would choose for themselves. The cost is concealed.
Wages are depressed without employees understanding why. The day when every employee in America gets his or her insurance through an exchange will be a good day for market economics. It’s true that the exchanges are subsidized. So is employer-provided care, to the tune of almost $200 billion a year.
3) We should call for reducing regulation of the policies sold inside the health care exchanges. The Democrats’ plans require every policy sold within the exchanges to meet certain strict conditions.
American workers will lose the option of buying more basic but cheaper plans. It will be as if the only cable packages available were those that include all the premium channels. No bargains in that case. Republicans should press for more scope for insurers to cut prices if they think they can offer an attractive product that way.
4) The Democratic plan requires businesses with payrolls more than $500,000 to buy health insurance for their workers or face fines of $2,000 per worker. Could there be a worse time to heap this new mandate on smaller employers? Health insurance comes out of employee wages, plain and simple. Employers who do not offer health insurance must compete for labor against those who do — and presumably pay equivalent wages for equivalent work.
The first point is red-meat, tax-cutting rhetoric for the Republican base – not much to see there.
The third point is very broad, but middle ground could be easily reached. Everyone is against “over-regulation” but everyone is for “consumer protection.” Finding the middle ground to give patients the best set of alternatives should be a key goal as the regulations of health-exchanges are spelled out.
The fourth and final point, while a good-faith effort to protect engines of job creation from additional burden, misrepresents the small business coverage of the health care reform bill. The small business provisions of the bill exempt companies with less than 50 employees. The only way Frum’s payroll figure would make sense is if each employee was being paid $10,000 a year. At that point they’re eligible for health care subsidies of almost $50,000 for a family of four.
But it’s Frum’s second point that progressives should consider. Employer-based health care has been a long-term roadblock to innovation and job creation. (The whole story can be heard here.) Moving from a system where insurers try to sell packages to employer HR departments to one where patients can make choices themselves on the exchanges envisioned in Sunday’s historic bill can save up to 40 percent of what we’re spending on health care. But many of us getting health care through our employers don’t have the option to look to the exchanges. (The Washington Post has a handy tool you can use to see what your health care options will be come 2014.)
We should take sensible Republicans like Frum at their word and look to give more people the opportunity to embrace the benefits of choice that will be brought around by health exchanges. Maybe by getting behind an idea like the Wyden proposal we can get Republicans like Frum to embrace the president’s vision of working in a bipartisan manner.
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanmixer/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
Amidst the understandable relief among Democrats at the passage of health care reform by the House, there’s been relatively little talk about the Democrats who still voted “no.” But 34 of them did, and fortunately, Nate Silver of 538.com took a close look at factors that might have explained the residual defections.
Nate concludes that Obama’s 2008 share of the vote in each members’ district, their general ideology, and their views on abortion, were the variables most highly correlated with a “no” vote. Variables that didn’t make as much difference include the competitiveness of the members’ own races, the number of uninsured in their districts and campaign contributions by insurance industry lobbyists.
It’s not that surprising that all 12 House Democrats representing districts where Obama won less than 40 percent of the vote in 2008 voted “no,” or that 61 of the 63 representing districts where Obama won over 60 percent voted “yea.” But 13 of the 30 from districts where Obama won more than 40 percent but less than a majority voted “no.”
Despite Bart Stupak’s decision to support the bill at the last minute, it’s significant that 24 of the 34 “no” votes in the House were members who voted for the original Stupak Amendment. Putting it another way, supporters of the Stupak Amendment split 37-24 in favor of the bill, while opponents split 182-10.
Ideologically, Nate uses the Poole-Rosenthal system to break down Democrats, and shows that “roughly the 110 most liberal Democrats voted for the health care bill.” That’s pretty amazing when you consider the unhappiness over the bill expressed by so many self-conscious progressives once the public option dropped out. Those categorized as “mainline Democrats” in the Poole-Rosenthal typology went for the bill 48-2, and “mainline-moderates” voted for it 44-7. In the most rightward category — “moderate-conservative” — members split right down the middle, 25-25.
All the other variables don’t quite have the salience of Obama vote share, ideology or abortion position. That should be at least mildly comforting to those Democrats who feared that pure political self-protection or insurance industry money were the major motivating factors for those voting “no.” And it’s very clear that the Democratic Left’s decision to support the bill despite concerns over its composition was absolutely crucial.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Yesterday, we learned that a coalition of State Attorneys General — 12 so far — plan to launch a constitutional challenge to the just-passed-but-not-yet-signed Senate health reform bill on grounds that imposing an individual mandate to buy health insurance is not justified by the powers Congress enjoys under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Interestingly enough, the media reports I’ve seen on this story do not mention that 11 of the 12 AGs in question are Republicans. The one Democrat, Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, is running for governor in this very conservative state.
For what it’s worth, few constitutional experts find any merit for a Commerce Clause challenge to health reform. But the proposed suit is probably part of a longstanding conservative legal effort to slowly chip away at the expansive view of the Commerce Clause, which has been the basis for a variety of important congressional actions, including the Civil Rights Act.
While the challenge is unlikely to get anywhere, it is worth remembering that there wasn’t much if any precedent for the decision in Bush v. Gore, either.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
We interrupt this somewhat unscheduled progressive glee to make a brief point about national security. The Washington Post has a pointed op-ed today on Guantanamo Bay and military tribunals.
Now, let’s be clear: There are differing views within the progressive movement about the viability, constitutionality and political realities of trying terrorism suspects. There has been significant grief from progressive quarters that the administration is laying the groundwork to reverse its decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court. (For the record, my personal view is that I stand with what the president said at the National Archives last year.) But lost in this division, there’s one issue in the Post‘s piece that we progressives should seize:
Congress and the president should hammer out a set of rules to guide judges on how to handle the Guantanamo habeas cases still wending their way through the system. And they need to agree on a legal framework to govern indefinite detentions now and in the future. [Italics mine]
Let us not forget that the Bush administration force-fed Obama this shit-sandwich. Rather than construct a legal framework to deal with terrorism detainees, the Bush White House took a pass by locking them up in GTMO and hoping the problem would never resurface. It really didn’t, until the Bushies were back cutting brush at Crawford. So, if progressives want to avoid fights and internal fallouts over terrorism suspect issues in the future, they have to define the rules of the road.
And while we can argue about the threshold of evidence regarding civilian vs. military trials, one idea that merits serious consideration is something that PPI has pushed in the past — national security courts. Here’s an excerpt from our “Memo to the New President” by Harvey Rishikof:
The thrust of the idea is to have a dedicated set of federal trial judges working with an expert bar of federal and military prosecutors and defense counsel — all with high-level security clearances. Such a court could accommodate the particular challenges of prosecuting terrorism cases in a manner wholly consistent with the Constitution, the common law, international conventions, and the relevant statutes.
This would be no sealed-off Star Chamber; trials would be open to the public unless there were truly compelling reasons to limit access in a particular case. Such openness would help give our own people and our allies the necessary proof that the United States is reasserting its identity as a champion of human rights and due process.
It’s a good idea that deserves consideration as part of the solution, even if the national security court use is ultimately mixed in with civilian and/or military trials. But the Obama administration could make things a lot easier on itself if it solved the problem with an institutional fix, and not just muddling through like they are with KSM.
…and now you can return to smiling ear-to-ear about health care.
Just over a month ago, Jon Chait of TNR predicted that conservatives would “freak out” if and when health reform legislation was indeed enacted. Aside from the fact that many of them have been drinking their own kool-aid about the allegedly totalitarian implications of a health care system that would maintain America’s uniquely capitalist orientation towards health services, conservatives spent far too much celebrating the death of reform to accept its resurrection.
I don’t believe in spending too much time on schadenfreude, but it has been interesting to see the absolute shock with which some conservatives and tea party activists have reacted to last night’s vote. My favorite reaction is this from Newt Gingrich, posted on the Human Events site:
This will not stand.No one should be confused about the outcome of Sunday’s vote
This is not the end of the fight it is the beginning of the fight.
The American people spoke decisively against a big government, high tax, Washington knows best, pro trial lawyer centralized bureaucratic health system
In every recent poll the vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity
Speaker Pelosi knew the country was against the bill. That is why she kept her members trapped in Washington and forced a vote on Sunday.
She knew if she let the members go home their constituents would convince them to vote no.
The Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine combined the radicalism of Alinsky, the corruption of Springfield and the machine power politics of Chicago.
Sunday was a pressured, bought, intimidated vote worthy of Hugo Chavez but unworthy of the United States of America.
It is hard to imagine how much pressure they brought to bear on congressman Stupak to get him to accept a cynical, phony clearly illegal and unconstitutional executive order on abortion. The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine was most clearly on display in their public humiliation of Stupak.
Hugo Chavez! Saul Alinsky! A six-adjective sentence (“big government, high tax, Washington knows best, pro trial lawyer centralized bureaucratic health system”)! The end of civilization as we know it!
This is the same Newt Gingrich, mind you, who led a Republican-controlled Congress over the brink in 1995 and 1996 in the pursuit of extremely unpopular policies, arguing he had a mandate from the electorate to carry out a conservative revolution. And this is the same Newt Gingrich who increased the power of the Speaker’s Office to levels not seen since the days of “Czar” Reed, all but abolishing the seniority system and making loyalty to the Speaker and the Caucus’ agenda the only criterion for advancement. As for “intimidation”: wonder what Gingrich thought of those Republicans who placed photos of defeated 1994 Democrats on the seats of wavering Democratic members yesterday?
Gingrich’s crocodile tears for Bart Stupak are even more ludicrous. Stupak made himself a national celebrity by creating a symbolic fight over essentially inconsequential language differences in the House and Senate provisions on abortion. Yesterday he accepted a symbolic victory that was equally inconsequential, and folded his tent. I can’t imagine how Obama, Pelosi and Reid were guilty of “ruthlessness and inhumanity” by accepting his face-saving deal.
Newt was almost certainly playing for the galleries where his heart really lives these days: among potential 2012 caucus-goers in Iowa, a right-tilting crowd if ever there was one. And speaking of Iowa Republicans, Rep. Steve King outdid Gingrich in his remarks to a crowd of Tea Party protestors outside the Capitol last night:
You are the awesome American people,” said King. “If I could start a country with a bunch of people, they’d be the folks who were standing with us the last few days. Let’s hope we don’t have to do that! Let’s beat that other side to a pulp! Let’s chase them down. There’s going to be a reckoning!
It’s interesting how King alternates between a threat of violence and a threat to leave this godless socialist country behind and take the “real Americans” with him.
Let’s hope Republicans get a grip over the next few days.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
They took the scenic route, but they got there. After a year of negotiations, town halls, summits and shouting, Democrats have passed comprehensive health care reform legislation. The reform measure passed by the House Sunday now goes to President Obama’s desk for his signature. The House’s fixes inscribed in a separate bill will now be taken up by the Senate, and is expected to pass via the budget reconciliation process.
The outcome certainly affirms President Obama’s reputation as a clutch player – someone who’ll come through when you need him the most. Of course, the game probably wouldn’t have been that close if he hadn’t sat out for so long. This is where I hope the Obama administration has learned its lesson. Throughout the process, the president decided to take a hands-off approach, letting Congress do much of the work. It was a strategy borne of the failure of President Clinton’s plan, which was seen as a case of a White House completely oblivious to how Congress works. But Obama overcompensated, and the result was a process that seemed rudderless.
Worse, the hands-off approach extended to the bill’s selling. Confident that it was the right policy, the administration was complacent that the media and the public would see that it was the right thing to do as well. What we got instead was tea parties and town halls and “death panels.” In the absence of a permanent campaign to enlighten the public, misinformation ruled the day — and continues to infect public understanding of what just passed.
Which is why this is a good sign:
President Obama is set to begin an immediate public relations blitz aimed at turning around Americans’ opinion of the health-care bill.
Planning inside the West Wing for the post-vote period has proceeded quietly, even as the president and his allies on Capitol Hill were fighting for the measure’s passage.
Reshaping the legislation’s image will take place in three phases, White House aides said: the immediate aftermath; the seven months until the November midterm elections; and the several years that follow, during which many provisions in the measure will gradually take effect.
The plans for a PR blitz to sell the bill post-passage suggest an administration that has learned its lesson. Polls show that support for health care reform, particularly among Dems, began inching up the more Obama threw himself into its passage. It was a powerful reminder: when Obama commits himself to firing up the base, the base tends to get fired up. The promise of an all-out publicity campaign by the White House probably also assuaged a lot of wavering Democratic congressmen. As Nate Silver points out, one of the best predictors of whether a congressman would vote for the bill was whether they thought Obama would be an asset to them.
He may be known as No Drama Obama, but the president supplied plenty of it these last few weeks, with a bipartisan summit, rousing public appearances and quiet one-on-ones with recalcitrant Dems, culminating in a tour-de-force address to House Democrats on Saturday. The result was a pitch-perfect campaign that rallied progressives, bucked up public opinion, and emboldened lawmakers.
This administration has the best salesman in the country at the helm. When he talks, people – at least the converted and the persuadable – tend to listen. It seems like they’re finally starting to figure it out.
Already reeling economically, California may soon be overtaken by Massachusetts as the greenest state in the union.
California ranked first in a 2009 survey of the most energy-efficient states, with Massachusetts second. In January, however, the Bay State announced the nation’s most ambitious energy efficiency standards for utilities.
Despite growing energy demand, Massachusetts aims to cut electricity use by 2.4 percent over the next three years. It will provide utility customers with $1.6 billion in incentives to conserve energy at home, including free energy audits and rebates to purchase more efficient appliances. That’s more on a per person basis than California spends on energy efficiency.
And it’s not just Massachusetts. Connecticut, Maine and Rhode Island also have passed mandates for utilities to invest in any energy-saving measures that cost less than traditional energy-supply options. In fact, New England seems to be emerging as the nation’s epicenter of energy efficiency, clean tech innovation and carbon emissions control.
While Congress struggles with a nationwide “cap and trade” system for carbon dioxide, 10 Northeast states launched a regional cap-and-trade program covering all major power plants. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) caps emissions at projected 2009 levels through 2015, when the cap declines annually to reduce emissions 10 percent by 2019.
To examine why, and how, New England has catapulted itself into clean energy leadership, PPI is hosting a conversation in Boston today with Ian A. Bowles, Massachusetts’ secretary for energy and environmental affairs. Boston is also the base for the Clean Energy Council, a regional network of clean tech businesses, analysts and investors.
The event is part of PPI’s E3 Initiative, a coalition of energy and environmental businesses working to develop and drive new policy frameworks to build a clean economy.
Health care reform legislation, declared dead so many times by its enemies and sometimes its friends, became an accomplished fact last night via House enactment of the Senate-passed bill. The House also passed the closely associated reconciliation bill “fixing” the Senate bill, and final action on that measure in the Senate will take a while. But no matter: the most important health care legislation since the enactment of Medicare in 1965 is on its way to the president’s desk. It will ultimately provide coverage for 32 million people lacking health insurance; will finally outlaw the denial of insurance (or outrageous premiums for) those with pre-existing conditions, beginning with children; will undertake the most serious effort yet to move the health care system from payment for procedures to payment for good health results; and is estimated to reduce federal budget deficits by $120 billion in its first decade. For dessert, the bill closes the arbitrary “donut hole” for the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
The winding road leading to this accomplishment almost defies description, particularly after Republicans gained a 41st seat in the Senate in January and with it the ability to veto any legislation that didn’t proceed under budget reconciliation rules. After endless mockery for their handling of the issue last year, the administration and the Democratic congressional leadership all earn a great deal of credit for the ultimate victory: Harry Reid for getting all 60 Senate Democrats on board for a bill in December; Nancy Pelosi for the deft negotiations that produced 219 votes in the House; and the White House and the president for refusing to heed a thousand calls to totally revamp or abandon the legislation.
And despite the many conflicts among Democrats over the composition of the ultimate bill, it’s significant that joy over the vote last night extends all across the party, from single-payer fans to managed competition advocates to all sorts of people focused on narrow issues. It appears we owe a special thanks to the Catholic nuns whose strong support for the legislation seems to have shamed Rep. Bart Stupak and several other House colleagues into a face-saving deal on abortion language, mainly a symbolic gesture offered to secure real live votes.
Now Republicans, of course, are predicting a huge public backlash and then a quick repeal of the legislation if and when they retake control of Congress. There will be a lot of noise made in the days just ahead by Tea Party activists who have become invested in apocalyptic rhetoric about the dangers of health reform, and perhaps others who have bought some of the lies and distortions conservatives deployed to fight this legislation, from wild claims about “death panels” to pervasive predictions that premiums will skyrocket and Medicare benefits will be cut. When these disasters don’t occur, much of the negative excitement will die down, even as the merits of health reform become more apparent.
As for threats that the bill will soon be repealed: the very tools of obstruction that Republicans so eagerly utilized to try to thwart health reform will be available to those trying to stop its repeal. Will 60 senators vote to withdraw health coverage from tens of millions of Americans any time soon? Will 60 senators go to the mats to re-establish the “right” of insurance companies to deny coverage to children with pre-existing health conditions? Will Republicans vote to re-open the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole”? Where will they find the funds to offset elimination of health reform’s deficit savings? Maybe they ignored the president’s recent arguments about how the most popular reform measures won’t work without a comprehensive approach. But if Republicans try to repeal reforms piece-meal, they’ll finally figure out what he was talking about.
All in all, it’s clear that President Obama and most congressional Democrats did one thing that cynical voters don’t much expect of politicians these days: they kept a promise to meet one of America’s most urgent national challenges, and they kept it despite a collective Republican decision against any cooperation, despite vast institutional barriers in the Senate, and despite predictable public nervousness about — and, for many, hostility towards — comprehensive action on such a complex issue.
That’s an accomplishment worth celebrating, extending and, if necessary, defending. Let’s prove America’s not ungovernable after all.
Will Marshall in U.S. News & World Report:
But despite the GOP opposition, the Democrats do have cause for some optimism. Voters are about evenly split over Obama’s plan in Congress, with 41 percent in favor and 43 percent opposed, and many Americans’ views remain in flux. “Public opinion is not immutable,” says Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute. “Opinions change along with conditions.” He agrees that final passage of healthcare will provide an important opportunity for Obama and the Democrats to trumpet their ability to govern on their own. Few if any GOP legislators are expected to vote for the Democratic plan.
Marshall adds that the GOP is pigeonholing itself as the obstructionist party. “The Republicans have gone so far off the rails” that many conservatives are “treating the commander in chief as an alien,” Marshall argues. “The Republican mainstream doesn’t seem to be there anymore. Who are the elders who say the party needs to regain its balance? . . . They let their crackpots loose, and to me, that’s scary.” He was referring to some members of the tea-party movement and others who have harshly criticized Obama in personal and political terms.
As we count down towards the health reform vote(s) in the House, it’s clearer than ever that there are two distinct but mutually reinforcing conservative takes on the bill. The most obvious, of course, is the bizarre construction of “ObamaCare” that the Right has been building for nearly a year now, based on distortions, fear-mongering, a few outright lies and sweeping smears, all in order to make legislation pretty close to what moderate Republicans have promoted for years seem like a socialist revolution if not a coup d’etat. This is the hard sell, and it will continue up to and well beyond this weekend’s votes.
But then there’s the soft sell, beloved of today’s model of “moderate” Republicans, such as they are, which involves lots of tut-tutting at the unedifying spectacle of the health reform debate, constant if unsupported claims that there are plentiful opportunities for a bipartisan “incremental” approach, and above all, phony concern for what Barack Obama is doing to his party and his country. This approach typically ignores or rationalizes the hard sell that most conservatives have undertaken, and the lockstep obstructionism of the congressional GOP, and blames Obama and Democrats for all the problems they are encountering in getting this legislation done.
A pitch-perfect example of the soft sell is Peggy Noonan’s latest Wall Street Journal column, presumably her final pre-vote expression of contempt for the president in the guise of respect for the presidency, which alas, isn’t what it used to be when her mentor, Ronald Reagan, stood astride Washington and the globe like a colossus.
The column begins with an extended expression of horror that Obama would postpone a trip to Indonesia and Australia in order to lobby for this little domestic bill that would deal with the trifle of health coverage for 40 million or so Americans:
And to do this to Australia of all countries, a nation that has always had America’s back and been America’s friend. How bush league, how undisciplined, how kid’s stuff.
It’s characteristic that Noonan does not mention that Obama is trying to give Americans the universal health coverage that Australians have and take for granted, or that final passage wouldn’t have been delayed until now if Scott Brown hadn’t come to Washington pledging to kill “ObamaCare.”
Noonan then engages, with the air of someone examining an especially loathsome insect, in a lengthy attack on the procedural issues involved in House passage of health reform, asserting that Obama’s trying to hide something in the legislation via the “deem and pass” (which she suggests sounds tellingly like “demon pass”) mechanism that House Democrats are apparently going to deploy this weekend. She endorses as self-evidently correct the complaint of Fox News’ Bret Baier, in his obnoxious interview of the president last week, that “deem and pass” means nobody will know what’s in the bill that’s “deemed” and “passed.” Like Baier, Noonan doesn’t seem to understand the simple fact that the underlying bill we are talking about here is exactly the same bill passed by the Senate in December — long enough even for Peggy Noonan to have gotten wind of it. The changes in the bill — namely, the reconciliation measure — were made available, along with a CBO scoring of their impact, before the votes were scheduled, and will be voted on explicitly by the House (and later the Senate). Yes, this is complicated, but you’d think someone with Noonan’s experience and pay grade would be able to figure it out, and again, Democrats would have never resorted to this approach if Republicans weren’t using their 41st Senate vote to thwart the normal process after a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate had already passed similar legislation.
But whatever — Republican obstruction is never much mentioned in Noonan’s stuff on health reform. And so it is entirely in character that Noonan concludes her column by blaming Obama for the rudeness exhibited by Baier in last week’s interview, and hence for diminishing the presidency! Ah, if only we had a real president like you-know-who:
[W]e seem to have come a long way since Ronald Reagan was regularly barked at by Sam Donaldson, almost literally, and the president shrugged it off. The president—every president—works for us. We don’t work for him. We sometimes lose track of this, or rather get the balance wrong. Respect is due and must be palpable, but now and then you have to press, to either force them to be forthcoming or force them to reveal that they won’t be. Either way it’s revealing.
I’d say it’s hardly as revealing as Peggy Noonan’s inveterate habit of not only ignoring conservative hubris, but attributing it to its victims.
This item is cross-posted on The Democratic Strategist.
Over at TNR, congressional expert Sarah Binder provides a very useful and detailed explanation of the procedures the House will go through this weekend in dealing with health reform. There will be (assuming things go as planned and Democrats have their votes) four separate votes: one on a Republican motion to recommit the rule for consideration of the reconciliation bill, one on the rule itself, one on a Republican motion to recommit the reconciliation bill, and one on the reconciliation bill. If the first or third motions pass, or the second or fourth votes fail to pass, health reform will have been defeated, at least for the moment if not forever.
But it’s the vote on the rule that will (assuming the Rules Committee goes in the direction Speaker Pelosi has indicated is likely) “deem” the Senate health care bill as having been enacted. This “self-executing rule” is what all the yelling and screaming on the Right is about. But since everybody understands what’s going on, it is fundamentaly erroneous to say that the House is trying to avoid a vote on the Senate bill. The vote on the rule is a vote on the Senate bill, and will have exactly the same effect as an explicit vote on the Senate bill, no more and no less.
That fact obviously does raise the question of why the House leadership is utilizing the “deem and pass strategy,” since anyone voting for the rule is actually voting for the Senate bill. I can’t answer that question, but presumably this basically meaningless distinction matters to at least one House Democrat. But in any event, the conservative charge that the House is going to enact the Senate bill without voting on it just isn’t true, and is simply part of the fog Republicans are trying to spread over the fact that by the end of this process (again, if all goes as planned), majorities in both Houses will have twice approved health reform.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
