HEALTH CARE Conservatives Try To Pare Down Reform Statement from Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta on the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy: "The progressive movement lost a hero today, and the Center for American Progress lost a dear friend. Senator Ted Kennedy served tirelessly in the Senate for the state of Massachusetts and the nation for over four decades, putting his efforts toward critical progressive issues such as education and immigration reform, fighting poverty, expanding civil rights and working to ensure health care for every American. When it came to reaching across the aisle and forging compromise and getting something done -- Senator Kennedy was simply in a league of his own. This great man bridged the idealism and purpose of an earlier generation and helped usher its revival today. His memory will live on in the generation of progressives that he has inspired through the change he has brought to America. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. We will miss the Senator, as will our nation." Conservatives have used the August recess to mount an organized opposition to President Obama's health care reform efforts. Even as 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance coverage every single day -- half a million will become uninsured while Congress is on vacation -- Republicans are insisting that Democrats pare down existing reform legislation. "We need to slow down and do a little less," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee and member of the "Gang of Six" tasked with producing bipartisan health care legislation, told a town hall gathering in Pocahontas, IA, on Monday. Similarly, during an appearance on CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) predicted that the bill out of the Senate Finance Committee is "going to have to be significantly less than what we've heard talked about." Yesterday's revised deficit projections have given conservatives an additional argument for paring down existing legislation. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) issued a statement arguing that the higher projections were "a flashing red light for any health care proposal that doesn't reduce the cost of health care for Americans and their government," and Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, declared that "if the House Democrats' unaffordable $1 trillion health care bill wasn't dead before, it should be now."
SMALLER IS NOT BETTER: A smaller health reform package would do little to reduce health care costs and increase access to affordable health care. As National Institutes of Health bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel points out, "[H]ealth care costs are the long-term driving force in federal and state budgets." Health care spending makes up "$1 out of every $6 in the economy, dwarfing automobiles and all other economic segments" and represents the "single most important factor influencing the Federal Government's long-term fiscal balance." Health care growth rates are "simply unsustainable and are why slowing the growth in health care costs is the single most important step we can take to put the Nation on firm fiscal footing." Scaling down legislation, however, "basically means gutting the benefits that would go to the working and middle class," the New Republic's Jonathan Cohn points out. "In other words," Cohn says, "it would help fulfill the fear many of these voters already have and that opponents of reform have tried hard to stoke: That reform doesn't have much to offer the typical middle-income American."
STEELE SCARES SENIORS: Despite the consequences of skyrocketing health care costs, Republicans continue to fearmonger about reform. On Monday, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that Obama "and congressional Democrats are planning to raid, not aid, Medicare by cutting $500 billion from the program to fund his health-care experiment." "These types of 'reforms' don't make sense for the future of an already troubled federal program or for the services it provides that millions of Americans count on," wrote Steele. To perpetuate the fear of Medicare cuts, the RNC released a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights" declaring that Medicare should not be "cut." "We want to make sure that we are not cutting the Medicare program," said Steele on ABC's Good Morning America. But the $500 billion in cuts the Democrats are proposing would eliminate inefficiencies, reduce insurance company subsidies, unnecessary hospital readmissions, and lower payments that encourage overtreatment. None of the $500 billion is coming out of benefits. In fact, some of the cuts have been endorsed by the health industry and supported by Republicans -- including Steele. All of the latest Republican health care plans call for eliminating Medicare "waste, fraud and abuse," for instance, and a good number of Republicans voted for Medicare payment cuts as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Yesterday, Steele further undermined his own argument that Medicare is a sacrosanct program that must be protected by calling it "a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care." Asked to respond to Rep. Anthony Weiner's (D-NY) argument that "if you like Medicare and you don't want to make any cuts to it, then you're basically defending a single payer system," Steele launched into an attack on the program, implying that it would be better if it were privatized.
REPUBLICANS REFUSE TO VOTE FOR REFORM: Senate Republicans who had previously indicated that they would be open to compromising on health care reform, are now suggesting they have closed the book on negotiations. Back in March, Grassley characterized himself as an honest negotiator, telling the Kaiser Family Foundation that "everything is on the table. ... You don't negotiate when everything is not on the table...everything's got to be on the table if you're negotiating in good faith." Since then, Grassley has adopted the rhetoric of the far right, routinely referring to health care reform as a government takeover, disingenuously misrepresenting reform legislation, and even going so far as to endorse the "death panels" myth. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Grassley "vowed not to vote for an 'imperfect'" health care bill. "Now is the time to do this right or not do it," Grassley said. Similarly, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), who is supposedly negotiating a health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee with Grassley and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), has indicated that he disagrees with "the entire approach the Finance Committee is taking.""We do need to have health care reform," Enzi said. "We do need to get it right. We need take the time to do it. I think the only way it will happen is we need to break it down into smaller parts than we have now and put it through one at a time." 
ENVIRONMENT -- CHAMBER OF COMMERCE WANTS A NEW 'SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL' ON CLIMATE CHANGE: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a 97 year-old organization that calls itself "the voice of business," told the Environmental Protection Agency in a filing yesterday that a "trial-style public hearing" on the science of climate change is needed to "make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science." William Kovacs, the Chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, told the Los Angeles Times that this hearing would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century." "It would be evolution versus creationism," he said, adding, "It would be the science of climate change on trial." The Scopes trial involved Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes who was indicted in 1925 for teaching evolution against state law. Scopes was found guilty, but the state supreme court later overturned the verdict of this "bizarre case," causing the anti-evolution movement to lose steam. The Chamber's campaign against climate science is being backed with multi-million dollar lobbying efforts bankrolled by big energy producers even though various Chamber board members -- including Alcoa, Dow Chemical, Nike, Rolls Royce, and Xerox -- claim to support economy-wide reductions in CO2 emissions. | 
Edward M. Kennedy, the "liberal lion" of American politics, passed away this morning after serving in the U.S. Senate for nearly 50 years. He was 77 years old. President Obama said that the country had lost "the greatest United States Senator of our time," adding, "For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts. ... An important chapter in our history has come to an end." World leaders have rushed to pay tribute to Kennedy. In the UK, where Kennedy received an honorary knighthood earlier this year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown praised him for believing that "every single child should have the chance to realize their potential to the full." In both Britain and Ireland, he was also remembered "particularly for his involvement in the long process that led to Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday peace accord." In July, Kennedy sent a letter to Massachusetts lawmakers, requesting that they "amend the state's rules and grant the governor the power to appoint his successor until a special election could be held." But no action has been taken and the question of Kennedy's successor still lingers. Politico reports that a special election is likely in January. The White House said yesterday that the federal government would have to borrow more than $9 trillion to support President Obama's agenda over the next decade. Budget director Peter Orszag said this year's deficit is now expected to reach $1.6 trillion, "the highest on record and the biggest as a percentage of the economy since the end of World War II." New documents released Monday detailing the CIA's interrogation show that the agency maintained tight control over the actions of its interrogators. "The documents underscore how closely supervised the program was...in Washington," said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Any investigation that began and ended with...rogue interrogators would be completely inadequate."
According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, "many of the lenders eligible to receive billions of dollars from the government's massive foreclosure prevention program helped fuel the housing crisis by issuing risky subprime loans." Of the top 25 participants in the $75 billion program called Making Home Affordable, "at least 21 specialized in servicing or originating subprime loans." President Obama "is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month," the Guardian reports. "There is a possibility" of a breakthrough meeting between Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas next month, says Israeli ambassador Gabriela Shalev. With the deaths of four U.S. soldiers yesterday, "the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan now has lost more troops this year than in all of 2008, and August is on track to be the deadliest month for American troops there since U.S. operations began nearly eight years ago." And finally: President Bush stopped by the Southern Methodist University Mustangs football practice on Monday, where he told the team to "win one for Yom Kippur." |
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Medicare is a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care."
-- RNC Chairman Michael Steele, 8/25/09
VERSUS
"We want to make sure that we are not cutting the Medicare program."
-- Steele, 8/24/09 | |
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Keep a civil tongue.