The Challenges Of Post-Occupation Iraq
The Challenges Of Post-Occupation Iraq
Today is June 30, the day earmarked by the U.S.-Iraq security agreement for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities. Despite entreaties from U.S. military commanders to permit exceptions (as allowed in the agreement), Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki chose instead to reject these requests and declare June 30 “National Sovereignty Day.” Some Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate, while Maliki delivered a nationally televised valedictory address. Iraqi security forces are now responsible for security in Iraq, and U.S. combat forces can now only operate with the assent of Iraqi authorities.
Iraq has already seen its first post-withdrawal violence, with at least 15 people reported killed by a car bomb in the contested northern city of Kirkuk. The specter of continued and possibly increased violence in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq’s cities reflects the failure of U.S. strategy to resolve the fundamental intra-Iraqi tensions driving the conflict. While a combination of the surge, the Awakenings, and the marginalization of the Mahdi Army led to today’s low levels of violence, the lack of a political settlement has frozen existing conflicts -– particularly the Sunni-Shia sectarian war and the intra-Shia fight –- while allowing long-standing problems –- namely the Arab-Kurd divide –- to fester.
This reduction in violence has corresponded to an increase in political power for Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. With relatively successful campaigns against the Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad and the successful negotiation of a withdrawal agreement from the United States, Maliki has gone from a weak and ineffectual leader to Iraq’s most powerful political figure and, in the view of some, nascent strongman. Maliki has staked his legitimacy on two pillars –- the ability to achieve security and reclaiming national sovereignty from the United States. More »
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Why Legalizing 12 Million Undocumented Immigrants Would Help U.S. Economy
Why Legalizing 12 Million Undocumented Immigrants Would Help U.S. Economy
Yesterday, Lamar Smith published an error-ridden editorial in USA Today in which he made a desperately weak case against providing 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. a path to legalization. Smith’s first line of reasoning is that the current economic recession would put Americans in a position in which they’re competing with immigrants for jobs. According to Smith, legalizing immigrants would flood the nation’s Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security systems and hurt U.S. taxpayers. However, Smith’s logic is mind-bogglingly flawed on a variety of levels.
To begin with, study after study shows that there is little, if any, relationship between immigration and unemployment rates at the regional, state, or county level. Furthermore, the potential economic benefits of a legalization program have been widely documented. Available research suggests that — had the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed — it would have generated a much needed $66 billion in new revenue during 2007-2016 from income and payroll taxes, as well as various administrative fees. Giovanni Peri, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California-Davis, further suggests that immigrants don’t even compete with the majority of natives for the same jobs because they tend to work in different occupations. Smith also sidesteps the argument that by legalizing the undocumented population, the “trap door” that artificially suppresses wages, benefits, and working conditions would be removed so that workers could compete fairly in an above-ground economy.
Smith hysterically claims that a flood of immigrants will flow into the country as soon as “amnesty” is passed and that a harsh policy of “attrition through enforcement” is the best way to deal with the nation’s immigration woes. Yet a study released today by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that the global economic recession is causing an international migration slow-down, echoing the well-documented claim that immigration is primarily driven by economics. Meanwhile, the OECD advises nations like the U.S. to “keep doors open” to immigrant workers in order to meet long-term labor needs. Watch the OECD’s video on the study’s findings:
Smith’s proposed solution of “attrition through enforcement,” a harsh strategy used to “wear down the will” of undocumented immigrants through deportations, detentions, and anti-immigrant ordinances, would cost taxpayers at least $206 billion over five years, or $41.2 billion annually. Finally, Smith cited a 2006 Zogby poll which showed that the majority of Americans prefer harsh enforcement policies that destroy communities, terrorize workers and rip families apart. Three years later, 2009 polling indicates that 68% of voters believe that undocumented immigrants should be required to register, meet conditions, and eventually be allowed to apply for citizenship.
Iraq’s ‘National Sovereignty Day’
Iraq’s ‘National Sovereignty Day’
The celebrations taking place in Iraq today marking the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq’s cities and towns provide a pretty explicit picture of how Iraqis have viewed the large U.S. military presence in their country — unfavorably. This is understandable. There’s something inescapably and unalterably repellent about having foreign troops patrolling your country, something that has been too little acknowledged in the American debate about Iraq, but which I suspect we would have no problem understanding were we confronted by machine gun-toting foreigners every time we went down the street for a loaf of bread.
Suggesting that today’s withdrawal “is far more important symbolically than practically,” Marc Lynch notes that “the Obama administration and General Odierno’s team deserve a lot of credit for their careful, rigorous, and publicly affirmed adherence to the agreement.” I think this is right — it’s done an enormous amount for the legitimacy of the Iraqi government that the Obama administration has refused to hedge on the terms of the agreement.
Meanwhile, Michael Rubin relays, in somewhat subtler and therefore more insidious form, the conservative “stab in the back” narrative that Dick Cheney floated yesterday. Rubin warns that today “will likely mark another milestone: the end of the surge and the relative peace it brought to Iraq.”
In the past week, bombings in Baghdad, Mosul and near Kirkuk have killed almost 200 people. The worst is yet to come. [...]
In effect, his strategy is an anti-surge. Troop numbers are not the issue. It is the projection of weakness. Not only Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki but Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani have also reached out to the Islamic Republic in recent weeks.
In Cairo, Mr. Obama said the U.S. had no permanent designs on Iraq and declared, “We will support a secure and united Iraq as a partner, and never as a patron.” Indeed. But until the Iraqi government is strong enough to monopolize independently the use of force, a vacuum will exist and the most violent factions will fill it.
Power and prestige matter. Withdrawal from Iraq’s cities is good politics in Washington, but when premature and done under fire it may very well condemn Iraqis to repeat their past.
As I wrote here yesterday, the war’s supporters hailed the signing of the security agreement as a victory for Bush’s Iraq policy — even if it was essentially an adoption of candidate Obama’s plan. But now we’re apparently to believe that President Obama’s honoring the terms of that agreement is a “projection of weakness” that could endanger the United States.
Rubin also introduces a new element to this argument by implying that Obama’s “weakness” has caused members of Iraq’s government to reach out to neighboring Iran. As Rubin surely knows, and as my colleague Brian Katulis and I wrote about in April 2008, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki President Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, among other Iraqi leaders, have longstanding ties to the Iranian regime — indeed, Talabani was among the very first leaders to congratulate Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his controversial re-election victory. The suggestion that these leaders are only now drawing closer to Iran as a result of the U.S. drawdown is both patently ridiculous and misleading.
While Rubin is of course correct that “power and prestige matter,” it’s typical of the conservative mindset to think that the best way to maintain power and prestige is through the continued, open-ended projection of military force, rather than through the cultivation and support of legitimate domestic governance. President Obama’s honoring of the security agreement is an important step in doing that for Iraq.
Why Wal-Mart Is Now Supporting An Employer Mandate
Why Wal-Mart Is Now Supporting An Employer Mandate
Today, Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the country wrote a letter (along with the Center for American Progress and SEIU) to the Obama administration expressing its support for the employer mandate: [Read the full letter HERE]
We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage, but any alternative to an employer mandate should not create barriers to hiring entry level employees….Support for a mandate also requires the strongest possible commitment to rein in health care costs. Guaranteeing cost containment is essential. One way to ensure savings was recently advanced by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, “Implement pre-specified targets for spending growth and enact a “trigger” mechanism that automatically enforces reductions,” (Crossing Our Lines, Bipartisan Policy Center) President Obama suggested strengthening the role of Med Pac to help enforce spending discipline.
Wal-Mart’s support for an employer mandate is highly significant, but so is its rejection the ‘free rider provision’ — a likely component of the Senate Finance Committee’s bill — and request for a trigger to ensure the reduction of health care costs. By embracing an employer mandate now, Wal-Mart raises its profile on the issue — not to mention cleanses its tarnished reputation — and helps mold a likely component of health care reform: a requirement that every large employer provide adequate coverage or pay a certain percentage of its payroll towards financing health care for its workers.
As the nation’s largest employer of a predominately low-wage, low-skilled work force, Wal-Mart sees the free rider provision — requiring businesses to help finance coverage for workers who receive coverage through Medicaid or subsidized coverage in the soon-to-be-established Health Insurance Exchange — as a competitive disadvantage that raises costs. (The provision also discourages the hiring of lower income workers or workers with disabilities.)
The business argument for supporting reform that lowers the growth of health care costs, even with a mandate (especially when most of the large employers who would be effected by the mandate already provide coverage) is obvious. After all, progressives have long argued that all firms would benefit from the reduction in unpaid medical bills incurred by the uninsured, increased productivity through improved worker health and labor force participation, and the savings due to a reduced rate of health-care cost growth. But Wal-Mart is holding us to it. That is, if the savings from reform don’t materialize, or as David Cutler and Judy Feder argue in their new paper, “if experience falls short of expectations,” the legislation, Walmart argues, should include certain “triggers” that “automatically enforces reductions.” [Read more about the triggers HERE].
On the whole, this is a win-win for reformers. The nation’s largest employer has embraced a mechanism that enhances the existing system of employer-based coverage, levels the playing field between employers and preserves the employer contribution — an important source of funding for health care reform. In turn, it has requested that we guarantee cost reductions and steer clear of a policy that undermines low-wage workers. Let’s hope the Senate Finance Committee is listening.
Alleged Exploitation Of Immigrants And Seniors Underscores Need For Consumer Protection Agency
Alleged Exploitation Of Immigrants And Seniors Underscores Need For Consumer Protection Agency
Since the Obama administration announced its plan to create a new regulatory agency solely tasked with protecting consumers, there has been a steady drumbeat of opposition from the banking and business lobbies, Republican lawmakers, and the talking heads at CNBC. But today, there are a couple of reports highlighting why a consumer protection agency is so necessary.
First, the LA Times is reporting the story of former Bank of America teller Gabby Ornelas, who is accusing the bank of exploiting Latino immigrant consumers:
Ornelas was instructed to use her Spanish language skills and Latina heritage to sign up customers for as many kinds of banking services as possible, she said — services that led to lucrative fees for the bank and financial entanglement for many customers.
And then there’s McClatchy noting that “an influx of shady loan professionals have made lawmakers uneasy about the safety and soundness of the popular government-backed reverse-mortgage program”:
As the popularity of reverse mortgages grows, however, complaints are mounting that unsavory loan professionals who fled the troubled sub-prime mortgage industry now are plying their craft on unsuspecting seniors seeking the loans. Some agents, seeking higher fees, are steering loan applicants into costly long-term annuities, which almost always are inappropriate for seniors because they can tie up retirement savings for many years.
AARP also claims that predatory lenders are attempting “to get seniors to use proceeds of their reverse mortgage to buy expensive long-term-care insurance,” even though it often “makes more sense for seniors to use the payout for actual long-term care, not a hard-to-use insurance policy.” Earlier this month, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan warned “that reverse mortgages pose significant compliance risks and said regulators should get out in front of this issue.”
Today, the Treasury Department delivered legislative language for the creation of the new agency to Capitol Hill. One of the agency’s main responsibilities, according to the draft language, will be prescribing rules “identifying as unlawful unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices in connection with any transaction with a consumer for a consumer financial product or service.” The agency will also have the power to issue subpoenas and seek court orders to halt abusive practices for both banks and non-banks.
Currently, the regulatory system treats consumer protection “as secondary or even in direct conflict with ensuring the soundness of financial institutions,” but these two functions of the agency — creating rules to protect consumers and the use of enforcement mechanisms — will hopefully address that imbalance. As long as the new agency is adequately funded and given as much clout as the banking regulators, it can rein in those hawking abusive financial products to vulnerable populations.
A Storm’s Coming On Campaign Finance
A Storm’s Coming On Campaign Finance
Yesterday’s high-profile decision in the Ricci firefighters case obscures another, equally important development which could usher in a new era of corporate money in politics. Traditionally, the Supreme Court decides every single case it heard during a particular term before adjourning for the summer recess. This Term, however, the Court announced that it will leave one case, a campaign finance case called Citizens United v. FEC, undecided. Moreover, in a brief order explaining why this decision will be delayed, the Court ordered the parties to brief whether a landmark precedent limiting the influence of corporate money in politics should be overruled.
Nineteen years ago, in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the Court upheld a ban on independent political expenditures by corporate donors. As the Court explained in Austin, “the unique state-conferred corporate structure that facilitates the amassing of large treasuries warrants the limit on independent expenditures.” Corporations are designed to amass massive amounts of money, and they can use their enormous wealth to drown out individual voices, all while spending only a fraction of their treasuries.
Should the Court toss out Austin, it could be the end of any meaningful restrictions on campaign finance. In most states, all that is necessary to form a new corporation is to file the right paperwork in the appropriate government office. Moreover, nothing prevents one corporation from owning another corporation. Without Austin, even a cap on overall contributions becomes meaningless, because corporate donors can simply create a series of shell-corporations for the purpose of evading such caps.
Admittedly, Austin dealt only with independent expenditures, not direct corporate donations to candidates and their campaigns, but the Roberts Court’s apparent willingness to take on Austin directly is its boldest assault on campaign finance reform yet. By 2012, President Obama may not only need to run against the Republican candidate; he may also be in a no-holds-barred political fight with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Chamber of Commerce and Wal-Mart.
HELP Releases Public Plan Outline
HELP Releases Public Plan Outline
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, Pensions (HELP) committee has released its much anticipated outline of the public health insurance option. Earlier this month, in an effort to find common ground with Republicans and iron out some of the most contentious issues, the committee’s ‘“Affordable Health Choices Act,” omitted language on the employer mandate and the new public option.
At the time, the New York Times had reported that the committee was considering a public plan that would reimburse providers 10 percent above Medicare rates. The outline released today doesn’t preclude that possibility, but it makes it less likely.
The new HELP framework allows the public plan to “reimburse health care providers at rates which will be no more than the average reimbursement rate paid by private plans offered through Gateways.” Under this arrangement, the new public plan would have to negotiate its own rates and play by the same rules as other private insurers within the Gateway (i.e. Exchange) — it “would follow the same rules as private plans for defining benefits, protecting consumers, and setting premiums.” What’s more, the public option would be responsible for attracting providers and would thus have to rely on competitive rates (instead of Medicare-like rates) to retain enough participants.
During its first few years of operation, the public plan would be protected from becoming a dumping ground for sicker and costlier patients. Under the outline, it would qualify for “risk corridor protections” to “offset or reclaim excessive losses and gains which could result during the start-up period (identical to those in Medicare Part D). Subsequently, its premiums would be set to make it self sufficient.”
On the whole, then, the plan follows Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) level playing arrangement. Some of the public plan’s inherent advantages — i.e. its ability to use Medicare rates and Medicare leverage — are intentionally dulled. Still, the national option would be able, in due time, to build a strong market presence and use its size and market presence to inject competition in the insurance markets and drive down costs.
The WonkLine: June 30, 2009
The WonkLine: June 30, 2009
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below, and subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, you can now follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
National Security
Max Blumenthal writes that “major American news outlets have broadcast on a virtual loop the video of the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, an unarmed 26-year-old Iranian woman, by Iranian security services…Yet when Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media.”
The Telegraph reports that “Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading challenger to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has issued a fresh call to his supporters to maintain peaceful protests after the government confirmed the result of the disputed election.”
A powerful Taliban faction in a northwestern tribal region has said it is withdrawing from a peace deal with the government to protest continuing strikes by American drones, confronting the Pakistani military with a possible two-front campaign against militants.
Climate
President Obama praised the passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill by the House, but is speaking out against the trade sanctions within the bill. He warns that, because of the state of the economy, the U.S. should “be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there.”
The Energy Department issued new standards for lighting that would save large amounts of energy by boosting the efficiency of fluorescent tubes. From 2012 to 2042, the US would save as much as $4 billion annually and avoid up to 594 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, roughly the equivalent to removing 166 million cars from the road for a year.
Africa’s farmers need help to access loans, fertiliser and export markets to avoid future food supply crises caused by climate change and commodities speculation, a top agricultural expert said today.
Immigration
The Washington Post reports that the LGBT community is lauding the imminent release of a proposed regulation that would end a 1987 U.S. travel and immigration ban for foreigners infected with HIV.
Bank of America has been accused by several ex-employees of exploiting their Latino immigrant customers, implementing a series of tactics to sign them up for multiple services that helped the bank incur high interest rates and fees at the financial expense of their immigrant clientele.
US District Judge Joseph Tauro ordered the release of Sunday Agbata, an undocumented Nigerian immigrant who was imprisoned for nearly a year after receiving his deportation order, as immigration officials failed to justify why they had detained him for so long.
Economy
CNN Money reports that AIG is expected to formally install its new board today, at its “first annual shareholders meeting since U.S. taxpayers were given majority control.”
The New York Times reports that “starting Wednesday, the federal Education Department will begin offering a repayment plan that lets graduates reduce their loan payments, based on their income.” Also tomorrow, the interest rate on new federal Stafford loans will drop to 5.6 percent, from 6.8 percent.
Noam Scheiber at The Stash asks some Treasury Department insiders if the Public-Private Investment Fund is still needed: “[T]hey generally say they’d be pretty happy if it turned out the PPIP were unnecessary.”
Health Care
On Monday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said that a government-run plan that would take effect if the private insurance market fails to deliver affordable coverage “could bridge the partisan divide that threatens to derail President Barack Obama’s efforts to reform the system.”
Ezra Klein on the importance of the health insurance exchange: “The Health Insurance Exchange is where the public plan will live. And if the exchange doesn’t survive, or thrive, then neither will the public plan.”
Media Matters For America Action has started a campaign against the lies of Betsy McCaughey.
Conservatives Attack Sotomayor For Not Having A Crystal Ball
Conservatives Attack Sotomayor For Not Having A Crystal Ball
Within minutes of today’s decision in Ricci the right-wing opened a new assault on President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, claiming that all nine justices disagreed with Judge Sotomayor. The claim featured prominently in a Federalist Society press call held just over an hour after the decision was handed down; right-wing law professor Jonathan Adler made the claim on his blog; and the same claim is all over the National Review’s website. By lunch, even Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) had picked up the spin.
The basis of this claim is the fact that both Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Ginsburg’s dissent created new legal standards which are different than the twenty-five year old rule Sotomayor was required to follow in Ricci. Under the Second Circuit’s 1984 decision in Bushey v. New York State Civil Service Commission employers have almost carte blanche authority to reconsider a hiring or promotion test if minorities underperform white applicants who take that test. The newly-announced rule created by today’s majority opinion says that employers must have a “strong basis in evidence” showing that the test was in fact illegal before they can throw out a promotion test. Justice Ginsburg’s dissent would have carved a middle ground, allowing employers to reconsider a test when they have “good cause to believe” that the test was illegal.
So Cornyn and his co-ideologues are right that Sotomayor failed to predict that both Kennedy and Ginsburg would create never-before-imagined legal standards in their dueling opinions in Ricci, but this is hardly a legitimate attack on Sotomayor. As legendary Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse explains, Sotomayor’s crime was that she simply followed the rules that were in place when Ricci was before her court:
This is a substantial weakening of the disparate-impact prong of Title VII. [T]he 2nd Circuit (and the 6th Circuit, which had handled a similar case in a nearly identical way) was playing by the old rules, and the Supreme Court changed those rules. Don’t we want our appellate judges to play by the rules they are given and to refrain from the activism that would be involved in crafting new ones? Does it seem to you, as it does to me, that Judge Sotomayor’s critics are now kind of stuck?
The lovely thing about being the nation’s highest court is that you aren’t bound by lower-court decisions, and can create new rules on the fly. Judge Sotomayor did not have this luxury, and she shouldn’t be attacked for doing nothing more than following a binding precedent.
Mark Krikorian And CIS Conflate ‘Uninsured Crisis’ With ‘Immigration Crisis’
Mark Krikorian And CIS Conflate ‘Uninsured Crisis’ With ‘Immigration Crisis’
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), recently told Michigan’s WXMI-GR news that the biggest growth in the uninsured has come from an increase in immigration — both legal and illegal. According to Krikorian, “From 1989 on, more than 70% of the increase in the total number of uninsured people is immigrants or their young kids.” Watch it:
CIS’ “findings” were also featured in Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert newsletter. Corsi is already well known for authoring two error-ridden anti-Obama books. His “controversial and often bizarre views,” include xenophobic government conspiracy theories as expressed in his book, “The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada.” Stephen Camarota, Director of CIS Research, told Corsi, “It is not too much to say that the nation’s problem with those lacking health care insurance is being driven by the nation’s immigration policy.” Krikorian is also quoted as saying, “We don’t have an uninsured crisis…We have an immigration crisis.”
What Corsi, Krikorian, and Camarota all conveniently fail to mention is that there were years during the post-1989 period during which the number of uninsured native-born citizens dropped dramatically. By leaving out this significant piece of information, anti-immigrant zealots are able to make it look as if immigrants were a larger share of the total increase in the uninsured than is really the case.
In a personal email correspondence, Dr. Walter Ewing, Senior Researcher at the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) further criticizes CIS for muddying the national health care debate with their anti-immigrant agenda. “Given that nearly 80 percent of the uninsured adults and children in this country are U.S. citizens, it is difficult to fathom how Mark Krikorian can treat this as an immigration issue,” says Ewing.
Ezra Klein has pointed out that excluding immigrants from a national health care system, as groups like CIS advocate, could do more harm than good as unskilled or semi-skilled insured native workers are left to compete with cheaper uninsured undocumented immigrants. As CIS and their anti-immigrant allies exploit the health care issue to make the case against immigration, some have gone as far to argue that immigration reform which includes a legalization program for undocumented immigrants could actually solve labor cost disparities and pave the way for health care reform:
“Most immigrants—legal and illegal—to this country are hard-working, young, and in relatively good physical shape (especially compared to native-born Americans). They make far fewer demands on the public purse than, for example, the average retiring baby boomer. If placed on a pathway to citizenship, they comprise a potentially huge new block of taxpayers—taxpayers that could be critical to balancing the long-term ledger for health care, social security, and other entitlements.”
Diehl: Obama’s Israel-Palestine Policy Too Effective
Diehl: Obama’s Israel-Palestine Policy Too Effective
It’s unfortunate for Jackson Diehl that this column, in which he argues for Obama to ease up already on Israel over its past commitments to a settlement freeze, should come out the same day as this story in the New York Times, which reports that “Israel would be open to a complete freeze of settlement building in the West Bank for three to six months as part of a broad Middle East peace endeavor that included a Palestinian agreement to negotiate an end to the conflict and confidence-building steps by major Arab nations, senior Israeli officials said Sunday.”
A settlement “pause” is, of course, far short of what Israel committed to under the roadmap, as Peter Juul pointed out in an earlier post. While the Obama administration should continue to pressure Israel on its obligations, I think we should recognize this proposal, as with Netanyahu’s qualified endorsement of a Palestinian state, as positive (if certainly insufficient) progress.
While a settlement freeze is by no means impossible, there’s no doubt that it will be extremely difficult for Netanyahu with regard to his right-wing, settlements-supporting political coalition. Knowing this, it seems to me that the Obama team has created an excellent incentive for the Israelis to engage in final status talks, determine the final borders of Israel and Palestine, after which time Israel can build all it wants — inside Israel.
Diehl, on the other hand, frets that “the extraction of a freeze from Netanyahu is, as a practical matter, unnecessary.”
While further settlement expansion needs to be curbed, both the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments have gone along with previous U.S.-Israeli deals by which construction was to be limited to inside the periphery of settlements near Israel – since everyone knows those areas will be annexed to Israel in a final settlement.
To call this argument — because the Palestinians have begrudgingly gone along with past agreements under which the U.S. acquiesced to continued Israeli building on Palestinian land, it’s no big deal if Israel just keeps building on Palestinian land — specious really does injustice to the word.
It’s also strange that Diehl would accuse the administration of “raising the stakes” by holding Israel to commitments on settlements — commitments that he does not deny that Israel has made. This bespeaks a pretty cynical view of agreements between the U.S. and its partners. I should think Diehl would be more concerned with the loss of American credibility in the region that has resulted from years of a U.S. “wink, wink” policy toward Israeli settlement building — credibility that Obama is now trying to restore as a necessary first step toward resolving the conflict.
Supreme Court: States Have The Right To Investigate National Banks For Lending Discrimination
Supreme Court: States Have The Right To Investigate National Banks For Lending Discrimination
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
The Clearing House argument was that only the federal government (in this case, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) has the ability to investigate national banks. Justice Antonin Scalia joined the four liberal justices in disagreeing with this argument:
The foregoing cases all involve enforcement of state law. But if the Comptroller’s exclusive exercise of visitorial powers precluded law enforcement by the States, it would also preclude law enforcement by federal agencies. Of course it does not…In sum, the unmistakable and utterly consistent teaching of our jurisprudence, both before and after enactment of the National Bank Act, is that a sovereign’s “visitorial powers” and its power to enforce the law are two different things. There is not a credible argument to the contrary.
This case began when Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, wanted to discover “whether minorities were being charged higher interest rates on home mortgage loans.” But at the time, the courts ruled that Spitzer was barred from investigating whether national banks were engaging in such practices, leaving the job to ineffectual federal regulators. Current New York AG Andrew Cuomo called the Supreme Court’s reversal of this decision “a huge win for consumers across the nation.”
As Adam Levitan added at Credit Slips, “hopefully this opinion, combined with the emphasis in the Obama financial restructuring plan on ending federal preemption of state consumer protection laws (federal law will be a floor, not a ceiling), marks a turning point in the long march of federal preemption of state consumer protection laws in financial services.” Indeed, Obama has taken positive steps to ensure that states can enforce consumer protections within their own borders, despite pressure from the mortgage and insurance industries.
In the grander scheme of things, this was an attempt by the banking and mortgage industries to grab a piece of the immunity from state law already enjoyed by the health insurance and medical device industries (as outlined by Ian Milhiser here). Hopefully this case will blunt the charge by others, including the restaurant industry, to avoid state law.
Inhofe Calls For Criminal Investigation Into Why EPA ‘Suppressed’ A Global Warming Denier
Inhofe Calls For Criminal Investigation Into Why EPA ‘Suppressed’ A Global Warming Denier
This morning, Fox News Channel’s Gregg Jarrett introduced a “very big story” that the Environmental Protection Agency “intentionally buried a study challenging some of Uncle Sam’s global warming research.” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) claimed the report, written by economist Alan Carlin of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, vindicates his belief that man-made global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”:
The thing is phony. I feel so good about being redeemed after all of these years, because they have been throwing this thing in my face since 1998 when we realized that all of those scientists that Al Gore had lined up — and I’m talking about Claude Allegre in France, David Bellamy in UK, and Nir Shaviv in Israel — all of them used to be on his side. They all said, “Wait a minute, this science is not right.” That’s exactly what Allen Carlin said. We’ve already started a investigation.
Watch it:
When asked if there should be a criminal investigation, Inhofe replied, “There could be and there probably should be.” Continuing his attack, he claimed that the EPA “have been suppressing science and coming out with what they want people to say. You might remember — I talked to you about it on this station. When I first realized that this thing was a hoax and I made the statement that the notion that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2 cause global warming, it is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated.”
In reality, what Fox News, Inhofe, and right-wing bloggers are promoting as a suppressed EPA report is nothing of the kind. Carlin’s paper, released by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (”CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life“), is a hodgepodge of widely discredited pseudoscience. Carlin was given permission by the NCEE to cobble the paper together even though he is not a climate researcher, and “the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists.”
The Carlin document cites the usual array of global warming deniers, including Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, William Gray, Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer — all of whom worked with Sen. Inhofe’s former aide Marc Morano to disseminate denials of climate science. Carlin’s references come from denier blogs such as ICECAP.us and Watts Up With That, as well as publications from the Heartland Institute, the Science & Environmental Policy Project, and the Friends of Science Society, all conservative front groups. RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt summarizes the paper as “a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at.”
Similarly, although the 76-year-old botanist David Bellamy, 72-year-old geochemist Claude Allegre, and 32-year-old astrophysicist Nir Shaviv publicly question man-made global warming, they represent a steadily dwindling number of scientists, few of any of which actively study climate change, that argue fossil fuel emissions are not warming the planet.
What’s really shocking, however, is that “the CEI press release was reported with a more or less straight face by at least two media outlets, CBS News and New York Times Greenwire, without any questioning of CEI’s own motivations or role in the affair.” Both stories show the effect of the collapsing of the mainstream media industry — the CBS story is crossposted by CNet.com reporter Declan McCullagh, the libertarian who fabricated the “Al Gore invented the Internet” story. And the New York Times story is crossposted from E&E News, an independent subscription news service.
Tom Daschle: ‘I Can’t Think Of A Tool That More Effectively Controls Costs Than A Public Option’
Tom Daschle: ‘I Can’t Think Of A Tool That More Effectively Controls Costs Than A Public Option’
Over at ThinkProgress, Faiz Shakir reports that “in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she’s open to the idea of dropping a public health insurance option in favor of a medical-insurance cooperative,” even if the proposed co-operative is a mosaic of state-based programs.
Sebelius explained that the administration was open to any proposal that would “have a comprehensive approach that lowers costs” and provides “coverage for everyone.” “The administration remains open to all serious ideas including national and state co-ops as well, public plans modeled on Medicare, as long as such plans achieve the president’s goals of reducing cost, improving quality and giving Americans real health-care choice,” Sebelius said.
But it’s a unclear that a national cooperative — much less state-based cooperatives — would be able to lower costs. A single health insurance plan has limited scope to influence the practices of providers and other insurers. It lacks the clout of Medicare — which can drive system innovations and payment reforms — Medicare-like administrative efficiencies, or the ability to use Medicare leverage to ensure a large provider network that accepts Medicare prices. A new cooperative health care plan won’t be able to lower costs and drive private insurers to aggressively bargain with providers (and pass the saving on to its beneficiaries in the form of lower premiums). Multiple cooperatives — operating as non-profit health insurance plans — would have even less market leverage to bargain for lower prices.
In fact today, during a press briefing with reporters, former Sen. Tom Daschle — who has been criticized for failing to strongly advocate on behalf of the public plan — argued, “I can’t think of a tool that more effectively controls costs than a public option. I mean every study that has been done on a public option shows what remarkable cost savings you can derive”:
Actually as I said at the beginning, the degree to which Republicans make themselves less and less relevant is the degree to which a public option is more and more likely, because we are negotiating with the Democrats rather than the Republicans who oppose it. So I would say that a reconciliation vehicle would probably have a pure public option just because most likely it will only involve Democrats deciding what that reconciliation package will be.
Watch it:
Health care reform isn’t all about a public option, but a public option may be essential to sustaining the effort. Progressives certainly shouldn’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good — a health care bill that provides coverage to more Americans but lacks a public option is better than no reform at all. But Democratic lawmakers should be careful not to sacrifice good policy for the sake of winning one or two Republican votes. As the New York Times reports this morning, there is “Little Hope for G.O.P. to Support Health Bill.” Republican opposition is rooted in ideological stubbornness and a political unwillingness to allow Democrats to win on the issue, not sound policy rebuttals. As GOP word-smith Frank Luntz has conceded, Republicans will label Obama’s reform effort a “government takeover” of health care regardless of the actual proposal and they continue to misrepresent and lie about the consequences of a public option.
But as Daschle points out, if Republicans continue to lie and obstruct reform, they may push Democrats into reconciliation and, ironically, contribute to the creation of a robust public option. Unfortunately, it’s not yet clear that everyone in the administration agrees that this is good policy.
Transcript: More »
Anti-Immigrant Group Mistakenly Bashes Cornyn’s ‘Pro-Amnesty’ Stance
Anti-Immigrant Group Mistakenly Bashes Cornyn’s ‘Pro-Amnesty’ Stance
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
“Sen. Cornyn has been making incredibly frightening pro-amnesty statements lately. Only you in Texas can shake him back to some degree of sensibility. Earlier this spring at a Senate hearing, he said that he is in agreement on most immigration issues with Sen. Schumer (the radically pro-amnesty Democrat from New York who chairs the Senate panel on immigration). Then yesterday, the authoritative Capitol Hill newspaper — Roll Call — said Cornyn intends to goad Obama into moving faster to pass comprehensive immigration reform. That terminology almost always means amnesty.”
Numbers USA, rest assured — in Cornyn’s case, his tempered “terminology” means nothing of the such. Though Sen. Cornyn praised Obama for beginning the immigration discussion, this weekend he reassured Texas voters that he strongly opposes “amnesty” in the same breath that he harshly criticized the unproductive agenda of groups like Numbers USA:
“Unfortunately you see groups like that basically are more interested in using money by using fear tactics rather than they are in talking about a subject in a rational and intelligent way…I do oppose amnesty, because I think my constituents in Texas oppose amnesty overwhelmingly. But that’s not to say that there can’t be some practical solution that falls short of amnesty that allows us to improve the status quo.”
Cornyn might want to double check with his constituents, but most polling indicates that the majority of Americans support a path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US. The very health of the GOP largely hinges on the party’s ability to regain the confidence of Latino voters who largely favor immigration reform legislation that contains a legalization component.
Cornyn has instead indicated that the only “practical solution” he is willing to support is a guest worker program — a controversial element of the immigration debate that labor groups strongly oppose. The nation’s two largest labor federations equate any new guest worker program to an “indentured servant” initiative.
Bibi Still Playing Games On Settlements
Bibi Still Playing Games On Settlements
The Israeli government has responded again to President Obama’s pressure to freeze all construction in settlements, in accordance with Israel’s obligations under the 2003 roadmap. Unfortunately, the Israeli government doesn’t seem to understand what the word “freeze” means. The New York Times reports today that the Israeli government will propose a conditional suspension of some settlement construction in a meeting between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell today. But this quasi-suspension seems more designed to relieve the pressure the Obama administration is placing on Israel for a settlement freeze than actually fulfill the roadmap obligations.
According to the Times, the Israeli offer will only last three to six months, during which a final status deal with the Palestinians and a broader end to the Arab-Israeli conflict will be negotiated. Construction projects currently under way would not be affected by the Israeli proposal, nor would construction in East Jerusalem. While this offer represents a shift from the Netanyahu government’s earlier stance of allowing “natural growth” in settlements, it’s still a far cry from the complete freeze demanded by both President Obama and the roadmap. Portraying it as a “freeze” when it allows settlement construction currently underway to move forward and excludes East Jerusalem –- the status of which is presumably subject to final status negotiations -– is rhetorical sleight of hand that attempts to portray Israel as being reasonable.
This dishonesty is compounded by reports that Barak’s Defense Ministry approved the construction of 50 new homes in an existing settlement just before Barak came to Washington bearing the Israeli government’s new proposal. This new construction is supposed to give settlers evicted from an illegal outpost homes, but it’s unclear why an existing settlement needs to be expanded to accommodate them. An illegal outpost is dismantled, but its residents are relocated to an existing settlement that will require additional construction in order to house them. Meanwhile, the Israeli defense minister will come to Washington bearing a settlement freeze that isn’t really a freeze.
So far, President Obama has been right to remain steadfast on a complete settlement freeze as outlined in the roadmap. Neither he nor Special Envoy Mitchell should let the Israeli government get away with rhetorical sleight of hand or shell games when it comes to the settlements. The fact that the Netanyahu government has already inched away from its own uncompromising position indicates that the United States can obtain more concessions if it remains firm on the issue.
Report: ‘Lack Of Progress’ On Toxic Assets ‘Threatens To Prolong The Crisis And Delay The Recovery’
Report: ‘Lack Of Progress’ On Toxic Assets ‘Threatens To Prolong The Crisis And Delay The Recovery’
Today, the Wall Street Journal provided a good dissection of how efforts to rid banks of the toxic assets clogging their balance sheets have “sputtered repeatedly“:
[T]hat initiative — called the Public-Private Investment Program, or PPIP — has lost momentum. Big banks worried about having to sell at fire-sale prices while small banks feared they would be shut out. Potential buyers balked at the risk of doing business with the government, concerned that politicians might demonize them for making big profits. The program’s problems threaten to stymie efforts by struggling smaller banks, in particular, to clean up their balance sheets.
The PPIP, much discussed and debated upon its release, has definitely faded from view. But just because we’re successfully ignoring the toxic assets doesn’t mean that the problem has gone away.
In fact, today, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) — which The Guardian calls “one of the few bodies consistently sounding the alarm about the build-up of risky financial assets and under-capitalised banks in the run-up to the credit crisis” — warned that “taxpayers around the world still face potentially large losses because governments have failed to act quickly enough to remove toxic assets from the balance sheets of key banks.” And the BIS’ prime example is the U.S.:
Progress on problem assets has been slowed by the complexity of the securities affected, legal constraints and, above all, the limited political will to commit public funds to the clean-up effort. The lack of progress threatens to prolong the crisis and delay the recovery because a dysfunctional financial system reduces the ability of monetary and fiscal actions to stimulate the economy. The lack of progress on removing troubled assets from the banks’ balance sheets and recognising the associated losses is illustrated by the US experience.
Federal officials reportedly told the Journal that the “because a dozen or so big banks recently succeeded in raising capital,” there is less pressure to get the PPIP off the ground. But even if those few banks are healthy (and that’s a big if), what of every other institution, particularly small and mid-sized, grappling with toxic portfolios? The financial system is not repaired simply because Bank of America can raise capital.
For all the talk of “green shoots,” toxic assets and housing still seem to have bedeviled the administration, and unfortunately, those are two areas (along with rising gas prices) that can stop an economic recovery right in its tracks.
Making Sure Health Care Reform Is Sustainable
Making Sure Health Care Reform Is Sustainable
Today, the Center for American Progress hosted a breakfast with former Sen. Tom Daschle and John Podesta to discuss the prospects of health care reform. “July will be the most historic and consequential in all of history,” Daschle explained, arguing that it will be “extraordinarily critical when it comes to health reform.”
Indeed, after the July 4th recess the Senate Finance Committee and the three House committees with jursidiction over health care will begin marking up legislation. All four are expected to focus on the great elephant in the room: how do we finance reform that could cost north of $1 trillion?
Most progressives propose a mix of different revenue streams. 1) Eliminating or reducing excessive or wasteful spending in Medicare and Medicaid could seed approximately $400 billion. 2) Modernizing the system by implementing electronic health records and instituting payment reform could yield costs savings of 1.5 percentage points annually (or over $500 billion). 3) Additional revenue from the employer mandate, limiting tax preferences for medical spending and sin taxes (taxes on alcohol and soda) would generate more than $400 billion.
This basket of pay-fors provides Congress with a menu of options, making fully financed health care reform more probable. As Podesta pointed out during the briefing:
One of the reasons I think this is important, is if you settle in on 400, 400, 400 then the cuts are sustainable. If you are imagining all of the costs coming from the revenue side, or all of the costs coming from traditional cuts in public program, it is very very hard to get the package put together right. But if you can take 400 out of over payments, 400 out of modernization, 400 out revenues, that’s a doable deal. None of it is easy. If it was easy, it would already have been done.
But what “if experience falls short of expectations?” What happens if productivity improvements, investments in health information technology and payment system reforms fail to slow the growth of health care spending and lower costs? How then do we ensure that health care reform is budget neutral? Well today, Harvard economist David Cutler and CAP Senior Fellow Judy Feder released a new report in which they argue that should reform fail to produce savings, Congress could rely on a series of so-called ‘failsafe’ proposals:
A commission would monitor health care spending and, after some time would have the authority to implement a series of measures to address the problematic areas. “The first piece is the trigger,” Feder explained. “You would have some combination of a mechanism to ensure adequate funding for health care reform and the other is a target for the rate of growth of health care spending. That’s the kind of trigger that we would see…A commission would at a point, say 5 years out, would evaluate experience and if we were somewhat short, if all of the modernization hasn’t happened or the savings hadn’t gone where we needed them to go, then that commission would make the decision as to what actual measures would be taken to get growth under control.”
The WonkLine: June 29, 2009
The WonkLine: June 29, 2009
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below, and subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, you can now follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
Climate
A new report from Friends of the Earth describes how Shell Oil “continues to greenwash its image” even as it has become the world’s “most carbon intensive oil company,” by moving “heavily into polluting tar sands, natural gas, and continuing to flare gas in Nigeria” while cutting back on renewables.
Even as a deadly heatwave in the central U.S. subsides, “a blistering heatwave in the Indian capital of New Delhi has triggered record power and water shortages, leading to widespread demonstrations.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lobbied officials from the dozens of states that already have systems to cap global warming pollution, asking them “to be engaging with the Senate to ensure that” the climate and energy legislation passed by the House of Representatives “doesn’t get weakened unacceptably.”
National Security
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai “accused Afghan guards working for U.S. coalition forces of killing a provincial police chief and at least four other security officers Monday, and he demanded that American forces hand over the guards involved.”
As a partial recount of Iran’s disputed election began today, pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi, who came in fourth in the official count, said an annulment of the election was “the only way to regain the people’s trust.”
A new report by the International Committee of the Red Cross says that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip has left “1.5 million people in despair.” The report says the blockade of the coastal strip is preventing Gaza from rebuilding, six months after Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which left many homes damaged or destroyed.
Health Care
Yesterday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said President Obama would “like to have a public option – or government-run insurance plan – as part of a health reform package, but will not insist on it.” “‘We’ve not gotten as far as we’ve gotten by drawing bright lines in the sand,’ Axelrod said.
“President Barack Obama’s drive to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system may be back on track thanks to Senate efforts to cut the price tag to $1 trillion, but a bipartisan deal on the sweeping proposal still is far from certain.”
Jonathan Cohn asks, ‘The Public Option Is Important. But How Important?’
Economy
The Wall Street Journal reports that “cash-strapped states are considering raising taxes on oil production to plug yawning budget gaps, but they face strong resistance from oil companies.”
Simon Johnson writes that Treasury’s plan for allowing banks to buy back their TARP warrants is a mistake: “In Treasury’s scheme, there is significant risk of implicit gift exchange with banks – good jobs/political support/other favors down the road – or even explicit corruption.”
Via The Mess That Greenspan Made, the Los Angeles Times reports that personal bankruptcies are surging in the former housing bubble hotspot of Southern California, with a 40 percent increase from the levels seen last year.
Immigration
Following President Obama’s meeting on immigration reform last week, several individuals were quick to point out the “complex political equation” that will involve balancing demand for temporary workers from the business community with labor’s fierce opposition to any guest worker program during the legislative battle.
The “fate” of a series of hard-line anti-immigrant bills proposed in the state of Arizona, including one that would require public schools to collect data on students who can’t prove legal residency in the US and another that expands the state’s trespassing law to make Arizona the only state to criminalize the presence of undocumented immigrants, will be determined no later than this Tuesday by the state legislature.
Despite mixed feelings surrounding the expulsion of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, Honduran immigrant rights leaders are protesting the military takeover of their home country and are asking President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to push for the restoration of democracy in Honduras.
Cleaning Up the Mess at Guantanamo
Cleaning Up the Mess at Guantanamo
Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress.
Today’s Washington Post report that the Obama administration is preparing an Executive Order on detention authority is a big step in the right direction. Of course some concerns remain about the emerging policy, but many of the specifics outlined in the story — especially criminal prosecutions for future off-battlefield detentions and recognition of the train wreck that would likely come from Congress — are very encouraging. It’s not perfect, but if the Obama administration follows this path, it would be a significant improvement over the Bush administration and would go a long way towards cleaning up the mess at Guantanamo.
After Congress’ pathetic performance during consideration of Guantanamo funding in the supplemental appropriations bill, it is now evident that no matter how well-intentioned the president and some responsible members are, Congress is not a reliable partner. Whatever would emerge from the sausage grinder risks being far worse than even the already unacceptable status quo. One likely outcome from Congress would be the creation of national security courts for suspected terrorists — an option Obama now appears to have rejected — which would build on the errors of the Bush experiment with military commissions and pollute the entire U.S. justice system.
It is important to recognize that President Obama is not avoiding Congressional authorization because Congress has already approved traditional law of war detention in the Authorization to Use Military Force of 2001. The Supreme Court sustained military detention authority of those detainees captured in zones of active combat in 2004 in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, so President Obama is on firm legal ground should he choose to limit military detention to those circumstances.
According to the Post, that is exactly what Obama is considering for any detainees captured in the future:
“Al-Qaeda operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and possibly in the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities. Suspects captured elsewhere in the world could be transferred to the United States for federal prosecution, turned over to local authorities or returned to their home countries.”
This would be a significant shift from the Bush administration’s policy that swept into U.S. military detention virtually anyone suspected of terrorist activity captured anywhere in the world. It would restore the bright line between criminal and military detention, a crucial distinction to preserve not just in the United States, but also in other countries that look to or use the U.S. as an example. More »
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