FLASHBACK: In 2000, Lamar Smith Said ‘We Should Not Let The Law Get In The Way’ Of Stopping Deportations
FLASHBACK: In 2000, Lamar Smith Said ‘We Should Not Let The Law Get In The Way’ Of Stopping Deportations
Republicans are up in arms about an internal draft memo by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) leaked last week which outlines “administrative relief options to…reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization.” Immigration hawk Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) blasted the Obama administration, stating, “[t]he President has promised border security and immigration enforcement. He has said we must hold individuals accountable for their illegal acts. But now we find out the truth: while saying one thing to the public, the Obama administration is scheming to ensure that immigration laws are not enforced.” Smith went as far as to accuse Obama himself of “conspiring to implement amnesty without any Congressional action.” However, Smith’s attack doesn’t line up with some comments he made a few years ago.
In 2000, Lamar recommended officials handle the harsh effects that the 1996 Immigration Act was having on legal immigrants administratively, rather than have Congress amend the act. At the time, the New York Times reported that “Representative Smith suggested two ways for the government to stop deportations that, though required by the statute, would be inhumane” — options that caught the Immigration and Naturalization Service office off guard:
First, he [Smith] called for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to exercise prosecutorial discretion in hardship cases. That is, immigration officials would simply decline to proceed with a deportation case. [...]
Second, Mr. Smith proposed that the attorney general use a provision of immigration law that allows her to ”parole” aliens into the country for ”urgent humanitarian reasons.” Parole, he argued, could be used to prevent deportation as well as to allow entry. [...] ”The Justice Department or I.N.S. could assign one staff member to look at these cases for parole,” Mr. Smith said. ”He could probably handle 10 cases a day.” [...] ”The government can always do what it wants to do in hardship cases,” the Congressman said. ”We should not let the letter of the law get in the way of the spirit.”
Granted, Smith was referring to the government’s ability to parole legal immigrants with deportation orders. However, Smith concedes that it is within the President’s power to do so — something that many of his Republican colleagues have argued is not. In a letter authored by GOP senators requesting a hearing on the issue, they stated that they “are troubled that the executive branch could be engaged in an effort to inappropriately expand its authority to ensure illegal immigrants are not removed from the United States.” However, in 2000, Smith probably would’ve rightly argued that it’s not an inappropriate expansion of power, but rather, an exertion of the capacities that are legally within the purview of USCIS.
Contrary to what Republicans suggest, however, that doesn’t mean USCIS is or ever planned on moving forward. An editorial in the Washington Times warns, “the question is not whether government can implement the myriad suggestions in the memo, but rather why President Obama is going to such extraordinary and unprecedented lengths to protect millions of people who are in violation of federal law.” However, other than a memo written by low level staff members that was “borne out of brainstorming sessions” that took place in 2007 during the Bush administration, there’s not a shred of evidence to suggest that’s the case. One USCIS spokesmen clarified that “as a matter of good government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will discuss just about every issue that comes within the purview of the immigration system.” He also definitively stated that “DHS will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.”
The reality of the situation is that deportations have actually reached an all-time high under the Obama administration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to deport an estimated 400,000 people this fiscal year, 25 percent more than were deported by President Bush in 2007. And if that’s not enough, Obama explicitly rejected the idea of granting administrative relief in his July 1 speech at American University, proclaiming, “there are those in the immigrants’ rights community who have argued passionately that we should simply provide those who are [here] illegally with legal status… I believe such an indiscriminate approach would be both unwise and unfair.”
Most importantly, while granting administrative relief to certain vulnerable undocumented populations would certainly alleviate some of the suffering of the immigrant community, it wouldn’t fix the broken immigration system. Republicans don’t like to admit it, but comprehensive immigration reform isn’t amnesty. Instead, it consists of creating an immigration visa system that responds to the nation’s economic needs, securing the border, and putting undocumented immigrants on a tough, but fair path to legalization — politically, or practically, none of these components are a solution on its own. Perhaps that’s why Smith essentially supported the status quo in 2000 by recommending ad hoc administrative action directed at a small group of people over Congress actually fixing the “inhumanity” of the immigration system once and for all.
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Judge Finds Proposition 8 Unconstitutional
Judge Finds Proposition 8 Unconstitutional
U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite- sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
Last night, anticipating Judge Walker’s decision, lawyers for the Proposition 8 defense team asked Walker to “for a stay of his ruling if the outcome is to declare the law unconstitutional.” Walker issued an emergency stay of the judgment and will decide later if an indefinite stay is in order.
The ruling is now expected to be appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Treasury Announces Targeted Anti-Foreclosure Programs — But Why Not Think Bigger?
Last week, I noted that 75 percent of metro areas have seen an increase in foreclosures, but that lawmakers have been reduced to pleading with banks to perform mortgage modifications, as the Obama administration’s signature modification program has been a big flop. The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has had more homeowners drop out of it than successfully receive a permanent mortgage modification.
As the Huffington Post’s Shahien Nasiripour and Arthur Delaney laid out, HAMP “has fallen short of its goals — rather than significantly and permanently reducing home foreclosures, it is only delaying them.” Today, the administration is trying to do something about the problem:
As many as 50,000 struggling homeowners in five U.S. states with high unemployment may receive help from a special $600 million federal fund intended to head off foreclosures. State housing agencies in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon and Rhode Island can use money from the Treasury Department’s “Hardest Hit Fund” for foreclosure mitigation that was announced in March.
According to Reuters, “some of the programs that states proposed will help unemployed or under-employed people keep up with their mortgage payments. Others will try to assist homeowners who are facing negative equity by reducing the principal of loans that they owe or will be used to finance short sales of homes to avoid foreclosure.”
These ideas — particularly reducing loan principal — are good ones, but I have to wonder why the amount of money dedicated to them is so small and why this response is limited to states with the worst unemployment. After all, as David Dayen pointed out, just $250 million of the $75 billion promised to HAMP has been spent. There’s quite a bit of money to facilitate more intensive foreclosure prevention efforts across the country.
“We’ve got a huge amount of people who are under water that aren’t going to be made whole,” said economist Dean Baker. “If you can’t persuade the banks to do a write-down that will allow them to stay in their homes, then you haven’t done that person a favor.” And while Treasury has talked a good game on eventually getting around to principal reductions, up to this point “as few as 0.1 percent of mortgage modifications initiated under HAMP involve reductions of principal.”
Foreclosures remain one of the key problems undermining the economy, yet the policy response has been incredibly lackluster. These small ball initiatives are certainly going to help some individual homeowners, but they aren’t on a grand enough scale to address the wider issue.
Oil Spill Could Put Gulf Sturgeon On Brink Of Extinction
Oil Spill Could Put Gulf Sturgeon On Brink Of Extinction
The vast quantities of oil and dispersants that have flooded the Gulf of Mexico are now disappearing into the water column, leading scientists to worry about the long-term toxic effects. One species of particular concern is the Gulf sturgeon, a remarkable “living dinosaur” of a fish that can reach 1000 pounds, and can cause serious injury with its armor-plated skin as it leaps through the air. However, these anadromous fish — which, like salmon, spawn in rivers but live as adults in the ocean — are no match for man’s destructive power. Once living throughout the eastern Gulf, the fish is now a threatened species because of river damming, pollution, and overfishing, with a range limited from the Suwannee River in Florida to the Pearl River in Mississippi and Louisiana. According to Frank Parauka, a fishery biologist with the the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, there are about 10,000 Gulf sturgeon left.
When the Bush administration made plans to open up more of the Gulf of Mexico to drilling — including the eventual site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster — the Minerals Management Service predicted that there would be “minimal” impacts on the Gulf sturgeon, even in the case of “accidental spills”:
Impacts on Gulf sturgeon associated with routine operations and accidental spills under the proposed action are expected to be minimal, because there is relatively little overlap between the locations that could be affected by activities and the distribution of Gulf sturgeon. [p. 57]
In fact, nearly all of the estuarine regions that are key to Gulf sturgeon survival have been affected by the BP oil disaster. Ichthyologist Stephen Ross, who has been tracking Gulf sturgeon in the marine environment for years, has found that the adult fish live among the Mississippi barrier islands in the cold months of the year, and that juveniles probably live there all year long. In an email interview with the Wonk Room, Ross explained that the threat to the sturgeon from the subsurface (benthic) oiling of the barrier islands and gulf coast could be “devastating”:
First, subadult and adult Gulf Sturgeon accomplish their entire annual food intake during the time they are in coastal waters (October-March), so any impact that altered the benthic food base would be devastating to Gulf Sturgeon. Second, we are pretty sure that juvenile Gulf Sturgeon inhabit the coastal estuaries throughout the year. Consequently, penetration of oil into the inshore areas would also be a major problem– of course, not just for Gulf Sturgeon but for all aquatic and marsh organisms.
Gulf sturgeon do not forage when they are in the rivers. They enter the estuarine habitat after fasting for months and completely depend on resources obtained when they are in saline waters. Comparing the maps for the Gulf sturgeon critical habitat and the oil’s impact, only the far eastern reaches of the sturgeon’s feeding range appears to be untouched by BP’s toxic slick. More »
The Motives Behind The GOP’s Bizarre Attack On The 14th Amendment
Recently, the Republican Party has been rallying around a new effort to potentially repeal provisions of the 14th amendment which automatically grant citizenship to those born in the U.S. Despite the media attention the GOP is generating, few reporters have reminded their audiences of one major procedural hurdle involved: getting two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states to support an amendment to repeal part of the Constitution. Given the fact that it’s unlikely that such an amendment would get very far, it begs the question of why lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and others, are proposing the Senate Judiciary Committee waste its time by organizing hearings on the topic. The truth is it likely boils down to two things: riling up their base before November’s midterm elections and creating a toxic environment to kill any chance of the DREAM Act passing if and when it is introduced this fall.
To begin with, the notion that pregnant women are crossing the border in herds simply to have a U.S. born “anchor baby” is simply mistaken. While it has certainly been known to happen, it is by no means the norm. Even immigration restrictionist Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies points out, “there’s no evidence suggesting that this ‘drop and leave’ stuff is true…. My own sense is that most illegal alien women who have kids here…didn’t come for that purpose; they came for jobs or to join relatives, and one thing led to another, birds-and-bees style, and they had kids.” Denying citizenship to those who are born to undocumented immigrant parents would only compound the problem of illegal immigration by ballooning the number of those in the country without documents.
However, the potential introduction of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act as it is known, explains a lot. In July, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) indicated that he would introduce the DREAM Act in the coming weeks if he feels he has the votes. Based on estimations, the DREAM Act would potentially put a little under a million undocumented youth who were brought here at a young age by their parents and meet certain requirements on a path to legalization. The usual right-wing anti-immigrant talking points simply don’t hold up as well when talking about the DREAM Act. It’s much more difficult to argue that “DREAMers” are lawbreakers who are being rewarded for coming here illegally to take jobs from U.S. citizens when they were brought to the U.S. by their parents and, through no fault of their own, invested in by the U.S. education system and raised as Americans. Perhaps in response, the Republican Party is shifting the conversation to focus on the definition of citizenship itself. As they move the debate farther to the right to argue that the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be citizens, it will tighten the space Democrats have to make the case for legalizing the undocumented children of undocumented immigrants.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party stands to rack up cheap political points with its base. Graham, McCain, and Kyl have all been accused by the right of being soft on immigration. Taking such an extreme position allows moderates like them to prove that they’re willing to back up their radical anti-immigrant base rather than working with Democrats to solve the problem. And in the unlikely chance that they succeed, it would also conveniently mean more undocumented immigrants who would probably vote for Democrats, but can’t. Yet, what the senators are probably overlooking is that all those “anchor babies” already are or probably will become voters who will remind their children and their grandchildren of the party who tried to take that right away.
38 Republican Senators Vote To Filibuster A Deficit Reducing Jobs Bills
Today, the Senate (finally) invoked cloture on a bill that provides states with $26 billion in funding for Medicaid and to prevent mass layoffs of teachers. These two streams of funding have been added to — and subsequently cut from — bill after bill, as conservatives objected to their cost, just as they’ve objected to every spending measure that has been suggested to help alleviate some of the pain of the Great Recession for the lower- and middle-class.
Initially, the bill that was voted on today added $5 billion to the deficit. But it was tweaked to include larger spending offsets, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, it now decreases the deficit by $1.3 billion over ten years through cuts to food stamps and closing corporate tax loopholes that allow multinationals to claim domestic tax credits.
As Steve Benen put it, “for Republicans who claim to want to improve the economy, but not at the expense of the deficit, there were no excuses — Dems offered a modest, sensible bill, which would save jobs, help struggling states, all without adding to the deficit.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) yesterday said “this amendment meets every test Republicans claim to be concerned about.”
And two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — did indeed vote to invoke cloture and end the ongoing filibuster. The rest of the Republican caucus, however, voted no. That’s 38 Republican senators who voted against a deficit reducing jobs bill. (Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) didn’t vote.)
As David Dayen pointed out, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) authored a fully paid for state aid bill that was “substantially similar to this,” yet he still voted no. At this point, everyone should stop taking at face value the notion that Republicans really want small spending measure to pass, but only if they’re “paid for.” This vote clearly puts the lie to that assertion.
Now, the cuts made to the food stamp program in order to pay for the bill are unfortunate. And in the larger sense, there is simply no reason to be offsetting measures to boost the economy, spur job creation, or bolster the social safety net now, as they have little effect on the long-term structural deficit but can make a huge difference in combating the effects of the Great Recession. But the fact remains that 38 Republicans senators voted today to filibuster a jobs bill that also reduces the deficit (which was also a vote to preserve corporate tax loopholes).
The Warming World Of Wally Broecker, 35 Years Later
The Warming World Of Wally Broecker, 35 Years Later
The original, full version of this post appears at ForeignPolicy.com.
Thirty-five years ago, on August 8, 1975, geoscientist Wallace Smith Broecker published “Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?” in the journal Science, the first time the iconic phrase “global warming” was used in a scientific paper. Synthesizing decades of earlier work, Dr. Broecker — known by all as Wally — accurately predicted “that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide.”
Wally Broecker’s 1975 projection of global warming (dashed line) with actual measurements (red) superimposed.
The past 35 years have seen humanity answer Wally’s question in the affirmative, running a radical experiment on the only planet we inhabit. Carbon dioxide levels have risen 40 percent to 392 parts per million from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm, and the global mean temperature has risen 0.8 C, on 1.3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide. Humanity has produced 60 percent of that global warming pollution since Broecker’s paper was published. As a result, the planetary ecosystem has fundamentally changed — weather has become more extreme, seasons have shifted, and global ice and snow is in decline — with more rapid and radical change on its way.
“To those who even today claim that global warming is not predictable,” climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf writes at the peerless Real Climate blog, “the anniversary of Broecker’s paper is a reminder that global warming was actually predicted before it became evident in the global temperature records over a decade later.”
In fact, one can even go back to 1896, when Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius predicted that the burning of coal could eventually double atmospheric CO2, leading to a temperature increase of several degrees Celsius, although he believed such a day was far into the future. For the next fifty years, most scientists considered manmade climate change an unlikely speculation.
In the scientific explosion following World War II, however, scientists began using new measurements and the new digital computers to revisit the effect of man’s carbon dioxide pollution on the climate, and our modern understanding of the greenhouse effect developed through the work of pioneering scientists. By the end of the 1950s, Frank Capra had made an instructional film on manmade global warming and Robert Revelle had testified before Congress about the “large scale geophysical experiment” mankind was conducting with industrial greenhouse pollution.
The year 1965 marked the first time the threat of manmade global warming was brought to the President’s desk, in an extended report for Lyndon B. Johnson by top climate scientists, including Revelle, Charles Keeling (whose measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide from Mauna Loa have become the most remarkable graph in climate science), and the young Wally Broecker. “By the year 2000,” they wrote, carbon dioxide pollution might “produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate, and will almost certainly cause significant changes in the temperature and other properties of the atmosphere.”
In the years leading up to Broecker’s global warming paper, the field rapidly advanced with the launch of the first weather satellites, the mathematical understanding of chaos theory — by MIT’s Ed Lorenz, and the rise of physical oceanography. Several groups of scientists competed to test the limits of supercomputers with general circulation models that simulated the planetary ocean-atmosphere interactions that generate the global climate, a practice that continues to this day.
By the end of the 1970s, climate scientists around the world were coming to the consensus that Broecker’s analysis was right — the exponential rise in carbon dioxide emissions would overcome natural cooling cycles and the effects of aerosol pollution to dangerously warm the planet within decades. “Man is setting in motion a series of events that seem certain to cause a significant warming of world climates over the next decades unless mitigating steps are taken immediately,” warned a 1979 report by top climatologists for the Carter White House, recommending “[e]nlightened policies in the management of fossil fuels and forests” to “delay or avoid these changes.”
Increasingly, the scientific enterprise has shifted toward the measurement of the changes wrought by global warming in every corner of the world, and toward a new emphasis on civilizational risk management and public engagement. However, the interface between research and policymaking has been poisoned by the influence of corporations and individuals opposed to any restrictions on carbon pollution (even ones based on free market principles). Using lessons learned from the tobacco industry’s efforts to deny the dangers of its product, global-warming polluters have poured their vast resources into a long-running campaign of deceit to corrupt efforts to make policy at local, national, and international levels. Today’s climate scientists face intimidation, slander, and even threats of criminal prosecution for their work to illuminate a way to preserve the human experiment on our burning planet.
After Wally Broecker coined “global warming,” the 1980s followed as the hottest decade on record. The 1990s were even hotter, and the 2000s hotter still – at an increasing rate despite a natural cooling cycle, just as Broecker predicted. The past twelve months have been the hottest in history, bringing continent-wide heat waves, freak storms, and unprecedented rains that have devastated millions from Nashville to Moscow, from Oklahoma City to the French Riviera. Having predicted this future, Broecker now investigates potential triggers for abrupt climate change and researches methods to capture carbon dioxide pollution, because, he says, “We are going to need some way to bail ourselves out.”
Read the full version of this post at ForeignPolicy.com.
In Defense Of Matlock
In Defense Of Matlock
Following their protest of a CMS brochure explaining the benefits of health care reform to seniors on Medicare, GOP Senators have written a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius expressing their “profound concern” about a television campaign featuring Andy Griffith. Seizing on a blog post from Stephanie Cutter, which introduced the Griffith ad as an attempt at “correcting the record” about Medicare benefits, Sens. Coburn, Barrasso, McCain, Burr, and Thune are feigning indignation:
The Administration’s clam to “correct the record” is misleading and offensive. We can debate the relative merits of the new law, but co-opting public funds during a recession, to make a political, poll tested argument about the new law, is wrong. While we understand the intensity of the Administration’s faith in this new law, “correcting the record” through the use of a taxpayer-funded ad campaign is highly inappropriate and breaks with the spirit of the law.
The new law cuts nearly $530 billion in taxpayer dollars from the Medicare program and uses Medicare dollars to pay for those who are forced to buy federally-mandated health insurance.
Watch the ad in which Griffith assures seniors that their guaranteed Medicare benefits won’t be cut and lays out some of the benefits of reform:
Since Republicans spent taxpayer dollars conflating cuts in the private Medicare Advantage program with guaranteed benefits under Medicare, using federal dollars to unspin those myths makes sense, particularly since many seniors still have the wrong impression about the law. For example, according to the latest Kaiser Tracking Poll, a large number of seniors “mistakenly believe the law includes provisions that cut some previously universal Medicare benefits” and 36% think that the law creates ‘death panels.’ Also, only 14 percent of seniors know that the law will increase the Medicare Part A trust fund by 12 years “and nearly half (45%) of seniors think the health reform law will weaken the financial condition of the fund. ”
The politics of attracting and keeping the senior vote are pushing the GOP to foolishly lash out against one of the most popular personality figures in American culture. They’re not necessarily accusing Andy Griffith of lying — standard benefits will be protected and the GOP actually supports some of the fraud provisions described in the ad — as much as they’re just trying to hold on to their narrative about the health care reform law.
Deficit Fraud Gregg Wouldn’t Pay For Extending Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich: ‘I Just Don’t Subscribe To That View’
Deficit Fraud Gregg Wouldn’t Pay For Extending Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich: ‘I Just Don’t Subscribe To That View’
Recently, a spate of faux deficit hawks have put forth the notion that, while any steps to alleviate the effects of the Great Recession for the lower- and middle-class must be paid for, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should simply be added to the deficit. “You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). “Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn’t a cost,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) agreed. “That’s where we are today. That’s the baseline. It doesn’t score anything to continue them.”
Today, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who has previously said “I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset,” explicitly dismissed the notion that extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich should be paid for. “I just don’t subscribe to that view,” he said:
I don’t subscribe to the view that when you cut taxes, when you maintain a tax situation like we have today — what we’re actually taking about is whether the Obama administration is going to increase taxes — that you basically have to pay for keeping taxes at their present levels. I just don’t subscribe to that view.
Watch it:
Coburn and Gregg are conveniently forgetting that President Bush and Republicans in Congress purposely designed the Bush tax cuts to sunset in ten years, to reduce their long-term cost. The baseline assumes a full expiration, so an extension most certainly does count as a cost against it.
Furthermore, Gregg is one of the loudest self-styled deficit hawks in Congress, continually warning that the U.S. is going to become a “banana republic.” Earlier this year, he refused to support an extension of unemployment benefits unless it was fully paid-for, saying that those who wanted to extend the benefits “basically keep spending money like drunken sailors.”
But when it comes to $830 billion — all of which will be spent on the richest two percent of Americans — Gregg’s concern about spending and the deficit suddenly evaporates. As Michael Linden pointed out, “$830 billion is enough to pay for all veterans’ hospitals, doctors, and the rest of the Veteran’s Affairs health system, plus the United States Coast Guard, plus the Food and Drug Administration, plus the operation and maintenance of every single national park for the entire 10-year period — with more than $100 billion left over.” So who, again, has more disregard for the deficit?
GOP Voters In Missouri Reject Republican-Inspired Individal Mandate
Yesterday, Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected the federal requirement to purchase health insurance, becoming the first state in the nation to nullify a portion of the new health care law. Conservatives attached the ballot measure, known as Proposition C, to the state’s primary election and it passed easily, attracting more than 70% of the vote.
But the story Republicans will be telling this morning, namely that the voters have rejected the central tenet of Obamacare and that support for the law is on the decline, doesn’t accurately capture the reality of the situation. A majority of the voters in Missouri voted for Prop C, but most of these supporters were Republican or conservative voters who were coming out to cast their ballot in the state’s competitive GOP primaries. The results say more about the reactionary state of Republican politics and the erosion of GOP policies than about general anti-reform trends or the merits of the mandate.
After all, the notion of requiring everyone to purchase health care insurance as a means of pushing younger and healthier individuals into the system and lowering premiums for everyone, was originally a Republican proposal developed as an alternative to the Clinton health care plan. In 1993, Sen. John Chafee (R-RI), then head of the Senate Republican Task Force, had signed up half of the Republican Senators, including then-Republican Senate leader Bob Dole “for a phased in universal coverage plan that would require every individual to buy a policy.” The plan resembled the current health care law in other ways, offering subsidized coverage for poorer beneficiaries, requiring that insurers offer a standard benefits package and preventing issuers from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions.
Prominent GOP senators like Chuck Grassley (IA) and Judd Gregg (NH) continued to believe that individuals should take responsibility for their own health care costs throughout the years, co-sponsoring the bipartisan Wyden-Bennett health care plan, including the initiative in their own proposals, or publicly endorsing the measure on Fox News. But the politics changed during this reform debate, pushing GOP lawmakers to abandon their previously held positions in favor of repeal policies that would remove the incentive for healthier Americans to buy insurance and consequently increase premiums across the board.
Thus far, the success of this strategy has been limited to Missouri. Arizona — which has put an anti-mandate initiative on the ballot in November — may soon pass a nullification measure, but these states are the exception rather than the rule. In fact, nullification bills have been rejected or failed to pass in at least 26 states where conservatives “claimed legislators would defy federal law.”
The WonkLine: August 4, 2010
The WonkLine: August 4, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 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. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
Health Care
“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last night estimated that the latest version of the Democrats’ plan to extend emergency Medicaid benefits will reduce the federal deficit by almost $1.4 billion over the next decade.” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will bring the measure to a vote today.
“There are about 95 medical liability claims filed for every 100 physicians—or almost one per doctor—and nearly 61% of physicians age 55 and older have been sued, according to a report released by the American Medical Association and based on a survey of 5,825 “non-federal patient care physicians” conducted in 2007 and 2008.”
“Health care reform hits another milestone next month, with new provisions that include a coverage expansion for young adults and restrictions on an insurer’s ability to impose annual coverage limits or to reject children with pre-existing medical conditions.”
Environment
“Fossil fuel is wrecking the one Earth we’ve got,” Bill McKibben writes, “We definitely will need disciplined, nonviolent but very real anger.”
Russia’s record heat “threatens the burgeoning economy” as the death toll from hundreds of wildfires has reached 40, with wheat prices skyrocketing a “the worst drought in at least 50 years in Russia, persistent dry weather in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other parts of Europe, and excessive rains in Canada may curb supply from some of the world’s biggest exporters.”
This morning, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “will deliver a statement on the flooding in Pakistan,” which has “killed an estimated 1,500 people and displaced more than 3 million over the past week.”
National Security
“The United Nations peacekeeping force in South Lebanon, Unifil, said on Wednesday it had concluded that Israeli forces were cutting trees that lay within their own territory before a lethal exchange of fire with Lebanese Army troops on Tuesday, largely vindicating Israel’s account of how the fighting started.”
“Iran’s state media are denying reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was targeted in a grenade attack Wednesday.”
“Pakistan issued new flood warnings Tuesday as the country battled to cope with the worst floods in living memory, which have affected 3.2 million people and killed up to 1,500.”
Economy
“Local and state governments, as well as some companies, are squeezing their employees to work the same amount for less money in cost-saving measures that are often described as a last-ditch effort to avoid layoffs,” the New York Times reports.
The Government Accountability Office yesterday said that several for-profit colleges “encouraged fraud and engaged in deceptive and questionable marketing practices.”
Is Elizabeth Warren, potential nominee to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, more of a moderate than she is given credit for?
ANALYSIS: House GOP ‘Jobs Plan’ Would Give Billions In Budget Busting Tax Breaks To Huge Corporations
ANALYSIS: House GOP ‘Jobs Plan’ Would Give Billions In Budget Busting Tax Breaks To Huge Corporations
Our guest blogger is Ethan Berman, Economic Policy Intern at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
There is one consensus among all lawmakers as they push to bring back the jobs lost over the last few years and lower the unemployment rate: small businesses are the key. But Republican leaders are manifesting their desire to help small businesses by pushing for an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich (which will help less than two percent of small businesses) while simultaneously filibustering a bill providing tax credits to actual small businesses
But House Republicans have also proposed the Economic Freedom Act of 2010, a plan that embodies the same conservative economic policies that failed over the last decade. Introduced by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and supported by the House Republican Study Committee, it seeks to create new jobs through a number of huge tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations. Speaking on the House floor on April 22nd, Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) boldly stated:
Americans who have been jobless for over a year will continue down that road if new jobs simply do not exist. And I am not talking about temporary government jobs. Congress must work to stop spending and create a favorable environment for businesses to save money and invest by cutting taxes…This is why today I cosponsored the Economic Freedom Act.
How will the Freedom Act create jobs? It won’t. But among other things it will lower the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 12.5 percent, which as a new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Citizens for Tax Justice shows, will give gigantic tax breaks to large corporations such as:
Not only does this plan lower corporate tax revenue in a system already full of loopholes and tax credits, it is also extremely inefficient in creating economic activity. According to Moody’s Economy.com, a corporate tax cut only generates 30 cents of economic activity for every dollar spent. In contrast, the unemployment benefits extension that the Republicans filibustered earlier this year will result in $1.61 of economic activity for every dollar spent.
No one is arguing that this tax cut wouldn’t generate any economic activity or give companies less incentive to hide profits offshore, but rather that the negative consequences outweigh the positive by a vast amount. This tax break is estimated to add $2.7 trillion to the deficit relative to current law.
President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved or created about three million jobs since its enactment according to the Congressional Budget Office. In addition, it has provided tax cuts to more than 95 percent of American households. On the other hand, the Economic Freedom Act will not only cost the country trillions of dollars, but will also send the overwhelming majority of its tax breaks to a minority of individuals and large corporations, when we want money flowing into the hands of the people who are most likely to spend or invest it to create jobs.
To read more about the Republican “jobs plan” and its economic consequences, check out Republicans’ $10 Trillion Giveaway.
Stymied By Oil-Fueled Opposition, Reid Abandons Spill Bill
Stymied By Oil-Fueled Opposition, Reid Abandons Spill Bill
In response to one of the greatest oil disasters in history, the U.S. Senate will do nothing. Republican opposition to the limited oil industry reform package assembled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (S. 3663) has led him to pull the bill — and the BP-friendly Republican alternative (S. 3643) — from the floor. Pressed for time, Reid chose not to force his opponents to cast a vote on behalf of their oil sponsors. Reid’s package is almost exclusively made of bipartisan pieces of legislation:
— Interior Department drilling reform, co-sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
– Natural gas trucks retrofitting, co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
– The “cash for caulkers” Homestar energy efficiency program, co-sponsored by Bingaman and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
These initiatives would have held BP accountable, created jobs, protected the environment, cleaned the air, and strengthened energy security.
However, Murkowski, Hatch, and Graham joined their Republican colleagues — as well as the oil-fueled Democrats Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Mark Begich (D-AK) — in opposing Reid’s bill because it lifted the $75 million liability cap for oil companies like BP responsible for a major oil spill.
“It should be an affront to those who are serious about enacting good policy,” bloviated Murkowski, who had singlehandedly blocked a vote on lifting the liability cap in May. “Unlimited liability pretty much puts the big nail in the coffin,” said Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon.
The Republican counter-proposal would have replaced the liability cap with a complicated formula that essentially kept the cap unchanged, keeping the American taxpayer on the hook for any future big oil bailouts.
"We tried jujitsu, we tried yoga, we tried everything we can with Republicans to come along with us and be reasonable ...we could not get anyone to come along with us," Reid told reporters.
McConnell Falsely Claims That The Expiring Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich Affect Half Of Small Business Income
McConnell Falsely Claims That The Expiring Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich Affect Half Of Small Business Income
In order to justify their blanket opposition to allowing the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans to expire on schedule — as President Obama has proposed — Republicans have been trying to claim that they’re looking out for the interests of small business. “To those who are pushing the higher marginal rates, I say the burden is on you to show that you are not harming our primary job creators, small business,” charged Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
Of course, less than two percent of the small businesses in the country make enough money to file in either of the top two tax brackets, which are the ones in question here, so Republicans have had to find ever more creative statistics to try and prove their small business bona fides. Today, during an interview with Bloomberg News, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claimed that allowing these tax rates to reset to where they were under President Clinton would affect fifty percent of small business income in the country:
What they propose to do is raise taxes on the top two rates, which would capture about fifty percent of small business income and affect about 25 percent of the American workforce in the middle of a recession. We think it’s a terrible idea.
Watch it:
Now, McConnell doesn’t have the tightest grasp on economic statistics. After all, he said that there’s “no evidence whatsoever” that the Bush tax cuts decreased revenue when there is, in fact, an abundance of evidence showing just that. But still, McConnell either doesn’t understand the data he’s looking at or is willfully distorting it.
This claim, which has also been made by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), comes from a Joint Committee on Taxation report which states that 50 percent of business income is in the top two tax brackets. But the report in no way shows that this is from small businesses. In fact, it explicitly states “these figures for net positive business income do not imply that all of the income is from entities that might be considered ’small.’”
That same report actually says that just three percent of people with any business income at all — from a business large or small — will be affected if the top two tax rates increase. That means that 97 percent of people who collect at least some of their income from a business will not see their taxes go up under the President’s plan.
Dylan Matthews dissected the IRS filings of small businesses and found that “the filers reporting small business income who would be affected by letting the tax cuts expire come disproportionately from the ranks of the super-rich.” In fact, the Tax Policy Center has found that the Bush tax cuts actually harmed small business, because they made the tax code friendlier to large corporations and increased the cost of capital (by generating huge deficits). So what cherry-picked stat will Republicans rely on next to try and hide their plan to spend $830 billion on a tax break for the super rich?
START Vote Delayed By McConnell’s Obstructionism And Kyl’s Nuclear Pork
START Vote Delayed By McConnell’s Obstructionism And Kyl’s Nuclear Pork
Remember last year when Republicans were aghast at all the sidedeals on health care? Remember when Republicans railed against pork barrel spending and argued for a laser like focus on deficits? Well hypocrisy knows no bounds. The sunbelt shakedown is now in full effect.
Senator Kerry just announced today that he would delay the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote on the New START Treaty. The delay is not because the treaty wouldn’t pass out of committee, it is because the White House and Kerry are close to getting more Republicans – Senators Corker and Isakson are basically supportive of the treaty, but were allegedly upset about having a vote as they claimed to have a few outstanding questions that they wanted answered from the Administration before voting. The timeline for the committee was always tight, so a delay is not a real surprise.
But the delay in the vote has really nothing to do with process or rushing. Mitch McConnell yesterday made it abundantly clear what the hold up is about – the GOP (and more specifically Senator Jon Kyl) hasn’t been bought off yet. Corker himself noted last week, he supports the treaty but is following Kyl’s lead and holding out for more pork. McConnell told Reuters in a shocking degree of candor:
The only way this treaty gets in trouble is if it’s rushed… My advice to the president was, don’t try to jam it, answer all the requests, and let’s take our time and do it right.
And by doing “it right,” McConnell explicitly says buy off Kyl with nuclear pork:
All they have to do is find enough money to satisfy Senator Kyl that they are prepared to do what they said they would do… If it’s important to you, you can find a way, in an over a trillion dollar discretionary budget to fund it. In my view they need to do that, because without that I think the chances of ratification are pretty slim.
What does McConnell’s statement tell us:
First, there are no more substantive objections to the treaty. Mitt Romney and Heritage failed to convince GOP Senators that the treaty could be opposed on substantive grounds. Save for Senators DeMint and Inhofe, almost no GOP Senators are opposing the treaty on the merits. McConnell just threatened to cause the treaty “trouble” for no substantive reason. This is no longer a debate about the treaty.
Second, the GOP cares more about the politics of process than about US national security. When Anthony Wiener went ballistic on the floor of the House because House Republicans refused to vote for health care funding for 9-11 workers, it exposed the do nothing obstructionist bent of the GOP even when it comes to 9-11. Similarly, the one thing you would hope the GOP wouldn’t mess with is nuclear stability. Yet without the New START treaty in place the US military is rapidly losing its knowledge of and intelligence about the Russian nuclear arsenal because since the original START treaty expired last December the US no longer has boots on the ground monitoring what Russia is doing with its nuclear weapons. When weapons are on hair trigger alert and in 30 minutes entire cities could be destroyed the last thing you want is to have decreased knowledge and confidence. This is why our military is adamant about the treaty.
With all the complaints about “rushing” the Foreign Relations committee has done little else but talk about START in the last few months, as it has held nearly 20 hearings. The treaty has been so thoroughly covered that nothing new is being said about the treaty. Yet to gum up the process, it seems GOP Senators belatedly submitted questions to the Administration that they could not be expected to deliver in time. These delaying tactics will likely only continue further in September.
Third, it is all about nuclear pork. McConnell’s statement clearly indicates that support for START is all about whether Kyl is satisfied with nuclear modernization funding. Yet even neocon hawk Bob Kagan said that tying START to nuclear modernization funding was ridiculous: “The issue has nothing to do with New START’s intrinsic strengths or weaknesses.” Furthermore, the Administration has already pushed through a massive 15% increase. Yet Kyl and his colleagues are demanding more. Corker’s chief interest, for instance, is the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, TN, which Corker seemingly arbitrarily determined needs between $4-$5 billion, well above the projected $1.4-$3.5 billion that the facility’s own contractor projects. He concedes, however, that “certainly, there’s no official estimate” but nevertheless said “it’s very likely” he would support the treaty if he got the funding.
Fourth, it’s a massive slap in the face of Richard Lugar and shows the far-right direction the Senate GOP has taken. McConnell’s interview basically says if Kyl is given what he wants than everyone will fall into line. But there is no mention of Richard Lugar who is a strong supporter of the treaty. This demonstrates where the ideological direction the GOP is headed. McConnell neglects (and seemingly rejects) his party’s foremost authority on nuclear weapons issues in the Senate, in favor of the far right approach of Kyl who advocates building and explosively testing new nuclear weapons. It also shows how impotent Lugar is in influencing his colleagues.
Pentagon Tries To Address DADT Survey Privacy Concerns With ‘Certificate of Confidentiality’
Pentagon Tries To Address DADT Survey Privacy Concerns With ‘Certificate of Confidentiality’
After a copy of the Pentagon’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell survey leaked, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) warned gay and lesbian soldiers against participating, citing privacy concerns. “At this time SLDN cannot recommend that lesbian, gay, or bisexual service members participate in any survey being administered by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon Working Group, or any third-party contractors,” the group said. “While the surveys are apparently designed to protect the individual’s privacy, there is no guarantee of privacy and DOD has not agreed to provide immunity to service members whose privacy may be inadvertently violated or who inadvertently outs himself or herself.” Late last month, privacy concerns were only heightened after AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis was able to access the “DADT Confidential Dialogue,” a portion of the Pentagon’s DADT study that’s part of but separate from the survey.
But now, seeking to reassure and encourage gay and lesbian soldiers to participate in the questionnaire, the Department of Defense is publicizing the fact that Westat — the private company hired to administer the survey — has obtained a Certificate of Confidentiality from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). From the Privacy Statement:
CERTIFICATE OF CONFIDENTIALITY: We will do everything we can to keep others from learning about your participation in this study. To further help us protect your privacy, we have obtained a Certificate of Confidentiality from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). With this certificate, we cannot be forced (for example by court order or subpoena) to disclose information that may identify you in any federal, state, local, civil, criminal, legislative, administrative, or other proceeding.
A Certificate of Confidentiality does not prevent you from voluntarily releasing information about yourself or your involvement in this survey. Westat, however, will not disclose information to anyone that would identify you as a participant in this study unless you provide consent for us to release that information. If you provide consent for someone to receive your research information, Westat may not use the Certificate of Confidentiality to withhold this information. Also, if we were to find out that you are planning to harm yourself or someone else, we would need to report the threat to the authorities.
The certificate, which the Pentagon says it asked for months ago and only now received, would also apply retroactively to to anyone who has already taken the survey. Individuals would be protected permanently from forced disclosure.
Top Texas Donors Push For Immigration Reform While Funding Anti-Immigrant GOP
Top Texas Donors Push For Immigration Reform While Funding Anti-Immigrant GOP
Yesterday, the Bay Area Houston blog noted that top Texas donors of the GOP appear to have an immigration stance that runs directly counter to the one held by the Republican Party. Nonetheless, they continue pouring thousands upon thousands of dollars into funding candidates who fight for nativist immigration policies that run counter to their business interests. The Dallas Morning News recently ran an op-ed jointly authored by over 30 Texas businessmen making the case for why “Americans must face up to the reality of the foreign workers we need to keep the economy growing”:
We own and run a variety of businesses: agriculture, food processing, hospitality, construction, banking and more, mostly but not exclusively in Texas. And we know, if not firsthand, certainly at close reach, just how much the economy depends on immigrant labor. [...]
As chairmen, CEOs and stockholders, we call on Congress to act – to go back to Washington and pass realistic immigration reform that provides the workers we need to keep our businesses growing. [...] Neither the immigrants here today nor those we will need in the future should have to live in the shadows. These are good people with good values doing work that we need done, reaching for the American Dream and helping make it a reality for all. As we value the work, let us value the worker – and let’s fix the law so that it serves all Americans.
However, despite calling on Congress to “pass realistic immigration reform,” many of those wealthy Texas businessmen have donated thousands of dollars to a party that hasn’t only blocked any chance of comprehensive immigration reform, it’s also actively working to pass anti-immigrant, restrictionist policies that will make it even harder for them to do business. In all fairness, many of the businessmen donated funds to pro-immigrant Democrats as well — however those donations paled in comparison. Instead, many of them helped get several Republican candidates get elected and continue supporting the GOP throughout 2010, despite it’s swing to the far right on immigration.
Bob Perry of Perry Homes tops the list with $134,600 in the year 2010 alone. Over $65,000 of Perry’s money went directly to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which presumably provides strategic support to Republican senators who have done nothing but stall and obstruct Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) efforts to propose and enact comprehensive immigration reform. An additional thousand dollars went to Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) campaign, despite the fact that he recently tried to block federal funding of the Justice Department’s lawsuit against SB-1070 and “led the assault” on immigration reform in 2007.
Similarly, Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, founder of the Red McCombs Automotive Group and co-founder of Clear Channel Communications has donated a total of $10,000 to the NRSC. However, McCombs most shocking contribution was to immigration zealot Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). Woody Hunt of Hunt Construction has donated $60,800 to the NRSC this year as of April 2010. Hunt also donated almost $10,000 to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) who recently accused President Obama of “pandering to Hispanics” by “pretending” he’s going to do something about immigration. Bob Barnes, chief executive of Schlotzsky’s restaurant chain, donated $15,000 to the NRSC in March 2010 and an additional $15,000 to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who has firmly refused to work with Democrats on immigration reform.
Ultimately, it’s probably safe to say that these Texas businessmen represent just a small cross section of a business executives who advocate for and profit from sensible immigration policies while simultaneously funding a party with an immigration platform based in xenophobic pandering and nativist fear-mongering. While the Republican Party certainly defends other corporate interests, it seems that if corporate America really prioritizes immigration reform — one of the hot button issues of this election season — it would start putting its money where its mouth is. As long as the money rolls in and the cheap political points are scored, lawmakers will continue to deny businesses and the American people of the immigration reform the country needs.
‘Fecklessness’ Is A Two-Way Street
‘Fecklessness’ Is A Two-Way Street
The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens takes a break from promoting war with Iran to argue that the U.S. must, for the sake of our reputation, stay in Afghanistan. Reprimanding his fellow conservatives who are growing frustrated with the effort there, Stephens warns “The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation that can be stampeded into surrender by a domestic caucus of defeatists.”
Allies or would-be allies will make their own calculations and hedge their bets. Why should we be surprised that this is precisely what Pakistan has done vis-a-vis the Taliban? It’s not as if the U.S. hasn’t abandoned that corner of the world before to its furies.
How a feckless America is perceived by its friends is equally material to how we are perceived by our enemies. In his 1996 fatwa declaring war on the U.S., Osama bin Laden took note of American withdrawals from Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu a decade later. “When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets… you withdrew, the extent of your impotence and weakness became very clear.” Is it the new conservative wisdom to prove bin Laden’s point (one that the hard men in Tehran undoubtedly share), only on a vastly greater scale?
I’ve always found it interesting how, for pro-war types like Stephens, these sorts of “reputation” arguments always only go one way: Toward more war. The only way we can show enemies and allies what we’re made of is to continue fighting, continue expending vast resources, even as the strategy is failing, even as our own economy is in crisis. It just never seems to occur to them that ensnaring the U.S. in hugely expensive, open-ended military interventions could also be a goal of our enemies, or that persisting in an intervention that has begun to prove counterproductive is itself a form of fecklessness.
It’s true that in his 1996 fatwa, Osama bin Laden mocked the U.S. for withdrawing from Somalia. But more recently, in November 2004, he also mocked the U.S. for how easy it was for Al Qaeda “to provoke and bait” the U.S. into military action:
BIN LADEN: All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa’ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies. [...]
So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. [...]
And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the Mujahedin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan with Allah’s permission… And it all shows that the real loser is you. It’s the American people and their economy.
So which of bin Laden’s points should we not be trying to prove?
REPORT: ‘Yes On 8′ Successfully Deployed Save The Children Argument To Pass Prop 8
REPORT: ‘Yes On 8′ Successfully Deployed Save The Children Argument To Pass Prop 8
The LGBT Mentoring Project has released a report debunking some of the conventional wisdom surrounding the Prop 8 campaign in California. For instance, after the election, “a misleading finding from exit polls led many to blame African Americans for the loss. But in our new analysis, it appears that African Americans’ views were relatively stable.” A majority of African Americans opposed marriage at the beginning and the end of the Prop 8 campaign and “[t]he shift, it turns out, was greatest among parents with children under 18 living at home — many of them white Democrats”:
The numbers are staggering. In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.
Indeed, the report argues that “the most effective decision made by either campaign—the one with the biggest impact on the outcome—was Yes on 8’s decision to appeal to anti-gay prejudice by dishonestly alleging danger to kids.” Consider this ad:
Interestingly, the argument is so effective because it’s so familiar. Societies have long used children to deny rights to minority groups. Medieval anti-Semitism portrayed Jews as animals bent on destroying the children of the majority and accused them of murdering Christian babies in ritual sacrifices. In the late 1970s anti-gay crusader Antia Bryant organized a “Save Our Children” against a nondiscrimination ordinance in Florida, warning that “a particularly deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children.”
It’s always been about the children and history suggests that as gay people become more prominent in society and this argument loses currency, it will be transfered to a different minority group.
The CMS Double Counting Controversy Misses The Point
The CMS Double Counting Controversy Misses The Point
Yesterday, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a report arguing that under health care reform, “Medicare will save about $8 billion by the end of next year, and $575 billion over the rest of the decade.” The report also found that “[i]mplementing these changes extends the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by 12 years from 2017 to 2029, more than doubling the time before the exhaustion of the Trust Fund.”
Conservatives shot back with an argument perfected by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) during the health care reform debate: the administration double counted savings from the Medicare program by appropriating the same funds to the trust fund and to offset the costs of coverage expansion. During a conference call releasing the study, The American Spectator’s Phil Klein pressed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on this point and you can read his post on the matter here.
The long and short of it: the administration says that it estimates the effects of the law on the entire federal budget over a 10 year period. Under that scenario, the law increases the cash flow into the Medicare Trust Fund, but since that fund is part of the larger federal budget, some of the funds could be used on other legislative priorities. Klein quotes Jonathan Blum, the director of the Center for Medicare Management for CMS, as saying, “I think it’s been a historical, and longstanding budget convention that when you have less dollars paid to the Medicare program to pay for benefits, there are dollars that accrue to the overall federal treasury, that can be spent for other purposes. And this is an OMB, CBO budget convention.”
Conservatives are arguing that under a different accounting standard — i.e. trust fund account rules — which look at changes over a much longer period of time, the law would not extend the life of the trust fund because it would spend those trust fund dollars on other programs. Klein points to CMS actuary Richard Foster’s previous reports on the health care reform bills as evidence that the CMS itself has predicted much lower savings.
But what’s lost in the debate over which accounting rules to use is the CBO’s and Foster’s habit of underscoring savings from delivery reform. Throughout the health care debate, the CBO and CMS have consistently refused to score savings from payment and delivery reforms, even though they produced savings in the past. For instance, during the 1980s, the government grossly under-estimated the savings from the DRG prospective payment system and then again from the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Foster’s reports (which Klein cites) omitted “any Federal savings pertaining to the excise tax on high-cost employer-sponsored health insurance coverage, the fees on insurance plans, the excise tax on devices, and other non-Medicare revenue provisions of the PPACA” including system modernization. Conversely, the $575 billion in savings in this report include “quality of care improvements such as reducing the number of hospital readmissions and hospital-acquired conditions; delivery system reforms such as promoting accountable care organizations; pricing reforms such as ending overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans and improving productivity adjustments and market-basket adjustments to provider payments; and a range of provisions to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.”
One could argue that this report presents a more accurate picture of the possible savings from reform, if it’s properly implemented.
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