Stretched Budgets Encouraging States To Hasten Health Implementation
Stretched Budgets Encouraging States To Hasten Health Implementation
California has “passed two bills that provide the mechanisms and functions of the exchange” and separate legislation to boost adverse-event reporting among hospitals, leading the way in implementation of reform. The advances come in the midst of growing budget shortfalls and increasing number of uninsured, both of which are taxing the state’s health safety net programs.
A new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research finds “8.4 million Californians were uninsured in 2009 — up from 6.4 million in 2007, a 31% surge in just two years.” “The sharp increase was driven by widespread job loss, as areas that reported higher unemployment figures corresponded to areas with the highest rate of uninsured residents.” A higher number of uninsured means that state funds will have to be stretched further, to cover more people. As California HealthLine points out:
However, state budget issues continue to raise red flags for health care stakeholders. The budget, which is now about two months late, currently threatens cuts to health and human services, which critics say would hamper access to Medi-Cal, reduce home health services and make other changes. The budget delay also means that community clinics are now going without Medi-Cal reimbursements, which represents 50% to 80% of their revenue, and could force clinics to scale back their hours and service.
But what’s interesting is that this ongoing economic crisis in the states may be motivating state governments to implement health care reform more quickly, apply for all of the available federal grants and pressure even reluctant politicians to comply with the law’s requirements. For instance, I’ve noted that at least 19 of the 22 states that are suing the federal government over health care reform are also applying for the law’s recently released rate review grants and some — like Utah — are actively working with HHS to ensure that the law meets their needs.
Shana Alex Lavarreda, Director of Health Insurance Studies at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research tells me that California, which is currently setting up its high risk insurance pool program, is rushing to implement reform precisely because it would lessen the stress on state safety net programs. “It’s funny, politically they were talking about, the change was happening too quickly, we need to slow it down, we need to put it off, now that it’s actually passed, I’m hearing many more complains along the lines of, why isn’t this here yet, why isn’t it fully implemented, why aren’t we getting our subsidies now?” she observed.
Lavarreda said that from the federal prospective, an increase in the uninsured would result in higher costs, but argued that “from the state budget prospective, that’s actually a really good thing.” “More people might be going into the exchange, including the people that would otherwise be eligible for Healthy Families [the CHIP program]. If the adults are going into the exchange, they might not want their kids to be on Healthy Families — the CHIP program here in the state — and they might pull out their kids from that program, which would actually reduce state expenditures. It’s possible that the exchanges would pull people out of the public programs if they prefer to be in the private programs, receiving subsidies from the federal government instead.”
Some lawmakers have argued that implementation itself might stress the state budget, but for now, it’s still too early to tell if states will need more funding. “For us, [the economic downturn] has pushed it to the forefront of our current legislature’s agenda,” Lavarreda stressed. “The problem is not getting better, it’s getting worse right now and we’re going to be incredibly active in getting as much federal funding as possible given our budget situation right now.”
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Is Immigration Reform The Logic Behind Lindsey Graham’s 14th Amendment Madness?
Is Immigration Reform The Logic Behind Lindsey Graham’s 14th Amendment Madness?
Immigration advocates and anti-immigrant zealots alike have been scratching their heads ever since Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went from working with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on crafting an immigration reform bill to walking away from negotiations and suggesting that the 14th amendment should be amended to deny the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants from automatically becoming citizens upon birth. In an interview with Politico on who might be the “Republican standard-bearer for immigration reform” after the fall elections, GOP political consultant Ana Navarro suggests that there could be a method to Graham’s 14th amendment madness:
While many believe McCain is a lost cause on reform, GOP strategist Ana Navarro hasn’t written off one of the senator’s closest allies, Graham, who rolled out a reform proposal with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in March that included a path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. [...]
“There is a logic to his madness,” said Navarro, who fled Nicaragua at age 8 during the Sandinista revolution. “What he was trying to do is put something in the pot, to sweeten the pot so he could attract some of the right wing to reach a compromise on comprehensive immigration reform.”
Meanwhile, Graham’s spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied Navarro’s speculations:
Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said border security remains the senator’s No. 1 concern but that other issues — including employment verification, a guest worker program, birthright citizenship and a plan to deal with the illegal immigrants already in the country — also need to be looked at.
If Navarro is right, it would make the task of achieving effective and humane immigration reform that both sides can agree on pretty difficult. While immigration reform that includes a path to legalization together with an updated visa system would go a long way in eliminating most undocumented immigration, it’s hard to say whether the phenomena would disappear altogether. If not, changing the 14th amendment would cause a manageable problem to grow larger and larger in size every time an undocumented mother gives birth in the U.S.
It’s unclear that “sweetening the pot” by changing the Constitution would be enough to bring right-wingers to the table without causing pro-immigrant lawmakers to walk away from it. It didn’t work very well last time. In 2007 lawmakers crafted a bipartisan piece of legislation that was the last immigration reform bill that made it to the Senate floor. Though the legislation included a legalization program, it also contained a provision that replaced the green card system with a problematic “point system” that ignored labor needs and would’ve essentially changed the demographics of future immigration by prioritizing high-skilled immigrants over lower-skilled ones. Labor unions abandoned the bill when a temporary worker program was added without any path to permanent residence. At the time, The Council on Foreign Relations wrote, “the current bill will address the presence of millions of undocumented workers — no small feat. Yet without consideration of these underlying structural issues, the fundamental goals of immigration reform will remain elusive.” The bill didn’t make it past cloture.
It’s far too early to speculate as to what Graham would want in his immigration bill or if he’s even willing to work on one again. However, if his current 14th amendment politics are any indication, the compromise reached in 2007 would pale in comparison to what Graham has in mind now.
Fox News Ignores Ken Mehlman’s Coming Out, Runs Zero Segments On Story
Fox News Ignores Ken Mehlman’s Coming Out, Runs Zero Segments On Story
When Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Proposition 8, Fox News barely mentioned the story and its most prominent conservative commentators ignored it entirely. Yesterday, after the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported that former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bating 2004 re-election campaign — was coming out as gay, Fox News Channel remained similarly mum and as of this posting has yet to run a single segment on the story.
A Wonk Room review of Critical Mention reveals that CNN mentioned the name “Mehlman” 19 times, MSNBC reported on it 12 times (searches for “gay” and “Ken” produced similar results, with Fox News stuck at 0):
It’s unclear why Fox News ignored the story, since some Republicans have embraced Mehlman’s coming out. Current Republican Party chairman, Michael Steele, for instance, issued a supportive statement: “His announcement, often a very difficult decision which is only compounded when done on the public stage, reaffirms for me why we are friends and why I respect him personally and professionally.” Mehlman has also said that President Bush has been “incredibly supportive” of his coming out.
Ignoring stories which undermine conservative causes, however, is the norm at Fox. Earlier this month, Fox News refused to run a single segment on Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s racially-charged rant, after which she resigned from talk radio.
Half Of The Spending Cuts In Blunt’s Jobs Plan Aren’t Actually Spending Cuts
Half Of The Spending Cuts In Blunt’s Jobs Plan Aren’t Actually Spending Cuts
Last week, I pointed out that the “jobs plan” proposed by Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who is running for his state’s open Senate seat, includes a provision permanently guaranteeing taxpayer giveaways to the real estate industry, which calls into question Blunt’s commitment to deficit reduction. But that’s not the only part of his plan that proves Blunt is fundamentally disinterested in addressing government spending.
Blunt included in the plan what he has claimed is $2 trillion in spending cuts, which would presumably be used to either reduce the deficit or to fund some of the massive tax cuts that he’s embraced. “In this plan, Roy identified over two trillion dollars in cuts right off the bat that can be taken out of government,” said former Missouri treasurer Sarah Steelman, who has endorsed Blunt’s campaign.
But in what he charitably calls an “accounting error,” the Kansas City Star’s Dave Helling notes that fully one half of Blunt’s spending cuts aren’t actually spending cuts at all:
A look at that plan shows half of those savings — $1 trillion — would come from Blunt’s proposal to repeal the health care reform package…Repealing health care reform would eliminate $1 trillion in spending, but it would also eliminate the $1 trillion in tax and fee increases and Medicare reductions that are in the law as well. The net effect of health care repeal on the federal deficit is, roughly, zero.
Actually, contrary to Helling’s assertion, repealing the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t have zero effect on the deficit: it would actively increase it. According to the Congressional Budget Office, repealing the bill would increase the deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years.
But the point remains that the only way Blunt’s push for repeal works as a deficit reduction measure is if he plans to keep all of the tax increases and Medicare savings, without actually giving anyone any additional health care.
Plenty of other spending cuts that Blunt suggests are equally ill-informed. He proposes repealing the remaining stimulus funds, including those dedicated to middle class tax cuts. He also says he’d cut an unidentified “wasteful welfare program,” which is presumably the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund that House Republicans like to cite all the time. But it’s actually a successful work program that is supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, including 4,600 in Blunt’s own state.
Of course, Blunt is far from the only one who thinks that repealing the Affordable Care Act is a legitimate deficit reduction strategy. For instance, New Hampshire’s Republican Senate candidate, Kelly Ayotte, has made it the centerpiece of her deficit reduction plan.
DOJ Asks SCOTUS To Vacate Environmental Victory Against Greenhouse Gas Emitters
DOJ Asks SCOTUS To Vacate Environmental Victory Against Greenhouse Gas Emitters
Yesterday, the Solicitor General’s office filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to vacate a victory against several polluters, including a federally-owned corporation:
The Department of Justice brief, filed with the Supreme Court this week, says the Environmental Protection Agency is already on the job, and doesn’t need help from private plaintiffs.
“EPA has already begun taking actions to address carbon-dioxide emissions,” a brief filed by Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal says. “That regulatory approach is preferable to what would result if multiple district courts — acting without the benefit of even the most basic statutory guidance — could use common-law nuisance claims to sit as arbiters of scientific and technology-related disputes and de facto regulators of power plants and other sources of pollution.”
The administration’s brief was filed in connection with litigation pitting the state of Connecticut and seven other states as well as New York City against a group of large coal-burning utilities. The suit contends the utilities are creating a “public nuisance’” through their greenhouse-gas emissions and seeks to force them to cut their emissions. The utilities, including American Electric Power Corp., countered that the issue was a political, not a judicial, matter and that the states didn’t have a right to sue, among other arguments.
Unsurprisingly, environmentalists are outraged by DOJ’s brief, and their outrage in many ways harkens back to the controversy over a previous brief defending the egregious Defense of Marriage Act.
Generally speaking, DOJ has a duty to defend lawsuits filed against the federal government, and several environmental attorneys that I spoke with agreed that DOJ should not be faulted for filing a brief defending against a lawsuit where a federal entity is a defendant. As was the case with DOMA, however, DOJ should not be required to make dangerous or offensive arguments, and DOJ’s brief in the environmental litigation advances an argument that could seriously undermine environmental protection the next time a conservative president is elected.
Ever since a 1907 Supreme Court decision required Tennessee copper companies to reduce emissions that were damaging Georgia farmers’ crops, states have been empowered to sue harmful emitters under a legal theory known as “nuisance.” So the case against greenhouse gas emitters should be a slam dunk, since unchecked greenhouse emissions will cause devastating harm throughout the world.
DOJ, however, makes two claims why nuisance law should not apply here. Their less troubling argument is that, because EPA has started to regulate greenhouse emissions after President Obama took office, these EPA regulations “displace” federal nuisance law. Under this line of reasoning, if a future administration were to lift Obama-era regulations protecting against climate change, federal nuisance law would remain as a backstop to prevent emitters from being completely unchecked.
DOJ’s second argument creates a much bigger problem. Under this argument, the states lack “standing” to assert a federal nuisance claim altogether. Should this reasoning be adopted by the courts, federal nuisance law would no longer provide a backstop against emissions, and it would no longer serve as a deterrent to prevent conservatives from gutting environmental regulations.
One additional wrinkle presented by this case is the possibility it could be heard by a panel of justices who have largely pushed a knee-jerk pro-corporate agenda. Justice Sotomayor heard oral arguments in this case while she sat on the Second Circuit, although she was promoted to the Supreme Court before the final decision came down, so she is likely to recuse from further involvement in the case. Additionally, if Justice Kagan had any involvement with the case while she was Solicitor General she would recuse as well. In other words, the future of environmental law could rest in the hands of the Court’s four most conservative members: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.
Perhaps this is why DOJ offered the standing argument to the Court–as a way to prevent an ideological four-justice majority from doing something even more damaging while they have a chance. Even so, this standing argument has troubling implications for the future if it is ever adopted by the courts.
In Covering Ken Mehlman Story, MSNBC Anchor Acknowledges He Is Gay
In Covering Ken Mehlman Story, MSNBC Anchor Acknowledges He Is Gay
Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman’s coming out provided the media with an opportunity to review the GOP’s record on gay rights and explore the Mehlman’s role in crafting President Bush’s 2004 re-election strategy. On MSNBC, Mehlman’s revelation engendered an even more honest discussion when, during a segment with GOProud chairman Christopher Barron, daytime anchor Thomas Roberts — who is an openly gay anchor — discussed his orientation on air:
BARRON: We know that opinion poll after opinion poll shows that the single most important factor in determining how someone feels about gay rights or about gay issues is whether or not they know someone who is gay or lesbian….
ROBERTS: I think for probably most heterosexual Americans this isn’t going to come as a big deal, but I think for millions of gay and lesbian Americans — me included — find this to be kind of a shocking admission, especially when Mehlman’s leadership, in the positions that he held, came at a time when he was part of talks that would have put discrimination into the Constitution. When they were ramping up anti gay rhetoric and now he wants to come out say, ‘hey I’m one of you.’ So how does he go about trying to get millions of gay and lesbian Americans to believe that he is not just a big hypocrite.
Watch it:
Indeed, despite Bush and Mehlman’s effort to “put discrimination into the Constitution,” support for gay rights is increasing across the country. As recently as 2004, “same-sex marriage did not have majority support in any state.” Today, according to researchers at Columbia University, “17 states are over that line.” Similarly, CBS News poll found that 77% of Americans now say they know someone who is gay or lesbian,” an increase of 35 percentage points since 1992.
Reject All ‘Stab in the Back’ Arguments
Reject All ‘Stab in the Back’ Arguments
On Sunday, Frank Rich posted a column on the Park 51 controversy in which he argued “The prime movers in the campaign against the ground zero mosque’ just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan”:
The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.
So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?
While I think Rich is correct to note the bigotry and cynicism that underlies the most virulent opposition to Park 51, and the cowardice that underlies most of the rest of it, I think we should be careful not suggest that, by engaging in free speech, however ugly and false that speech may be, critics of Park 51 are undermining the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan, or national security more broadly.
We saw similar arguments leveled against critics of the Iraq war — first that, by questioning the case for war, they were “objectively pro-Saddam,” and later that, by continuing to criticize the war as it went worse and worse, they were emboldening insurgents.
But the idea that success or failure in Afghanistan will be determined by whatever stupid things Newt Gingrich or Glenn Beck say about Muslims is just daft, just as was the idea that those who criticized the Iraq war bear responsibility for the Bush administration’s disastrous incompetence.
None of this is to say that the controversy over Park 51 has no bearing on U.S. national security, I think it clearly does. Just as apartheid in the American South provided our Cold War adversaries with fodder for their anti-American propaganda, so it’s becoming clear that the anti-Muslim hysteria emanating from the anti-Park 51 protests is, as the New York Times reported, “playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.”
Does the Park 51 controversy make achieving the U.S.’s goals vis a vis the “Muslim world” more difficult? It may. The appropriate response to this, however, is not to attempt to chill speech by claiming it helps our enemies, but to engage in the debate more vigorously and honestly in order to ensure that American values of tolerance and religious freedom aren’t cast aside, either as a sop to bigotry or to political expediency, and let that be the rejoinder to our enemies’ propaganda.
How Immigration Reform Could’ve Helped Prevent The ‘Massacre’ Of 72 Migrants
How Immigration Reform Could’ve Helped Prevent The ‘Massacre’ Of 72 Migrants
Over the past year, amidst the heated immigration debate, immigration hawks have pointed to the violence taking place on the Mexican side of the border to argue that the U.S. isn’t ready for comprehensive immigration reform and should instead pursue a single-minded focus on border security. It’s probably only a matter of time before anti-immigrant lawmakers start pointing at the recent “massacre” of 72 Central and South American suspected migrants who were brutally tortured and killed by human smugglers in Mexico on their way to the U.S. as yet another reason to pour billions of dollars into immigration enforcement.
However, it’s actually the absence of immigration reform that contributed to their deaths and has helped propel the violence on the other side of the border. Just as the “insatiable demand” for illicit drugs in the U.S. fuels the bloody drug war in Latin America, heavy demand for and a steady supply of immigrant workers together with an outdated visa system that shuts most migrants out of the U.S. has fueled the profitable and violent human smuggling business.
Despite the poor state of the economy, the Global Consortium on Security Transformation wrote in May 2010 that “[t]he U.S. labor market has seen chronic shortages in some sectors for decades. As a result, “[i]t is no secret that much of the U.S. food processing and agricultural industries depend heavily on foreign-born (often illegal) workers for harvesting fruits and vegetables.” An aging population, low fertility rates, and rising education attainments and employment aspirations are amongst the factors that the study cites as contributing to the labor shortage in those sectors.
Meanwhile, few economic opportunities across Latin America creates an ample supply of workers who are more than willing to fill many of those jobs. However, irrespective of “good” or “bad” economic conditions, they can’t. The decades-old U.S. visa system that allows immigrants to enter and work in the country legally consists of static quotas that don’t respond to economic fluctuations.
Meanwhile, a focus on border security has made it increasingly difficult for migrants to enter the U.S. illegally. Yet it hasn’t stopped them from coming. Instead, it has increased the profitability of the human smuggling business and strengthened its ties with organized crime. In 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “[a]s U.S. border security has tightened, Mexican drug cartels have moved in on coyotes…the traffickers now use their expertise in gathering intelligence on border patrols, logistics and communication devices to get around ever tighter controls.”
Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez, chair of the department of transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o studies at Arizona State University, explains, “[n]ow, because of the so-called security needs of the border, what’s been created is this structure of smuggling in the hands of really nasty people who only treat the migrant as a commodity.” Along the way, migrants face rape, theft, physical and emotional abuse, and even kidnapping, torture, and death. Their own smugglers view them as exploitable cargo. If they make it to the U.S., they are cheap labor or trespassing “criminals,” depending on who you ask. Migrants like the 72 who were brutally killed in Mexico risk everything to attain the American Dream, but, somewhere along the line the humanity of their journey is lost.
Watch Amnesty International’s video on the risks migrants to the U.S. face:
Some well-meaning, free market thinkers would argue that an open border that allows for the free flow of labor is the answer. However, besides running the risk of being an economic and national security nightmare, it’s also politically impossible. Fixing the broken immigration system by creating a flexible number of opportunities for economic migrants to work in the U.S. without sacrificing border security is a much more practical and realistic solution. Replacing old visa quotas with a system that responds to economic supply and demand would devastate the lucrative human smuggling business by allowing more economic migrants to enter the U.S. legally, rather than paying someone to smuggle them through. It might even significantly dent the illegal drug trade by freeing up resources that are currently being indiscriminately used to pursue non-violent economic migrants and dangerous drug cartel operatives alike. In the meantime, more border security means more human smuggling profits, more violence, more exploitation, and more migrant deaths on both sides of the border.
Former Gov. Pataki Absurdly Claims That Heath Care Reform Is ‘One Of The Reasons We Have This Deficit’
Former Gov. Pataki Absurdly Claims That Heath Care Reform Is ‘One Of The Reasons We Have This Deficit’
Republicans have been trying very hard to blame President Obama for the nation’s deficit (which he largely inherited from his predecessor), but former Gov. George Pataki (R-NY) today may have gone to the most absurd lengths yet. On MSNBC, Pataki said that the health care reform bill that became law this year is “one of the reasons we have this deficit”:
You just said that Boehner indicated Obamacare as one of the reasons we have this deficit, one of the reasons we have failed to create private sector jobs and he’s absolutely right.
Watch it:
Pataki made no attempt to explain how a law that was passed this year and has yet to be implemented could have possibly caused this year’s deficit. Here’s a handy chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explaining where the deficit actually comes from:
See health care on there anywhere? No. The deficit was caused by the economic downturn (and the drop in tax revenue that came along with it), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Bush-era tax cuts that turned a record surplus into a deficit.
The Affordable Care Act not only adds nothing to the deficit this year, but is entirely deficit neutral. As Igor Volsky pointed out earlier, the Congressional Budget Office released a letter this week stating that the Affordable Care Act “will produce $143 billion in net budgetary savings over the 2010-2019 period.” Repealing the parts of the law that Republicans love to gripe about would cause an increase in deficits of $455 billion. Let’s repeat: repealing health care reform would increase, not decrease, the deficit.
Throughout the health care reform debate, Obama was very clear that he wasn’t interested in a bill that added to the deficit, and Democrats went to great lengths — having the CBO score and then re-score the legislation over and over — until they were certain that it had no deficit impact. In fact, it had to be deficit neutral to pass via reconciliation. Pataki’s claim is simply absurd and has no basis in reality (which hasn’t stopped other Republicans from making it as well).
Of course, Pataki seems to believe that Americans don’t actually deserve to hear policy details at all, at least from any Republicans. “Do the Republicans need to be more specific? Do the American people need to hear the ABC’s, how and then why [the Republican agenda] will work?” MSNBC’s Chris Jansing asked him. “No, I don’t think so,” Pataki replied.
CBO Warns Republicans That Repealing Health Law Would Increase Deficit By $455 Billion
CBO Warns Republicans That Repealing Health Law Would Increase Deficit By $455 Billion
The Congressional Budget Office is out with a new letter saying that while the health care law could reduce the projected budget deficit by $30 billion in 2020, repealing it would increase the deficit by an estimated $455 billion:
On balance, the two laws’ health care and revenue provisions are estimated to reduce the projected deficit in 2020 by $28 billion, and the education provisions of the Reconciliation Act are estimated to reduce the projected deficit in 2020 by $2 billion. [...]
Finally, you asked what the net deficit impact would be if certain provisions of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act that were estimated to generate net savings were eliminated—specifically, those which were originally estimated to generate a net reduction in mandatory outlays of $455 billion over the 2010–2019 period. The estimate of $455 billion mentioned in your letter represents the net effects of many provisions. Some of those provisions generated savings for Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and some generated costs. If those provisions were repealed, CBO estimates that there would be an increase in deficits similar to its original estimate of $455 billion in net savings over that period.
If they were to repeal the law, Republicans would have replace it with something that makes up for the deficit increases (assuming, of course that they will still care about the deficits) and helps slow the growth rate in the Medicare program. The GOP’s old leadership backed plan and its reliance on medical malpractice reform as a money saver won’t be enough.
Separately, the CBO also estimated that preventing payment reductions to the physician fee schedule would cost some $330 billion over the 2011–2020 period.
Daniels To Accept $434 Million In State Aid That He Requested But Then Opposed
Daniels To Accept $434 Million In State Aid That He Requested But Then Opposed
In an interview this week, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) asserted that “only a blind zealot” would say that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) “has done any good.” “It hasn’t worked,” he said. “It’s trickle down government is the best way I can describe it.”
Daniels’ rhetoric hid the fact that he not only trumpets stimulus investments on his state’s website, but he also signed a letter in February asking that some stimulus provisions be extended. And now that an additional $26 billion in state aid has been approved by the Congress, Daniels has his hands open for $434 million, “even though he opposed the legislation”:
“Whether it’s wise from a national standpoint, whether it’s really doing anything about the private economy where we need the jobs, that’s an open question to say the least,” Daniels said…“But they’re going to send it so we’ll be very cautious with it. … The most likely event is that it helps us maintain our position in the black with a little more room to spare.”
“If they send a check, we’ll cash it,” said the governor’s press secretary, Jane Jankowski. So, for the record, Daniels requested the money in February, opposed it this month, but now plans to accept it, just like all the other governors who have grandstanded against stimulus funding before gladly taking it.
Daniels says that the additional funding — which will help save the jobs of 3,100 teachers — “helps us maintain our position in the black” without noting that he is only in the black because of the Recovery Act. In fact, the Indiana budget includes more than $1 billion in stimulus money.
However, Indianans should keep an eye on Daniels, as he used some Recovery Act funding meant for education to simply bolster his state’s Rainy Day Fund, instead of spending it on students and teachers. Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) pulled the same trick, earning a slap on the wrist from Congress. The money is meant to prevent cuts in vital services and to preserve jobs, not to get tossed into the bank to boost the conservative budgeting credentials of a state’s governor.
Rick Scott Insists He Took ‘Responsibility’ For Largest Medicare Fraud In History
Rick Scott Insists He Took ‘Responsibility’ For Largest Medicare Fraud In History
Last night, during an appearance on CNN, Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott defended his stewardship of Columbia/HCA, a large for-profit hospital chain that pled guilty to 14 felonies and paid $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for defrauding Medicare. Scott explained that he invested his life savings in the business to “built the largest health provider in the world” and stressed that he “took responsibility for what went wrong”:
SCOTT: And what I tell people is, you know, when you’re in business, anything that goes wrong, you should take responsibility if you’re the CEO. I do. The difference is let’s think about where we are in the state. We have the highest unemployment on record. We have almost 50 percent of our home owns under water on their mortgages. We’re walking into a five-plus billion dollar deficit. Has any politician in the state taken responsibility for putting us in this position? No. What I tell people all the time is I’m a business person. I know, you know, you put up your money, you try to build your companies and you take responsibility for what goes wrong. I do. When I’m governor, I hope nothing goes wrong. If it does, I’ll show up, I’ll take responsibility and I’ll fix it.
Watch it:
Scott may certainly be sorry for what happened, but it seems that the only thing he took was “a $9.88 million severance package, along with 10 million shares of stock worth up to $300 million at the time” after he was ousted from the Columbia/HCA board. In fact, during a deposition Scott gave in 2000 about his time as head of Columbia/HCA, “he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 75 times,” an issue Scott’s challenger, Attorney General Bill McCollum tried to use against him. McCollum “circulated a transcript in which Scott took the Fifth even when asked if he worked for Columbia/HCA Corp., in addition to questions about the firm’s accounting and billing practices.” According to the transcript, Scott was holding a card, which read “Upon advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question by asserting my rights and privileges under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
During the interview with CNN, Scott reiterated that he would not be releasing his deposition in a separate lawsuit against Solantic, a series of urgent care clinics he established across Florida. That business has also come under fire for engaging in the very same kind of practices that led to Columbia/HCA’s downfall. “Well, it’s a private matter. It’s something — it’s not — has nothing to do with this race,” he told CNN. “What I’m going to campaign on is what I’ve campaigned on in the primary. It’s about jobs.”
Scott also added that that he would not support changing the 14th amendment to revoke birthright citizenship and insisted that he would reject any federal stimulus dollars. “I think stimulus money is an absolute mistake. There’s no free money in those stimulus dollars. We’re going to have to pay those dollars back whether we pay it back, our children pay it back, our grandchildren pay it back. Stimulus does not work.”
The WonkLine: August 26, 2010
The WonkLine: August 26, 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.
National Security
“Insurgents unleashed a wave of coordinated attacks across Iraq on Wednesday…offering their counterpoint to American aspirations of bringing the war in Iraq ‘to a responsible end.’”
“North Korean leader Kim Jong Il made a sudden trip to China Thursday- only hours after former United States president Jimmy Carter arrived in Pyongyang anticipating a meeting with the ailing chairman.”
“The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.”
Immigration
Mexican authorities found the corpses of 72 migrants from Central and South America who were killed by smugglers on their way to the U.S.
The Associated Press calls the 400-square-mile ocean expanse that stretches from a bullring on the shores of Tijuana, Mexico, to suburban Los Angeles “a new frontier for illegal immigrants entering the United States.”
Three Long Island teenagers who admitted targeting Latinos for violence have been sentenced to seven-year prison terms for their roles in the killing of Ecuadorean immigrant, Marcelo Lucero.
Climate Change
Peggy Venable, the Texas director of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, calls the EPA’s Supreme Court-mandated regulation of greenhouse gases “illegal” and a “massive power grab and centralization of authority.”
“As inland areas of Southern California sweltered for a third straight day Wednesday” under record-breaking heat, “powerful lightning storms sparked brush fires, caused flash flooding and knocked down power lines that trapped bus passengers.”
“Tropical Storm Earl, the fifth named storm of the Atlantic season, developed ‘ahead of schedule’ off the coast of Africa to join Hurricane Danielle on a trek to the west, the National Hurricane Center said.”
Economy
An error by the administration of Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) cost New Jersey $400 million in Race to the Top education funding; the Education Department has rebuffed Christie’s call to appeal the decision.
According to a report by NDN the economic agenda outlines this week by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) “could exacerbate the deficit by roughly $3.7 trillion over the next ten years.”
The SEC granted “proxy access” to shareholders yesterday, “marking the latest victory for the ’shareholder rights’ movement that has gradually chipped away power from top executives running U.S. corporations.”
Health Care
“California is moving forward toward establishing a health insurance exchange to be in compliance with the federal health reform law. The state Senate has passed two bills that provide the mechanisms and functions of the exchange.”
“California insurance regulators cleared the way Wednesday for Anthem Blue Cross to implement scaled-back rate hikes after a previous increase was canceled amid an uproar over its size.”
“After months of being pummeled by Republican attacks on the new healthcare law, the Obama administration and its allies are striking back in an attempt to stem public disaffection with the health overhaul ahead of the November election.”
Openly Gay Candidate In Wichita Receives Death Threat, ‘It’s Not Completely Surprising To Me’
Openly Gay Candidate In Wichita Receives Death Threat, ‘It’s Not Completely Surprising To Me’
On Saturday, Dan Manning — an openly gay military veteran who was discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and is now running for Kansas House of Representatives in Wichita — arrived home from work “to find a death threat attached to his front door.”
The threat, compiled of newspaper clippings so as to resemble a classic ransom note, calls Manning a “homo” and “fagit” and predicts that he “will die”:
“It’s not completely surprising to me,” Manning told me during a phone interview. “I’ve not made any effort to hide my sexual orientation, I’ve been open about it and my opponent has known about it since day one.” There is “no indication” that his Republican opponent Brenda Landwehr “or anyone in her campaign is behind this,” Mannning said, but added that “as I’ve been out talking to constituents in the district, they’ve made mention that they’ve heard stuff about me. They didn’t say it came specifically from Brenda. One can assume it may have come from her. Again, there is no proof, and I would not accuse her of such.”
The threat did come out of the blue however, since the campaign has eschewed social issues and both candidates have focused on the economy, jobs and education. “My personal life is not something to talk about, on the priority list,” Manning said. “There are a lot of issues in Kansas that need to be addressed, the same way as the rest of the U.S.” “Some people are going to try to make my sexual orientation the prominent issue of the campaign. But the feeling I’ve got from my constituents that I had a chance to speak to, they don’t care, as long as I’m qualified, I’m going to represent their interests.”
In 2005, voters in Kansas approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as a civil contract between two persons who are of opposite sex and declared “all other marriages to be contrary to public policy and void.” The measure, which Landwehr supported, passed with 70% of the vote.
Will More States Follow Daniels And Perry By Squirreling Away Funds Meant For Education?
Will More States Follow Daniels And Perry By Squirreling Away Funds Meant For Education?
When Congress finally passed the $26 billion state aid bill earlier this month, it included a provision — added at the behest of Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) — that Texas not receive any of its allocated education money unless it was willing to certify that it wouldn’t cut its state contribution to education funding.
There was a good rationale for the provision, as when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) passed, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) simply cut the state’s education budget by the same amount as the stimulus funding the state received, resulting in no net increase in education spending.
But maybe Indiana should have been on the list for heightened scrutiny as well. The Sunlight Foundation today highlighted a report in The North West Indiana County Times showing that Indiana, led by Gov. Mitch Daniels (R), pocketed its stimulus money and then placed its own education funding into a rainy day fund:
Indiana State Budget Director Christopher Ruhl confirmed the federal stimulus money was used to provide basic tuition support dollars for school districts, allowing the state to squirrel away funds that normally would have been used for that purpose. “The state dollars saved were placed in our education rainy day fund,” he said.
Hebron schools Superintendent George Letz said that the stimulus funding “was not used the way in which he thought it was designated by Congress.” “I had understood the Obama administration wanted the money to be used to provide personnel and programs to help our students improve their achievement level, but instead the government took the money and substituted it for basic tuition support,” he said.
East Porter County School Corp. Superintendent Rod Gardin confirmed this, saying “we didn’t receive any extra money.” In addition, Daniels changed the funding formula for his state’s education budget, actually shortchanging poorer districts that are losing students, even when the state technically had more education dollars to spend.
Daniels and Perry seem to have inspired some other states to at least look at using education funding to instead reduce their deficits. As Lucia Graves reported, “in California, legislators, including state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, have proposed using the $1.2 billion in federal money designated for the schools to help offset the state’s $19 billion deficit.” In Oregon, Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) has also said he might cut the state education budget after receiving federal funds.
At this point, was it a mistake to not apply the Texas standard to every state, ensuring that federal dollars actually wind up with students and teachers in the classroom? “If this is a good idea, then why not make it apply to all states?” asked Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.
GOP Scares Seniors About Part D Changes, Blames Health Law
GOP Scares Seniors About Part D Changes, Blames Health Law
Following a familiar pattern of blaming any unfavorable health care story on the recently passed health care law, the Senate Republican Communications Center has seized on an AP story about the consolidation of prescription drug plans to try and convince seniors that they won’t be able to keep the coverage they have. The AP article reports on “a new analysis by a leading private research firm estimates that more than 3 million beneficiaries will see their current drug plan eliminated as Medicare tries to winnow down duplicative and confusing coverage, in order to offer consumers more meaningful choices. Instead of 40 or more plans in each state, beneficiaries would pick from 30 or so.” Without missing a beat, the Senate GOP issues this release:
This really represents one of the most transparent and shameless attempts to scare seniors about health care in the post reform era. Consolidating Part D plans have nothing at all to do with Obama’s law and is actually a continuation of a Bush administration effort to ensure that seniors have meaningful choices of prescription coverage.
When Part D became law in 2003, lawmakers feared that seniors would not have enough prescription drug choices and established government back up plans that would go into effect in case private insurers failed to materialize. But private insurers did participate, offering some 1,400 plans nationally in the first several years and up to 1,800 plans in 2007. Insurers began offering a multitude of plans with an array of different co pays and deductibles in the hopes of attracting the largest possible market share. CMS officials in the Bush administration and senior advocacy groups like AARP, however, felt that seniors would become overwhelmed by the plethora of choice and began to set guidelines for how many plans a single issuer could offer. Several 100 plans, for instance, had fewer than 500 people enrolled in them and seniors themselves felt unable to compare all the choices adequately.
Beginning in 2005, CMS used its regulatory authority to narrow the number of plans a single sponsor could offer, eventually instituting a rule that any given sponsor could only offer three plans per region. The Obama administration has continued with this approach. In April, it published regulations saying that sponsors would have to demonstrate meaningful differences among plans and that plans with very low enrollments should be discouraged. The final list of plans to be offered for 2011 is still pending, but some don’t expect a great deal of coverage disruption. In fact, consolidation could proceed relatively smoothly, with insurers simply transferring policyholders to a different basic policy.
The larger point here is that all this has nothing at all to do with the health care law or Obama’s promise that you can keep the policy you have. The GOP press release relies on the party’s pre-reform tactics of literally lying to America’s senior citizens to discourage them from voting for Democrats.
Did Bill McCollum’s Immigration Bill Kill His Chance At The Florida Governorship?
Did Bill McCollum’s Immigration Bill Kill His Chance At The Florida Governorship?
Following last night’s surprising election results in Florida, several Latino Republicans are arguing that gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum (R-FL) lost his bid for governor largely as a result of his recent introduction of a tough, Arizona-style immigration bill. The Miami Herald reports:
GOP lobbyist and fundraiser Ana Navarro, who dropped her support for McCollum after he proposed a law “tougher” than the controversial immigration bill in Arizona, said McCollum’s stance lowered his margin of victory in Miami-Dade — and kept many Hispanic voters from going to the polls.
“I think he can blame [immigration],” Navarro said. “I think if you speak frankly with McCollum himself, he would admit it was a mistake.”
It was McCollum’s sudden support of an Arizona-style immigration bill — after originally distancing himself from that kind of legislation — that hurt him, said Carlos Curbelo, Republican in a runoff for a Miami-Dade School Board seat.
“That change took away much of McCollum’s credibility,” he said, while adding that Scott, who has attacked McCollum’s immigration proposal, faces a difficult task ahead in trying to woo Florida Hispanics.
It’s hard to say whether enough Republican Latinos stayed home yesterday to make up for the 40,000 votes that McCollum’s opponent, Rick Scott (R-FL) was able to capture over him. However, it is pretty clear his immigration bill didn’t help him nearly as much as he had hoped — if at all. A Mason-Dixon survey conducted on August 9th and 11th put McCollum at a slight 34 to 30 percent lead over Scott. On August 11th McCollum unveiled the “Florida Immigration Enforcement Act” and began campaigning on it. However, a couple weeks later, not much had changed in the polls. Quinnipiac University released a survey this Monday showing McCollum’s lead at 39 to 35 percent against Scott.
Perhaps more significantly, most Florida voters cite the economy as a top concern, not immigration enforcement. At the very least, McCollum’s bill was a distraction that cost him time, effort, and money that could’ve been directed towards convincing voters that he could address Florida’s economic woes. While 86 percent of Florida Republicans support bringing the Arizona law to their state, that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing on their mind when they enter the voting booth.
Finally, it is certainly possible that a drop in Latino Republican support may have contributed to his loss as some Latino Republicans are suggesting. A majority of the 1,600 Latino voters surveyed in four states, including Florida, said they would be likely to vote against a candidate if they disagreed with the candidate’s stance on immigration — and the majority of Latinos nationwide oppose Arizona’s approach to immigration. In Florida, 54 percent of Latino GOP voters support the Arizona law, but 36 percent oppose it — enough to make a difference in a tight race.
Ultimately, Latino sentiments will likely have a much bigger impact in Florida’s general election this fall. The same survey also found that a majority of Latinos in those states identify as Democrats, echoing reports over the past couple years that Florida’s Republican Latino electorate is shrinking. Meanwhile, Scott and McCollum shared pretty similar immigration platforms — something which will likely haunt Scott in November, but didn’t present angry Latino GOP voters with a chance yesterday to flex their political muscles (other than staying home). As far as the primary goes, as of August 14th, McCollum still had 57 percent support from Latino Republicans, compared with 21 percent for Scott. And while several notable Latino Republicans such as Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) sharply criticized McCollum’s move on immigration, other than Navarro, few went as far as to send a strong message to the Latino community by pulling their endorsement.
Even After The U.S. Draws Down, Iraqis Will Continue Fighting Them ‘Over There’
Even After The U.S. Draws Down, Iraqis Will Continue Fighting Them ‘Over There’
Today’s news from Iraq that “bombers and gunmen launched an apparently coordinated string of attacks against Iraqi government forces on Wednesday,” killing at least 50 people across 13 towns, provides an opportunity to reflect on one of the most dubious and, frankly, profane justifications for the Iraq war: “Taking the fight to the terrorists” — fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.
George W. Bush explained in 2005, while describing Iraq as “the latest battlefield in this war“:
Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.
This after-the-fact justification for the war — necessary in the embarrassing absence of either WMD or any substantive Saddam-Al Qaeda relationship — eventually became known as “Flypaper Theory.” The basic idea was that a U.S. presence in Iraq would distract extremists from trying to attack America. Because, presumably, a bus ticket to Baghdad is less expensive that a plane ticket to New York. But while it’s probably true that at least some of the extremists drawn to Iraq would have attacked elsewhere, the evidence is overwhelming that, for the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq (who, in any case, represented a small minority of insurgents), the U.S. occupation of Iraq itself was the decisive factor in their radicalization and mobilization.
While it’s generally believed that Al Qaeda in Iraq no longer has the capacity to seriously threaten to collapse the government, or to elicit the level of reprisals that led to Iraq’s 2006-7 sectarian civil war, they still retain the ability, as the last few weeks have horrifically demonstrated, to launch multiple coordinated deadly attacks, reaching what General Ray Odierno referred to as an “irreducible minimum,” beyond which it’s very difficult to degrade a committed group of terrorists.
Obviously, the continued presence of a group like Al Qaeda is a really tragic state of affairs for Iraqis, who, like most people, don’t tend to enjoy it when they, their friends, or their relatives get maimed in terrorist attacks, or living in constant fear that such a thing could happen. It’s important to remember, though — especially when tempted to wax indignant over views of the effects of American policy that hurt our feelings — that luring terrorists to Iraq to blow themselves up in markets and mosques and police recruiting stations wasn’t some tragic side-effect of the Iraq war, it was in fact a stated goal of the war, one with which Iraqis will tragically have to contend for some time to come. This, as much as anything, is George W. Bush’s legacy in Iraq.
The Nuclear Industry Needs A Cap On Carbon To Survive
The Nuclear Industry Needs A Cap On Carbon To Survive
Our guest blogger is Richard W. Caperton, Policy Analyst with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress.
Nuclear reactor developers have a compelling reason to support a cap on carbon pollution: the effects of climate change could make it to impossible to run nuclear reactors. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has drastically reduced power generation at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant this summer:
The Tennessee Valley Authority has lost nearly $50 million in power generation from its biggest nuclear plant because the Tennessee River in Alabama is too hot.
Browns Ferry is located on the Tennessee River in Alabama and uses river water for cooling. To protect wildlife in the river, TVA is not allowed to raise the river’s temperature above 90 degrees. But this year’s record heat have already raised the river temperature to near 90, so TVA can only use small amounts of water, which limits how much power they can produce. In fact, the air temperature has stayed below 90 only three days since June 9, far above the historical norm. In the 1990s, the TVA decided not to build extra cooling towers because they “estimated that the chance of exceeding the 90-degree temperature limit in the Tennessee River was very rare.”
This situation also gives us a stark reminder of how climate change will take money out of consumers’ pockets. TVA has had to buy more expensive power to make up for the lost production at Browns Ferry. They then pass this new cost onto consumers in the form of a fuel cost adjustment. The new fuel cost adjustment will increase consumer bills by $1 to $3. So, if your utility buys its power from TVA, that’s a $3 loss next month due to warming.
Fortunately, a comprehensive climate bill can fix this problem. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that climate legislation would significantly lower the risk of catastrophic climate change. Now we also know that the nuclear industry’s future depends on putting a cap on carbon.
Every piece of proposed energy legislation we saw this year included incentives for building new nuclear reactors, including loan guarantees, production tax credits, accelerated depreciation rules, and changes to permitting. These would all certainly be helpful, but they ignore the biggest incentive for the nuclear industry: putting a cap on carbon emissions.
Currently, coal-fired generation is less expensive than nuclear power, which adds to the risk of investing in new nuclear reactors. Putting a cap on carbon, however, would make coal-fired power more expensive than nuclear power, making it much more likely that an investment in a nuclear reactor will make money.
This dynamic is at play in Maryland, where Constellation Energy has applied for a loan guarantee for a new reactor from the Department of Energy. According to the Baltimore Sun, Constellation’s project is now at risk, whether or not they get a loan guarantee. Project chairman Michael J. Wallace told the Sun, “When we get the DOE loan guarantee, that certainly is a major step forward for us. We then need to go through calculations on all the other variables to see whether this project can go forward on an economically sound basis. And we have to continue to do that over the next several months.”
That is, a loan guarantee is certainly valuable, and is a critical ingredient in the project moving forward, but it won’t ultimately determine the project’s profitability. The project will sink or swim because nuclear power can compete with coal, which will only happen with a cap on carbon.
Republican Challengers Slam Gillibrand For ‘Pandering To Special Interests’ On Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Republican Challengers Slam Gillibrand For ‘Pandering To Special Interests’ On Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Arranged by hight at last night’s GOP Senate debate (see 2:00 on the video), the three Republican candidates hoping to unseat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) condemned the the Senator for placing “special interests” ahead of the needs of the military in advocating for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
- Treasury Department official David Malpass: “The military commanders have to have a huge say in this matter. And so I dont’ agree with Senator Gillibrand on her having the strong view coming from New York state, without the experience in the military….We now have General Petraeus in the Afghanistan war…I would be listening to him, rather than as a Senator injecting myself into that type of debate as strongly as Sen. Gillibrand has done.”
- Long Island attorney Bruce Blakeman: “The Generals and Admirals of our military asked for a year to review the policy and make a report to Congress. Senator Gillibrand, pandering to special interest groups, jumped the gun within two months that they asked for that time…I believe if the military leaders asked for a year to review the policy, then we should wait for that report.”
- Westchester Congressman Joe DioGuardi: “My feeling is we need to wait for them to give us their judgment and I would trust that judgment.”
Watch it:
Of course, the actual repeal amendment does accomodate the military’s ongoing study of DADT and would preserve the policy until the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense and the President guarantee that it does not undermine military readiness. The country’s most prominent military leaders — including Gen. David Petraeus, have expressed support for this process, suggesting that they would like to end the failed policy.
But beyond that, in watching this exchanges, it’s difficult to get beyond their assumption that gay people — by their very nature — are so incredibly disruptive to military service that to embark on a parallel track of congressional action and military study is just unthinkable.
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