After Bemoaning Regulations In Health Reform, House GOP Criticizes HHS For Loosening Them
After Bemoaning Regulations In Health Reform, House GOP Criticizes HHS For Loosening Them
The Hill’s Julian Pecquet notes that Republicans have doubled down on their approach of criticizing both the potential coverage disruptions of the Affordable Care Act and the government’s efforts to minimize these changes. Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee have written a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius noting that they’re “deeply troubled that some 30 companies were forced to consider dropping coverage as a result of the law” and by HHS’ attempts to “exempt certain companies from new requirements so they can continue offering low-cost health plans.”
The letter includes various about the waiver process:
- According to USA Today, HHS has granted waivers so that “thirty companies and organizations…won’t be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans.” What companies or organizations were granted this waiver, and how many employees will this affect? Please provide a copy of both the waivers and a detailed description of the effects of the waivers.
- Have any companies or organizations asked for the waiver discussed in the USA Today article but not been granted one? If so, what companies or organizations were denied this waiver and why?
- As mentioned previously, according to the Wall Street Journal the issue is not merely whether the companies are granted waivers, but whether the insurers that offer these plans will be able to comply with new medical-loss ratios. Has HHS been contacted by any insurers to date about such a waiver to the ratio requirement? If so, please provide the names of the insurance companies that have done so. Has HHS granted any waivers of any kind to certain insurers, and if so what did those waivers entail?
- Exempting these employers from coverage requirements and penalties will likely affect the cost estimates of the health law. Has HHS calculated the effect of the waivers on the reported cost of the law? Please provide us with any information HHS holds on each exempted plan so that the impact of these exemptions may be examined.
The GOP will then use any answers to argue that the government is now arbitrarily picking winners and losers, thereby destroying America’s small businesses and job creators. As Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) previewed the argument several weeks ago on local radio, “that’s why you don’t want a government takeover of health care, because all of the sudden you have bureaucrats with political power are going to be deciding…”
What’s really happening is that the administration is in a tough spot. If companies respond to the early regulations by dropping insurance coverage, low-wage employees will have to either go uninsured until 2014 (when the exchanges kick in) or try to enroll in Medicaid or the new high-risk insurance pools, for which they may be ineligible and may have some trouble affording. As Aaron Carroll of the Incidental Economist explains it, Democrats are facing the three-legged-stool problem. You can’t give people access to affordable coverage without regulating the insurers, getting everyone into the risk pool through the mandate and providing subsidies for those who need them, but the law implements the regulation leg four years before the subsidy and mandate legs are even attached. And so what you’re seeing now is a stool that just can’t find its balance.
Consequently, the government is exempting these companies for a year to give them an opportunity to gradually adjust their plans so they can meet the new requirements and will likely extend these exemptions through 2014 and issue even more waivers in the months to come. But as we’re seeing, this will make for its own batch of bad headlines, but it seems to be a better solution than letting thousands of low wage Americans go without coverage.
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Rubio Promises To Cut The Discretionary Budget, But Can’t Name Any Discretionary Spending Programs
Rubio Promises To Cut The Discretionary Budget, But Can’t Name Any Discretionary Spending Programs
Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio (FL) has been having a little trouble laying out exactly how he plans to balance the budget (as his proposed constitutional balanced budget amendment would require), while simultaneously cutting taxes for the rich and corporations. And when pressed for specifics regarding what, exactly, he would endorse eliminating from the federal budget, Rubio has simply refused to answer.
Today, Rubio’s penchant for budget fuzziness was on full display during an interview with Fox News. Asked what he would cut from the budget, Rubio seized onto the same John Boehner-inspired return to 2008 non-defense discretionary spending levels that was included in the House Republicans’ Pledge to America. But when asked what that translates into practically, Rubio managed to name precisely zero items in the discretionary budget that he would cut:
Q: What would be the first thing you would cut?
RUBIO: First thing that we need to do is actually roll back discretionary spending and freeze it at the 2008 level. [...]
Q: Is there an item on the discretionary spending that you think would be where to focus?
RUBIO: Oh, goodness. Yeah, how ’bout the unspent stimulus money? How ’bout the unspent TARP money? I mean, those two alone are significant billions of dollars that can be used to pay down the debt. That’s just a start. I think when you add $3 trillion to the national debt, the way this administration has done over the last 18 months, you’re not going to struggle to find places to cut back federal discretionary spending.
Watch it:
Both the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 were one-time emergency spending measures, not discretionary spending programs. They aren’t going to be re-authorized. In fact, TARP has already expired! Some discretionary programs did receive stimulus funding, but the Recovery Act, as a piece of legislation, is not discretionary spending and has no effect on the federal budget beyond 2012.
But what is in the discretionary budget? For starters, all federal education funding, some veteran’s benefits, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service, federal highway funding, the National Park Service, the Coast Guard, and Congress itself. And even if you cut every last penny of the non-defense discretionary budget, you still wouldn’t eliminate the deficit.
Rubio, like many Republicans, seems to think that there a whole host of programs in the federal budget that affect no one and that no one will miss. But it’s simply not true, and in the meantime, Rubio is utterly incapable of identifying anything he would do to get the long-term deficit under control. Instead, he simply names programs that are explicitly designed to disappear no matter what he or anyone else thinks of them.
Juan Williams And The Way We Talk About Islam
Juan Williams And The Way We Talk About Islam
While the attempt to treat Juan Williams as some kind of martyr for free speech is ridiculous on its face, (and the use of the word “dissident” for a guy who just got a $2 million contract for his trouble is disgusting) I agree with Reuel Marc Gerecht that “We would all be better off — Muslim Americans first and foremost — if we could have a more open discussion about Islam, Islamic militancy and what Muslims, here and abroad, think it means to be Muslim.” I’m just not sure if we necessarily agree on what “more open” means, or on the role that the President of the United States is supposed to play in that discussion:
The firing of Williams, who is also a paid commentator with Fox News, sparked a heated argument over political correctness — and calls for the public “defunding” of NPR — that is, in part, obscuring a more necessary debate: How do you approach the problem of Islamic militancy in the West and in the Middle East? President Obama, who has had innumerable briefings on the threats posed by al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups, has chosen to dial down American rhetoric (it was actually pretty tame under President George W. Bush) in the hope that average Muslims, wherever they may be, will view the United States as more friend than foe, and help Washington combat “violent extremism.”
This friendly approach is probably, unfortunately, counterproductive. So far, it’s unlikely that Muslim self-criticism — our ultimate salvation from Islamic holy warriors — has improved under Obama. Judging by the satellite channel Al-Jazeera, a vibrant hodgepodge of all things Arab, the opposite current, fed by Western self-doubt, appears to be gaining force. By being nice, we suggest that nothing within “Islam” — by which I mean the 1,400-year-old evolving marriage of faith, culture and politics — is terribly wrong. By being kind, we fail to provoke controversy among Muslims about why so many Muslims from so many lands have called suicide bombers against Western targets “martyrs” and not monsters.
Obviously, Gerecht makes some claims here about the impact of Obama’s rhetorical approach that he doesn’t provide evidence for (note the strategic use of words like “probably,” “unlikely,” “appears”). Leaving aside whether Gerecht’s rendering of the trends in “Muslim self-criticism” is accurate, color me skeptical of his suggestion that Obama could make a more positive impact if only he would be ruder to the world’s Muslims. And I’m always a bit perplexed by warnings against “Western self-doubt,” as if Western liberalism’s tendency toward self-criticism and self-correction weren’t one of its greatest strengths. This is, after all, according to Gerecht, precisely what we’re supposed to be hoping for and cultivating in the so-called “Muslim world,” a sense of self-doubt and self-criticism about the trajectory of their faith and their societies.
In terms of self-criticism, as Marc Lynch showed in his book Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today, al-Jazeera provided an important forum for quite a bit of self-criticism among Arabs over why they had countenanced Saddam’s tyranny for so long. This is obviously anecdotal, but I get invited on al-Jazeera fairly regularly despite my habit of saying outrageous things about how democracy is good and how no, we’re not just doing it for the oil. This also gets at the fact that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to decouple America’s message to the world’s Muslims from the American policies that impact many of those Muslims, either directly or through media, which unfortunately involve a lot of people and things exploding.
As for the President Obama’s rhetoric, I don’t think it’s really the president’s responsibility to get into fine-grained discussions about Islamic doctrine, but to set a general tone for the debate. In my view Obama has, despite a few missteps, done this fairly well. To his credit, so did George W. Bush, even though his party has pretty much devolved into an endless game of Islamophobic one-downsmanship since he left office.
Carrying out the deeper public debate about the problem of violent Islamic extremism, and America’s response to it, is the job of scholars, pundits, and analysts like Gerecht, and like your humble narrator. And in that, I think it’s clear that we need to do a lot better. I don’t think anyone can look at the quality of the current mainstream media discourse around Islam, America, national security, particularly the persistence of the ridiculous and deeply stupid-making “war of civilizations” frame, and conclude anything other than that we have, despite some bright exceptions, collectively pretty much failed at promoting a discussion of these issues at a level of seriousness that they really merit, given what’s at stake. And that’s a problem.
It’s not a problem, however, that has much to do with Juan Williams, though I suspect that one of the consequences of Williams’ axing is that it will be used by Islam-bashers to continue to deny that there is actually a double standard in regard to what is permissible to say about Islam and Muslims versus other faiths and groups, or that this somehow righted the imbalance. What Williams said was stupid and offensive, but I don’t think he should’ve been fired by NPR in the way that he was. He should’ve been fired long ago for not having offered a remotely interesting political insight in years. But then they’d have had to fire Cokie Roberts, too. (Which they should do!)
The fact is that if Williams were an effective advocate for progressivism/critic of conservatism he wouldn’t have had a job at Fox News in the first place, but I hope that his new status as the world’s best remunerated, least oppressed “dissident” won’t serve to further cheapen the important debate around how best to confront Islamic extremism.
Will Employers Just Dump Their Workers Into The Exchanges?
Will Employers Just Dump Their Workers Into The Exchanges?
Gov. Philip Bredesen (D-TN)
The gist of Bredesen’s argument is pretty simple: Some firms will find it more attractive to stop offering insurance and let employees get coverage through the new insurance exchanges, where generous subsidies will be available. But the Affordable Care Act, which I’ve long supported, imposes strong penalties on firms that do not offer insurance, as well as sizeable tax credits for smaller firms that encourage them to offer. And in most firms, the majority of employees will make too much money to be eligible for large subsidies anyway. It is for this reason that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that PPACA will reduce employer sponsored insurance in the U.S. by only about 2.5 percent by 2019. In other words, the effect on employer sponsored coverage will likely be small.
CBO projections aren’t perfect, of course. But this particular projection is consistent with the best evidence we have–evidence that, once again, Bredesen completely ignores. In 2006, the state of Massachusetts put in place a system much like the one the Affordable Care Act will create nationally–with subsidies for low income groups (subsidies that are even more generous than those in the Affordable Care Act) and an individual mandate, but without the small group tax credit or meaningful penalties on firms that don’t offer insurance. The result? Employer-sponsored insurance has risen in the state by more than 100,000 persons.
Bredesen’s claim that employees would move from employer coverage to subsidized insurance in the exchange also ignores that the government is already subsidizing employer plans through the tax code and will continue to do so (at lower levels due to the excise tax) under the Affordable Care Act.
Economists and many Democrats generally agree that the ACA’s employer responsibility requirement could be strengthened and many supported a true pay or play provision that would have ensured less employer coverage erosion. But they were opposed by the very same conservative Democrats and Republicans who are now echoing Bredesen’s claims. Rather than shoring up employer sponsored insurance (ESI), these lawmakers instead listened to the hysterical arguments of groups like the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and the Chamber of Commerce and strongly opposed the very provisions that would have avoided what they’re now predicting.
However, the general question of why employers choose to offer coverage is a good one and the best explanation I’ve heard argues that employers feel more comfortable with the existing system within which they themselves can define their contribution towards health care. In other words, rather than leaving it up to the government to set the amount they’ll have to contribute, companies want to be more in control of their own costs. Austin Frakt believes CEOs are wrong for thinking this, but agrees that employer coverage is here to stay.
Rep. Hensarling Uses Google’s Tax Dodging To Call for Cutting Corporate Taxes
Rep. Hensarling Uses Google’s Tax Dodging To Call for Cutting Corporate Taxes
Yesterday, Bloomberg News released an extensive report showing how Google used tax havens in Ireland and the Caribbean to dodge $3.1 billion in taxes in both the United States and abroad. Employing strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich,” Google managed to lower its effective corporate tax rate all the way down to 2.4 percent, far below the U.S. statutory rate of 35 percent.
Last night, CNBC ran a segment on Google’s tax dodging, which even CNBC’s supply-side guru Larry Kudlow seemed to think was out of bounds, saying, “I think, with a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, we do want corporations to pay their share.” Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), though, used the revelation regarding Google’s handiwork to call for cutting the corporate tax rate. Hensarling freely admitted that he didn’t actually have any clue what it was that Google did, but he is certain that Google’s taxes should be cut anyway:
I don’t know the individual facts of the Google situation. What I do know is that, second only to Japan, we have the highest corporate income tax rate of any industrialized nation of the world. I also know that for companies that want to repatriate their capital to the American shores, they’re looking at a 35 percent income tax rate, where on many other OECD nations, several of the EU nations, will tax it at zero to two percent. So, again, I don’t know the individual situation with Google, but I do know that zero times zero is zero and we ought to be look at how do we get this capital back into the United States of America.
Watch it:
So that Hensarling can get up to speed on the situation, here’s a handy interactive graphic laying out how Google’s tax scheme works. But Hensarling is hardly alone in finding corporate tax dodging a justification for lowering the corporate tax rate. Over the summer, Rep. David Camp (R-MI) said that the U.S. corporate tax rate “puts pressure” on companies to shift income, and therefore needs to be reduced.
But Hensarling’s position makes little sense. He called for bringing the corporate tax rate down to 25 percent, but why would that prevent companies from using tax havens? After all, Google’s 2.4 percent rate is still far below Hensarling’s proposed rate. And when given past opportunities to repatriate money at a lower tax rate, as Hensarling also suggested, corporations have used that money to enrich shareholders and executives, not to create jobs or make investments.
From his seat on the Financial Services Committee, Hensarling has consistently carried water for big corporations, no matter their behavior. Saying that they should be rewarded for tax dodging is simply another part of his pattern.
Angle’s Latina Spokesperson Backs Away From Criticism Of Candidate’s Anti-Immigrant Ads
Angle’s Latina Spokesperson Backs Away From Criticism Of Candidate’s Anti-Immigrant Ads
A couple weeks ago, I reported that the chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Hispanic Caucus and Sharron Angle (R-NV) spokesperson, Tibi Ellis, criticized her own candidate’s immigration ads on Spanish-language radio. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Ellis told 1060 AM Spanish radio host Edwin Saldarriaga “I condemned this type of propaganda, no matter who is running them, where they blame Mexicans as the only problem and where they attack them as the only source of illegal immigration.”
Yesterday, Ellis told progressive radio host Mario Solis Marich that the Las Vegas Sun misrepresented her remarks. In an attempt to set the record straight, Ellis began to tepidly back away from her criticisms of Angle’s ads and defend the conservative movement:
HOST: Are you okay with Sharron Angle’s ads that have been condemned nationwide as anti-immigrant?
ELLIS: I am okay with Sharron Angle’s ads that condemn anti-illegal immigration, yes.
HOST: So you’re okay with those ads?
ELLIS: No no no! Your question is about the anti-illegal immigration ads, yes, because I am an anti-illegal immigration policy person. I am not okay with having only the face of a Mexican immigrant as the representation of illegal immigration because illegal immigration has many colors. [...]
HOST: So you’re okay with Sharron Angle’s ads, we established that. Okay, so now we can move on. You’re set, okay? [Silence] [...] Does the anti-immigrant movement in this country — is it based within the conservative movement?
ELLIS: I disagree with that.
Listen:
Ellis may not be aware of the fact that Angle told a group of Latino students that they have been “misinterpreting” her commercials. “I’m not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through,” she said.
Ellis also accused Angle’s opponent, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) of “scapegoating” Latinos by using an image of a Latina to represent the undocumented students that Reid is trying to help via his support of the DREAM Act. Solis Marich explained to Ellis that there’s a difference between pandering and scapegoating and that while Reid may be guilty of pandering to Latinos, he can’t be accused of scapegoating them. In fact, the two words are logical opposites in politics.
When asked about the controversial ads telling Latinos not to vote which almost aired in Nevada, Ellis denied they had any connection to the conservative movement. Instead, she tried to argue that they were funded by the Latino Coalition, which she described as a bi-partisan organization. However, the Latino Coalition explicitly condemned the ads.
Curiously, Solis Marich opened the segment explaining that Ellis had agreed to go on his show to talk about politics, but changed her mind at the last minute and would not be appearing. Apparently, Ellis was under the impression that his show was in Spanish and shortly after finding out it was actually in English, she sent Solis Marich’s producer an email saying that it was her birthday and she no longer wanted to participate. Apparently, she had a change of heart and ended up calling in anyway. You can listen to the full interview here.
Today’s GOP Stomp On Reagan, Father Of Cap And Trade
Today’s GOP Stomp On Reagan, Father Of Cap And Trade
Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at American Progress.
Many Republican officials greatly admire the father of cap and trade: President Ronald Reagan. Yet opposition to “cap-and-trade” legislation to reduce global warming pollution is a common refrain among many Republican and a few Democratic officials this fall. The program is derided as a “cap and tax” that would drain voters’ wallets while bankrupting the nation. After the demise of comprehensive global warming legislation in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gloated that “cap-and-trade, which is also known as the national energy tax, is dead in the United States Senate.”
Ironically enough, the three most recent Republican presidents promoted cap and trade, including Ronald Reagan. They employed such a system to phase out lead in gasoline, cut chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting chemicals, and reduce sulfur pollution from power plants responsible for acid rain — all without undue cost.
Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) praised Reagan last year:
When you realize the magnitude of President Reagan’s achievements, there is absolutely no reason why anyone would ignore his ‘demonstrably good’ example.
Nonetheless, she and many of today’s public officials oppose a global warming plan that would employ the innovative cap-and-trade system first created by President Reagan, repudiating his legacy for cheap political gain and to curry favor with polluting industries.
The Reagan White House conceived the first cap-and-trade program to reduce pollution, used in the 1980s to phase out lead in gasoline at a lower cost. It was developed as a more flexible, market-based system to reduce environmental pollution compared to the so-called “command and control” model employed by environmental laws in the 1970s. The old system required each polluting facility to make a fixed reduction in air or water contamination, which ignored that some facilities could cut pollution more cheaply than others. An EPA analysis shows:
… estimated savings from the lead trading program of approximately 20 percent over alternative programs that did not provide for lead banking, a cost savings of about $250 million per year.
President Reagan also signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to slash the production and use of chemicals that deplete the upper ozone layer essential to screen out cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. His administration established a cap-and-trade system to implement the chemical reductions the protocol required. A 2006 scientific assessment concluded that “the Montreal Protocol is working” to reduce chemicals and protect the ozone layer.
President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, was the first president to propose the employment of a cap-and-trade system in an environmental law. The Clean Air Act of 1990 includes his proposed cap-and-trade system to reduce the sulfur pollution from power plants responsible for acid rain.
The Clean Air Act passed the Senate by a vote of 89-10 and the House by 401-25. Many staunch conservatives voted for it including Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo), Trent Lott (R-MS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Strom Thurmond (R-SC). Conservative House supporters included Reps. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Joe Barton (R-TX), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Fred Upton (R-MI).
When President Bush signed the Clean Air Act into law he highlighted its innovative cap-and-trade mechanism:
The acid rain allowance trading program will be the first large-scale regulatory use of market incentives and is already being seen as a model for regulatory reform efforts here and abroad.
“To reject this legacy and embrace the failed 1970s policies of one-size-fits-all regulatory mandates would signify unilateral surrender of principled support for markets,” write economists Richard Schmalensee, who worked in the Reagan White House, and Robert Stavins. “If some conservatives oppose energy or climate policies because of disagreement about the threat of climate change or the costs of those policies, so be it. But in the process of debating risks and costs, there should be no tarnishing of market-based policy instruments. Such a scorched-earth approach will come back to haunt when future environmental policies will not be able to use the power of the marketplace to reduce business costs.”
Schmalensee and Stavins’s warning should be heeded: This current crop of Republican and a few Democratic officials—in their zeal to curry favor with their special interest funders and Tea Party activists—could doom future efforts to follow the path paved by Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Bush to reduce pollution in the most cost-effective way possible.
Read the extended version of this post at American Progress.
Sen. Cornyn: Insurers Should Still Deny Coverage To Those With Pre-Existing Conditions
Sen. Cornyn: Insurers Should Still Deny Coverage To Those With Pre-Existing Conditions
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
But Republicans also say that they support some parts of the health care law — like the consumer protections that would prohibit insurers from denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions. Those elements would help consumers but they’d be better off if Obamacare were repealed and replaced with similar provisions. As Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) explained during his debate in North Carolina last night, “Those provisions are acceptable to me and most Republicans and most Americans,” he said. “I think it’s important to realize we could have the elimination of pre-existing conditions tomorrow. We could have the elimination of lifetime caps tomorrow. We could begin to close the doughnut hole tomorrow. But you can’t fix the current health care bill that the president passed.”
So would Republicans really adopt strong consumer protections? It’s unlikely. The House Republicans’ ‘Pledge,’ for instance, guarantees coverage regardless of pre-existing condition only to those beneficiaries who had been previously insured. The uninsured can still be denied coverage. Similarly, a bill offered by Sens. Burr and Tom Coburn (R-OK) in May of 2009 encouraged states to “establish rational and reasonable consumer protections,” but did not eliminate the practice of denying coverage nationwide. Throw into this mix yesterday’s comments by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and you quickly get the sense that any GOP pre-existing condition provision would be limited at best:
SIEGEL: But the basic change here, the government has expanded the entitlement to health insurance. Do you hope to see that expansion undone as a matter of federal law?
CORNYN: I think the way it was done is problematic because it imposes a fine on individuals who don’t carry health insurance, but it says, on the other hand, that if you get sick, that an insurance company must issue you a policy regardless of your preexisting conditions and the like, which is driving up the cost of insurance. I think the model, to me, the ideal model is one that we’ve seen used in companies like Whole Foods Company in Austin, Texas, using health savings accounts.
Cornyn, of course, has it backwards. You can’t require insurance companies to “issue you a policy regardless of your preexisting conditions” unless you impose “a fine on individuals who don’t carry health insurance.” If you don’t find a way to encourage people who otherwise wouldn’t have bothered with health insurance to buy coverage, you can’t eliminate the pre-existing condition denials. That’s because without a mandate that brings healthy people into the program, the provision requires insurers to accept individuals who waited too long to purchase coverage. These sicker applicants would use up a lot of health care and drive up costs for everyone else in the pool, pushing out younger and healthier applicants (and their premium dollars). Only sick people who desperately need coverage would remain in the plan and as Kentucky, Main, New Hampshire, New Jersey and many other states have all found out, that’s a prescription for failure.
So the larger point here is that no matter what Republicans tell you about pre-existing conditions, without a mandate, they can’t possibly replace the existing consumer protections. All they can offer is some inferior provision that look a lot like the existing HIPAA law and won’t do much for the uninsured.
GOP Senate Candidate Claims To Oppose Social Security Privatization Moments After Calling For Privatization
GOP Senate Candidate Claims To Oppose Social Security Privatization Moments After Calling For Privatization
A slew of Republican Senate candidates have recently tried to dress up their support for Social Security privatization as something else entirely, denying that they support privatization while continuing to advocate for the creation of private Social Security accounts that could be invested in the markets. Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, Ohio Republican Rob Portman, Arkansas Republican John Boozman, and Colorado Republican Ken Buck have all said they oppose privatization, while simultaneously advocating for private accounts.
Oregon’s Republican Senate nominee, law professor Jim Huffman, became the latest to join this club during a debate last night with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). Huffman asserted that he hasn’t argued for privatizing Social Security, literally one sentence after calling for the creation of private accounts. He then reiterated his idea later in the debate:
I have argued for allowing newcomers to the Social Security system to have the option of private accounts. I have not argued for privatizing the Social Security system. There’s nothing in the record that would uphold that argument.
Watch it:
This is all part and parcel of the concerted conservative campaign to change the terms — but not the policy prescriptions — of Social Security privatization. Privatization polls badly, so conservatives want to change the word, but not the idea.
And the fact remains that creating private Social Security accounts would impose new risks on seniors, create new administrative costs and benefit reductions, and wouldn’t even set the Social Security system on a path to solvency. In fact, such a move would force the federal government into trillions of dollars of new borrowing, as money that should have gone into the general Social Security system gets diverted into the creation of personal accounts.
An analysis of private accounts done by Robert Shiller found that, “given an all-stock portfolio and typical stock market returns across the world’s 15 largest economies, a worker’s account would have negative returns 33 percent of the time.” And diversifying an account with other investments such as bonds actually increased the likelihood of a negative return. This is an unnecessary risk for seniors — more than 13 million of whom are kept out of poverty only because of Social Security — no matter what those on the right want to call it.
Pentagon’s DADT Study Expected To Show Mixed Support For Ending Ban
Pentagon’s DADT Study Expected To Show Mixed Support For Ending Ban
Last night, during an appearance on The News Hour, TIME corespondent Mark Thompson reported that the results of the Pentagon’s Working Group studying Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will show mixed support for ending the policy and reiterated the military’s interest in slow-walking the repeal process:
MARGARET WARNER: Now, what is the status of the broader review? They sent out these surveys to service members, nearly half a million, then their families. That was in the early midsummer. Are those in yet?
MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I mean, it’s being collected by an outside firm. It soon will make its way throughout the Pentagon.
The sense I’m getting, talking to insiders, is this basically breaks down into thirds. A third of the body politic doesn’t care. A third opposes it, and a third is an advocate for lifting the ban…But the Marine commandant this weekend, John Conway, said 95 percent of the — James Conway said 95 percent of the Marines he has taken surveys of do not want to serve with openly gay men and women. That is a stunning figure, if that is what’s going to be in the poll. [...]
MARGARET WARNER: But, I mean, will they say, we can do it, or is there some pushback now from the service chiefs?
MARK THOMPSON: Well, no, their — Well, the sense is, No. 1, their mission is not — their mission is only how we should do it if the law changes, not should it be changed.
So, they’re going to look for the best path to undo don’t ask, don’t tell. There is some sense that the service chiefs, especially the Marines and the Army, the ground force guys, are slow-rolling this thing. They don’t want it to move out fast. They want it to take a long time.
I mean, it’s interesting. The papers filed with the courts have said, we have to train everybody before we do this. Meanwhile, you talk to the generals in Afghanistan who are saying, my lord, we have more important things to worry about. This is the last thing on our minds. So, there is some sort of disconnect there.
Meanwhile, in another sign that the government intends to defend the constitutionality of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals next year and drag out the repeal process even further (should the Senate fail to approve a bill in the lame duck session), Politico’s Josh Gerstein notes that DOD may be trying to bolster its argument by stressing that the new discharge rules do not represent any kind of moratorium of the policy. “I wouldn’t interpret that as a higher bar, a lower bar,” a defense official told reporters at yesterday’s briefing. “That is not intended to be a substantive change in the decision-making. You should not interpret that as we are going to separate more people or less people. We are going to elevate these decisions to ensure uniformity and care in the enforcement of the law. It is what it is,” the official said.
All of this, of course, is only contributing to a sense of uncertainty both inside and outside the ranks and ultimately undermines the possibility of a smooth end to the policy. As the RAND Corporation has concluded, implementing gay service that stated that openly gay service was entirely workable, but that a successful new policy must be “decided upon and implemented as quickly as possible” to avoid anxiety and uncertainty in the field. The military must “to convey a new policy that ends discrimination as simply as possible and to impose the minimum of changes on personnel,” the group found. Larry Korb also notes that, British, Canadian, Australian, and Israeli forces all dropped the ban quickly once ordered to do so by the courts without any adverse consequences. In fact, the British dropped the ban within one month after announcing that they would comply with a European Court of Human Rights decision that said that the ban on gays violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
The WonkLine: October 22, 2010
The WonkLine: October 22, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest public policy news. 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.
Education
“College seniors who graduated in 2009 had an average of $24,000 in student loan debt, up 6 percent from 2008,” according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt.
“Companies that run colleges and trade schools for profit are mounting a full-tilt, high-dollar campaign against an Obama administration effort to tighten rules for their access to federal aid,” the Washington Post reports.
“Teachers have no First Amendment free-speech protection for curricular decisions they make in the classroom,” a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. “Only the school board has ultimate responsibility for what goes on in the classroom,” the court said.
Immigration
Senate Republicans accused Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday of adopting a “lax approach” to immigration enforcement, citing reports that dismissals of deportation cases have surged — a claim DHS disputes.
New television and radio ads paid for by the Democratic National Committee will start airing nationally on Univision as part of a $1 million campaign by the DNC to reach out to Latino voters.
Robert de Posada, the man behind ads telling Latinos not to vote revealed his perverse logic: The losses Democrats suffer during the 2010 midterms will, in turn, force them to do something about immigration reform during the lame-duck period.
National Security
“Bombings rippled through northwestern Pakistan Friday, killing six soldiers in the tribal region and three people outside a mosque in Peshawar.”
“Israel needs good ties with the United States to survive and must be more understanding of U.S. demands over securing peace with the Palestinians, Israeli President Shimon Peres said in remarks aired on Friday.”
“Military leaders from across the globe believe North Korea’s nuclear program poses ‘the most serious threat’ to the Asia Pacific region, officials said at a high-level meeting that wrapped up on Friday.”
Economy
If Congress doesn’t act by the end of November, 1.2 million people will lose their unemployment benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that “32 states have adopted rules making it easier to qualify for food stamps since 2007. In all, 38 states have loosened eligibility standards.”
The Public-Private Investment Program, a Treasury Department program “aimed at reviving the mortgage-backed securities market,” has “returned more than triple what stocks or bonds gained in the past year.”
Health Care
“A group of large employers, including Wal-Mart, General Electric Co., Boeing and Delta Air Lines, have joined forces to push for healthcare payment reform.”
“An Associated Press-GfK poll found likely voters evenly split on whether the law should be scrapped or retooled to make even bigger changes in the way Americans get their health care.”
“The future of diabetes in America looks bleak, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report out today, with cases projected to double, even triple, by 2050.”
Justice
Washington state supreme court Justices Richard Sanders and James Johnson claimed at a recent court meeting that race discrimination plays no role in the higher incarceration rates among African-Americans. In Sanders’ words, “certain minority groups” are “disproportionally represented in prison because they have a crime problem.”
A 1992 Supreme Court decision permitting states to restrict campaign materials in a polling place apparently does not apply to the Tea Party.
Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, asked that her name be removed from a right-wing memo arguing that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.
Climate Change
Seeking to “out-coal” GOP candidate Rand Paul, Kentucky Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jack Conway supports mountaintop removal mining, arguing there are “technological advances” that provide new ways to “minimize” the devastation.
“Devastating floods spreading from northeastern Thailand have left 17 people dead over the past two weeks.”
“The signs of climate change were all over the Arctic this year — warmer air, less sea ice, melting glaciers — which probably means this weather-making region will not return to its former, colder state,” scientists reported on Thursday.
LGBT Equality
“‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is back on the books, but just five senior military officials will be able to discharge service members for violating it, the Pentagon said Thursday.”
“The antigay National Organization for Marriage is ramping up its fight to run political ads unconstrained by election law requirements in states including New York and Rhode Island.”
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that messages from U.S. religious pulpits are connected to the rising rates of suicide among gay youths, according to a new poll.”
Burr: ‘Founders’ Wrote 14th Amendment, Repealing DADT Could Require Changes In ‘Accommodations’
Burr: ‘Founders’ Wrote 14th Amendment, Repealing DADT Could Require Changes In ‘Accommodations’
During tonight’s North Carolina senate debate, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said he was against changing the 14th amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship, but said “it is important for the courts to determine” if the “founders” intended to allow for the practice:
BURR ON THE 14th: But I think when you have a debate in the country and that issue is raised, then it’s important for us to have that arbitrator, the courts to come in and tell us did our founders, when they wrote the 14th, did they have something else envisioned?
But the opposite should happen to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Burr insisted. That policy should be taken out of the courts and left to Congress. He didn’t know if being gay was a choice but worried that repealing the policy would require the military to change “the accommodations for troops”:
BURR ON DADT: Now personally I don’t see a reason to reverse it. But that’s a personal opinion. I think the country should have a debate. And what we should do is we should wait until the Department of Defense has gotten back the survey of those individuals who serve…. But I’m confident of this—that this is the wrong time to change this policy. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of troops deployed. We don’t yet know what we might have to do, from a standpoint of changing the accommodations for troops if the policy changed.
Watch a compilation:
As Pam Spaulding points out, Burr’s concern about “soap dropping in the shower,” so to speak, is unfounded. American soldiers are already showering alongside gay troops and so are the foreign troops who serve alongside openly gay servicemembers. None of our 25 allies that allow open service segregate troops on the basis of sexual orientation. As Larry Korb argues in this report, “the militaries of Great Britain, Canada, and Israel amply demonstrate that lifting the ban on openly gay service will not require the U.S. military to provide separate housing, shower, or other common-use facilities for gay and lesbian service members.” In fact, even General Carl Mundy, commandant of the Marine Corps from 1991 to 1995 and an opponent of a repeal, has predicted that segregating the forces “would be absolutely disastrous in the armed forces. … It would destroy any sense of cohesion or teamwork or good order and discipline.”
On the topic of health care, Burr said that he supported provisions that ban insurance companies from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions and close the Medicare Part D doughnut hole, but insisted that the Affordable Care Act must still be repealed.
“Actually, Judy, those provisions are acceptable to me and most Republicans and most Americans,” he said. “I think it’s important to realize we could have the elimination of pre-existing conditions tomorrow. We could have the elimination of lifetime caps tomorrow. We could begin to close the doughnut hole tomorrow. But you can’t fix the current health care bill that the president passed. And the truth is it doesn’t close the doughnut hole.”
As It Was Outsourcing Jobs And Making Billions, Fiorina’s Corporation Claimed Tax Credit For ‘Small Start-Ups’
As It Was Outsourcing Jobs And Making Billions, Fiorina’s Corporation Claimed Tax Credit For ‘Small Start-Ups’
On the campaign trail, California’s Republican Senate nominee Carly Fiorina has repeatedly defended the decision to outsource thousands of jobs that tech giant Hewlett-Packard made while she was its CEO. “During my time at Hewlett Packard, yes, I had to make some tough choices like families and businesses all across California are making tough choices. China is fighting for our jobs,” she said.
But at the same time that she was shipping positions overseas — and HP was raking in billions in profits — Fiorina also claimed California tax credits meant to encourage start-up companies to invest in manufacturing equipment (and presumably create jobs here in the U.S.):
While Fiorina was chief executive of the computer giant, the state was hospitable enough to grant the company a controversial $13-million tax refund even though, state officials said, it had already used credits to offset some income tax bills…HP was awarded $13 million in 2005, when the company posted net earnings of $2.5 billion. That year, California faced a $6-billion budget gap and slashed funding for public health programs, education and law enforcement. In asking for the rebates, the companies cited provisions of a law that state officials said were designed to encourage small start-ups to invest in manufacturing equipment.
Considering that it was founded in 1939, HP calling itself a start-up is obviously a bit of a stretch. According to the Los Angeles Times, “in years before the vote, Hewlett-Packard made $20,000 in political donations to the four members of the five-member Board of Equalization who approved the tax relief,” which may have greased the skids a bit.
This credit is California’s version of a problem plaguing the tax code at the federal level: the proliferation of credits and handouts to mature, profitable companies. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with trying to incentivize actual start-up industries, but there’s no reason to be giving companies that can clearly stand on their own two feet taxpayer money, particularly when states and the federal government are facing their own severe fiscal constraints.
Nowadays, Fiorina spends a healthy portion of her time bashing her state’s economic policies, telling CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, “the facts are we’re destroying jobs in this state through bad government policy.” But during her tenure as CEO, Fiorina clearly had no qualms about accepting tax credits meant to create and preserve jobs and then shipping positions overseas anyway. I guess we should expect nothing less from someone who refers to outsourcing as “right-shoring.”
Orszag To Democrats: You Should Have Included Malpractice Reform In Affordable Care Act
Orszag To Democrats: You Should Have Included Malpractice Reform In Affordable Care Act
Peter Orszag laments in the New York Times today about the Democrats’ failure to include more robust malpractice reform in the Affordable Care Act, noting that “what’s needed is a much more aggressive national effort to protect doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines“:
The health care reform act that Congress passed earlier this year included a modest set of state pilot projects, including one in Oregon that is intended to experiment with this approach. But these pilots are small; the project in Oregon, for example, has only $300,000 in financing.
What’s needed is a much more aggressive national effort to protect doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines. That’s the only way that malpractice reform could broadly promote the adoption of best practices. [...]
The health care reform act that Congress passed earlier this year included a modest set of state pilot projects, including one in Oregon that is intended to experiment with this approach. But these pilots are small; the project in Oregon, for example, has only $300,000 in financing.
What’s needed is a much more aggressive national effort to protect doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines. That’s the only way that malpractice reform could broadly promote the adoption of best practices.
Indeed, when I spoke to former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) several weeks ago, he too indicated that malpractice reform was probably a missed opportunity that would have been politically difficult to incorporate into this effort. “I’m actually not surprised, I’m disappointed that we’ve failed to go further on some of these issues. I think the President is a realist, he’s a pragmatist, he needed to ensure that we could bring a bill, maybe not with everything he/we wanted across the line,” Daschle told me. “I think he felt it would be hard to hold Democratic caucuses together moving a bill that went further. Ultimately, I’m confident that it’s going to happen….it was probably a bridge too far in this legislative effort.”
To be clear, malpractice costs make up only a small percentage of national health care expenditures and malpractice reform does not significantly decrease physicians’ anxiety of being sued. But it’s an issue worth tackling, since developing sensible solutions could improve quality and increase the number of physicians. The good news is, as I’ve been chronicling here, HHS is already funding some promising pilot projects that could provide a template for any future legislative efforts.
UVA Fights Back Against Cuccinelli’s Climate Witch Hunt
UVA Fights Back Against Cuccinelli’s Climate Witch Hunt
Our guest blogger is Luke Cole, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was confronted at the University of Virginia for targeting one of its scientists in his crusade against the science of global warming. Despite the over $350,000 incurred by the University of Virginia to defend climate scientist Michael Mann and the university’s Department of Environmental Sciences from Cuccinelli’s global warming witch hunt, the UVA College Republicans invited Cuccinelli to an informal speaking engagement last week. Over 25 students protesting the AG’s actions greeted Cuccinelli with signs including “God Hates Data,” “Skeptical of Cuccinelli,” and “Science: Not Determined By Popular Vote.” Cuccinelli was also confronted by a UVA environmental policy professor during the Q&A. The following day, Cuccinelli wrote on his Twitter account:
Awesome day in central Virginia – gorgeous in the fall! Lively discussion at UVA – only rude person was a prof, students were great.
Cuccinelli spoke briefly of his civil investigative demands against the university, claiming that the university continues to support Mann despite the accepted view that his findings were falsified and have been disproved — neither of which are true.
During the question and answer section of the visit, Professor Vivian Thomson, an environmental policy expert who is on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Sciences and the Department of Politics at UVA and who regulated air quality in Virginia for eight years as a member (and Vice Chair) of the State Air Pollution Control Board, questioned Mr. Cuccinelli’s claims about the science of climate change and the actions undertaken by the US EPA to date, which I captured on my smartphone:
Thomson asked if he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s conclusions in Massachusetts v EPA (2007) that “the harms associated with climate change are serious and well-recognized?”
Cuccinelli responded that Massachusetts v EPA was all about legal standing.
Mr. Cuccinelli also implied that EPA is undertaking a costly cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases. Professor Thomson observed that the Agency is not undertaking a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. EPA’s regulations to date have included (a) clean vehicle standards that will increase fuel efficiency and enhance energy security that should save motorists thousands of dollars over the life of their vehicles, and whose economic benefits far outweigh their costs; and, (b) a regulatory relief rule that exempts many small and medium-sized businesses from regulation for their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The costs that I am talking about are analogous to cap-and-trade, not that they are cap-and-trade,” Cuccinelli admitted. Professor Thomson asked Cuccinelli if he could share the cost studies that formed the basis for his claims about the costs of EPA’s actions to date. He had no such cost studies to offer. Read the rest of this entry »
UVA also asked the county court to put the case on hold while the Virginia Supreme Court resolves an appeal Cuccinelli filed seeking to overturn a previous August ruling rejecting his investigation.
In Response To Choi, Jarrett Insists Obama Must Appeal DADT Ruling, Says Frustration Should Be Directed At Congress
In Response To Choi, Jarrett Insists Obama Must Appeal DADT Ruling, Says Frustration Should Be Directed At Congress
This morning, Lt. Dan Choi denounced White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett for suggesting that those who urge the administration not to appeal a recent federal court decision overturning Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell don’t “actually understand” President Obama’s duty to defend existing laws. “I’m so absolutely upset at the things she could be saying at this moment,” he began. “Valerie Jarrett said that gay people, some of us should try to understand the politics and the situation and that we are a nation of laws. Well we understand that, we don’t need a lecture from Valerie Jarrett on that.”
This afternoon, Jarrett appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room and doubled down on her argument that the Justice Department must appeal the ruling, insisted that Obama can’t change the policy through executive order and falsely suggested that Obama has already admitted that the policy is unconstitutional:
JARRETT: [Obama] can’t simply sign an executive order to revoke it or he would have. So we’re asking Congress to repeal it. And until then, the Justice Department has no choice but to defend the laws that are on the books and that’s what the Justice Department is doing. But we want it to end and end as soon as possible.
BLITZER: One legal scholar suggested today that perhaps the president could go ahead do what he needs to do, but at the same time make it clear to everyone that he thinks this law is unconstitutional.
JARRETT: He has done that. He did that as recently as last week at a town hall meeting. He said that he thinks this law should be absolutely repealed. He does not believe in this law. [...]
BLITZER: Will you push for repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell during the lame duck session?
JARRETT: I know the president has said he wants it repealed as quickly as possible….we share the frustration of people who think it should be done right away. We wish it had been done sooner. But we are determined to get it done.
BLITZER: If Dan Choi were here what would you say to him?
JARRETT: I appreciate his frustration. I share his frustration and I understand that for somebody who has served proudly in the military that he thinks this is an outrage. We think this is an outrage, too. And we think that focus should be directed at Congress. Because Congress is the one that passed it in the first place. Congress is the one who should repeal it.
Watch it:
LGBT advocates have argued that Obama could also use his stop-loss authority to prevent the military from discharging individuals based on their sexual orientation and have claimed that the White House does not have to appeal the ruling if he believes that it is unconstitutional.
This morning, Ted Olson — former Solicitor General under President George W. Bush — agreed with this emerging consensus, saying “It would be appropriate for them to say ‘the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that.’”
Significantly, Jarrett also refused to say that Obama would lobby for repeal during the lame duck session and incorrectly suggested that he had said that the law is unconstitutional during the MTV town hall. At that event, Obama dodged the question and instead reiterated his promise that “This policy will end and it will end on my watch.”
Conservative Latino Coalition Distances Itself From Founder And His Ad Telling Latinos Not To Vote
Conservative Latino Coalition Distances Itself From Founder And His Ad Telling Latinos Not To Vote
Today, Capital Wire posted a press release issued by the conservative Latino Coalition denouncing the controversial ads released by Latinos for Reform, another right-leaning political group, which told Latinos not to vote. Latino Coalition president Hector V. Barreto stated:
The Latino Coalition believes in holding all our elected representatives accountable, by actively participating in the democratic process. At the heart of this process is our right and duty as citizens to vote. That we have not achieved Comprehensive Immigration Reform, yet, should motivate us to deepen our participation, not withdraw to the sidelines. [...] What is clear is that any message of abstention to Latinos is terribly ill-founded and contrary to our best interests.
Earlier this week, the president of Latinos for Reform, Robert de Posada, tried to tell MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that the Spanish-version of the ad was more tempered and only called on Latinos not to vote for candidates who betrayed them (the Spanish ad vaguely makes this point, but later clearly tells them not to vote at all). Also, when O’Donnell pointed out that “there are no other Latino organizations on board with this,” de Posada told him that he was simply listening to “a group of [Latino] leaders in Washington, DC who depend on access to the White House.”
Watch de Posada’s interview on MSNBC:
The Latino Coalition’s statement debunks de Posada’s first claim: “the spot’s Spanish translation deviates significantly from its English version, by widening blame to both political parties –as opposed to its English counterpart, which focuses on Democrats – and urging Latino voters not to vote in any election, as opposed to the specific instruction in the English-language spot not to vote in Congressional races only.”
Furthermore, the Latino Coalition also doesn’t have much to do with the current White House. In fact, what their press release curiously doesn’t mention is that the Latino Coalition was founded and led by Robert de Posada himself.
De Posada told Talking Points Memo earlier this week that he created the Hispanic Business Roundtable in 1994, which later became the Latino Coalition which he led until 2007. In fact, when Barreto became president, de Posada issued a statement saying “As national chairman, Hector Barreto will be a leader that helps set the
community on the right course to greater prosperity.”
After Stay Of Injunction, Pentagon Will Require Additional Approval For DADT Discharges
After Stay Of Injunction, Pentagon Will Require Additional Approval For DADT Discharges
Earlier today, Marc Ambidner suggested that the Pentagon — which on Tuesday sent a guidance to recruiters instructing them to accept gay and lesbian enrollees — may adopt a more lenient approach towards enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell following the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ temporary stay of the policy. At a briefing this afternoon, officials hinted that they may be pursing a softer approach towards the ban, telling reporters that discharges will now require the approval of the “service branch secretary.” In other words, only five people in the entire Department of Defense will be able to discharge a gay soldier under the policy:
Discharges under the military’s ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy will now take the approval of the service branch secretary, and only in consultation with the defense department general counsel and the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, according to a pair of memoranda issued by senior military leadership today.
Until further notice, pursuant to a memorandum from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a follow-up memorandum from Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Clifford Stanley, no service member can be discharged under DADT without the ”personal approval of the secretary of the military department concerned, and only in coordination with me and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense.”
A senior defense department lawyer briefed reporters on Thursday afternoon about the memos, saying, ”These two memos are primarily in reaction to … the temporary stay last night. We are clearly in a legally uncertain territory.”
The temporary stay will likely remain in effect until after October 25, when the court decides whether to leave it in place pending an appeal of Judge Virginia Phillips’ ruling that the policy is unconstitutional.
Read the new memorandum HERE.
We note again for Servicemembers, that altering their personal conduct during this period, in reaction to last week's injunction, may have adverse consequences for themselves or others depending upon the state of the law. I also emphasize again, that it remains the policy of the Department of Defense not to ask Servicemembers or applicants about their sexual orientation, to treat all members with dignity and respect and to ensure maintenance of good order and discipline.
Once Seen As Victors Of Health Reform, Hospitals Now Turning Against Democrats In The Midterms
Once Seen As Victors Of Health Reform, Hospitals Now Turning Against Democrats In The Midterms
Jon Walker notices that the American Hospital Association — which had agreed to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years if health reform covered at least 94% of Americans and didn’t include a public option — is now turning against the administration and “spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to help elect Republicans this November.”
On one hand, the news is not too surprising. The industry believes that helping elect Republicans will probably bring about looser regulations and less strenuous spending cuts from the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which the GOP has promised to repeal. On the other hand, while all of the health care interest groups won important concessions from the new law, none were more successful than the hospital industry. During the 15 months beginning in January 2009 and ending in March, when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, hospitals spent approximately $108 million on lobbying and got a lot for their effort.
Here are the cuts they accepted:
- Lowering the annual update rates paid to hospitals.
- Reducing Medicare payments for excessive and preventable readmissions.
- Lowering bonus payments for hospitals who treat the undeserved: Currently the government pays about $45 billion dollars a year in DSH payments to help hospitals afford uncompensated care. Since health care reform will insure 34 million Americans over a 10-year period, the number of ‘uncompensated’ care cases will decrease by as much as 80%, but DSH payments will only be cut by some 15%.
But, as the Tennessee Hospital Association’s (THA) concluded, the above cuts would still allow hospitals to net about $16 billion from reform. “The breakdown estimates that the industry will receive additional money of about $171 billion over those same 10 years as a result of reimbursements for newly insured patients…In other words, the hospitals would give up $155 billion in cost cuts, but take in $171 billion in new money — a net gain of $16 billion. What’s more, the Tennessee association notes that the deal delays most of the industry’s cost givebacks until the second half the agreement’s 10-year year period — well after the hospitals have enjoyed some of the benefits of the new money they’re expecting from expanded insurance coverage.”
“[T]he bond prices and stock prices will tell you that most hospitals are winners, at least in this bill,” Thomas Scully, who ran CMS from 2001 to 2004, explained at a recent roundtable for Health Affairs. “Assuming there are no subsequent bills, hospitals are probably the biggest winners. They got hardly touched and got a lot of new money,” Scully said.
Hospitals are also protected from cuts under IPAB through 2019 — but as their latest political manoeuvrings suggest, that still wasn’t good enough. After all, why tolerate any cuts — no matter how far into the future — when you there is a good chance that you can help elect a party that will make them all go away?
Tea Party Defends Climate Pollution As Lord’s Will
Tea Party Defends Climate Pollution As Lord’s Will
In a front-page article in the New York Times, John Broder noted that opposition to the science of global warming has become “an article of faith” among Tea Party conservative activists. In addition to libertarians who believe “efforts to address climate change are seen as a conspiracy to impose world government and a sweeping redistribution of wealth,” others — prodded by the “preaching” of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and others — use their Biblical faith to justify their denial of the destructive power of coal and oil pollution. Tea Party organizers in Rep. Baron Hill’s (D-IN) district told Broder their denial of pollution was consistent with the Bible’s teachings:
“I read my Bible. He made this earth for us to utilize.” — Norman Dennison, founder of the Corydon Tea Party
“Being a strong Christian, I cannot help but believe the Lord placed a lot of minerals in our country and it’s not there to destroy us.” — Lisa Deaton, founder of We the People Indiana
Of course, the Bible teaches not only that earth’s bounty is a gift to humanity, but also that we must be its shepherds:
The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land. Lev. 25:23-24
I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and you made my inheritance detestable. Jer. 2:7
“These Tea Party people represent a fringe view not only in politics, but also in religion,” Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Politics, tells the Wonk Room. “The majority of Christians and other people of faith are supportive of protecting the environment precisely because of their religious beliefs, including the belief in God as creator.”
Many Christians, across the spectrum from evangelical to mainline to progressive, as well as scientists, celebrated when a group of evangelicals issued a statement in 2006 called “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.” This “biblically based moral witness” sets its theological claim for the urgency of climate change action in the biblical view of God as creator, and that damaging the creation is “an offense against God himself.”
“The world is less than it might be so long as human beings are less than they might be, since the capacity of human beings to shape the material environment into a sign of justice and generosity is blocked by human selfishness,” Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said in 2009. “In the doomsday scenarios we are so often invited to contemplate, the ultimate tragedy is that a material world capable of being a manifestation in human hands of divine love is left to itself, as humanity is gradually choked, drowned or starved by its own stupidity.”
Religious leaders from Christian and other faiths are also mobilizing to fight big oil’s Proposition 23 effort kill California’s climate protection law. “My Christian faith calls me to care for my neighbor and all that God has created,” explained Rev. Dean W. Nelson, Bishop, Southwest California Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in a press announcement today. “Proposition 23 calls us to look back, not forward, and to cast a blind eye to the urgent consequences of our addiction to fossil fuels. These consequences include affects on human health, human-caused climate change and its threat to food and water supplies and densely populated coastal areas, and our economic vulnerability to global energy politics and prices.”
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