Category: Domestic issues

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Barack Obama Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

The Difference Between Obama’s Health Care Reform and the Republican’s Health Care Reform

[digg-reddit-me]David Brooks, struggling to find some coherent ideological distinctions in the messy struggle over health care:

[A]s Yuval Levin has pointed out in National Review, the Democrats believe the answer is to create a highly regulated insurance system with inefficiencies eliminated through rational rules. The Republicans believe that the answer is to create a genuine market with clear price signals, empowered consumers and an evolving process.

If only it were so clear. It’s worth pointing out again how similar the current Obama-backed bill is to the Dole-Chafee bill proposed to counter Bill Clinton in 1993 (as I have before.) Both that 1994 Republican bill and this one seek to create a genuine market with clear price signals – as, it seems, does the main Republican proposals today. The difference between the Dole-Chafee bill and Obama’s bill on the one hand, and the current Republican efforts today isn’t that one sees government bureaucracy as the answer and the other sees the market as the answer. The difference is that one holds that the government can and should provide clear rules to prevent corporations from abusing their position and their customers, and the other assumes that the market will sort it all out eventually. It’s the difference between an open but regulated market and an unregulated one. It’s the difference between as much reform as the insurance industry can abide by and insurance executives’ wet dreams of glorious profits without red tape making them actually provide something of value to their customers.

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Barack Obama Health care National Security Politics The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Obama Chooses Policy Over Politics

Ezra Klein:

[W]hat appears to be happening is that Barack Obama is listening to his policy people. He didn’t scale back the health-care reform bill because they convinced him that the different pieces didn’t work on their own. He’s trying to close Guantanamo because a lot of people who work on this stuff think we should close Guantanamo. That’s the thing about electing a smart technocrat as president: He’s swayed by smart, technocratic arguments. The political people are being used to help sell and shepherd the policy, and to figure out how much of the policy can pass Congress, but they seem to be losing the major arguments over what that policy should be.

That sounds about right. I don’t know how effective this style of governing is though. I expected more of a pivot from the White House focusing more on politics than policy after Scott Brown’s defeat. I don’t think that’s ideal – but it seems necessary if Obama wants to keep Congress Democratic. It doesn’t seem any longer that this is the lesson the White House took.

Or it is, but they’re not letting their timing be determined by these dramatic events. Perhaps, as he has so often, Obama plans on waiting out the negative media cycle and then going for the win.

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Health care

Lamar Alexander Defends Senate from Those Who Say It Needs Reform

[digg-reddit-me]Watching Lamar Alexander being interviewed on This Week it struck me that he was defending how the least popular institution in America works. Being a politician, he wouldn’t admit this outright – but his meaning was rather clear:

Well, you know, former governors — and I’m one — always have a hard time with the Senate. You know, we’re — we’re used — governors are used to saying, “Let’s go this way,” and a legislator in a reactor to things. So that’s part of the problem.

According to Alexander, the problem is that governors expect to get things done – that’s “part of the problem.” Lamar Alexander defends the the Senate as an institution designed to slow things down; but he further defends the current status quo which combines recent rules changes and a changed political atmosphere, to create an institution now seemingly designed to prevent any major legislation from being passed at all. Lamar Alexander though – and many other Republicans these days – defend this status quo. Alexander claims that this inability to create big programs means we instead will have to adopt a piecemeal approach, which is better. From an interview with Ezra Klein:

It is arrogant to imagine that 100 senators are wise enough to reform comprehensively a health-care system that constitutes 17 percent of the world’s largest economy and affects 300 million Americans of disparate backgrounds and circumstances.

He lists all the failed bills that attempted to find comprehensive solutions to problems that failed in the Senate: Immigration and social security reform under Bush, health care reform under Clinton, health care and climate change under Obama. But Alexander sees this as a good thing:

We don’t do comprehensive well in the Senate. It’s not because we don’t do our job well. It’s because we’re such a complicated country.

The common understanding, and probably the true one is that Alexander – like George Will – apparently has come around to this disdain for comprehensive solutions in the period since a Democrat took office. Accusations always fly back and forth over convenient flip flops regarding institutional power and procedures once the balance of powers changes. This isn’t news – and its hard to figure out how to approach this issue if you don’t take the position being offered at face value, even if you can see the partisan strings that seem to be motivating the change in position. Even Alexander’s position seems at odds with the Republican plans he cites and supports – allowing insurance to be sold across state lines for example which is an extremely radical move.

But if you squint you may see some consistency in Alexander’s positions. Alexander may not be deriding radicalism as it seems, but, as his words say, “comprehensive” radicalism. The problem isn’t then that the Senate might introduce a radical change that entirely changes America’s health care system – it’s that the solution is comprehensive and complicated. One thing each of the comprehensive failures Alexander points out have in common is that they all involved difficult and contentious issues with many interests groups competing and the reform attempted to preserve many elements of the status quo. The only status quo that I’ve heard Lamar Alexander defend however is the broken legislative body of which he is a member.

On the other hand, Alexander was a major proponent of Bush’s tax cuts which were radical, budget-busting legislation that significantly re-wrote America’s social contract. They weren’t part of some comprehensive plan though – they were just one isolated measure enacted (perhaps) without regard to the consequences or preserving the status quo. (Or, actually several isolated measures.) He supported the Iraq War which was certainly radical – but once again, didn’t seem to be part of any comprehensive plan to accomplish anything. He supported Medicare Part D – which seem much closer to being comprehensive, but could also be seen as merely “fixing a hole in the roof” and helping out the seniors who he needs to get reelected.

Senator Alexander’s problem then isn’t with radical measures passing the Senate. It is with well-thought out and complicated legislation – with, in his words, “comprehensive” legislation.

[Image by Talk Radio News licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

What Obama Is Trying to Accomplish With the Bipartisan Health Care Summit

One thing I had noticed but not managed to fit into my post on why Republicans didn’t want to go to the health care summit that they had been demanding was how perfectly Obama’s proposed summit fit into “the Obama method.” Jonathan Chait makes the point I would have:

Obama knows perfectly well that the Republicans have no serious proposals to address the main problems of the health care system and have no interest (or political room, given their crazy base) in handing him a victory of any substance. Obama is bringing them in to discuss health care so he can expose this reality.

I’m not saying this is some kind of genius maneuver. I’m not even saying it will work. (I wouldn’t bet against it, though.) I’m just saying that this — not starting over, and not pleading for bipartisan cover — is what Obama is trying to accomplish.

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Barack Obama Criticism Health care National Security Politics The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

How the Media Undermines Civility

[digg-reddit-me]Civility in political discourse is a difficult thing to maintain – as people engage in politics often because they believe strongly in what they are advocating. One of the ways to maintain this is to politely refrain from accusing your opponents of dastardly deeds – and instead, be circumspect and try to make uncontroversial points of agreement that undermine your opponents. For example, when debating the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate political spending, you might plausibly say in the course of argument that, “Without free speech, we would live in tyranny,” or “Attacking the First Amendment is un-American.” While the thrust of your argument may be that your opponents are – given the rest of what you’re saying – undermining the First Amendment, you don’t claim that they are advocating tyranny or are un-American. You don’t call them names, in other words. You criticize their actions as you perceive them. It’s a fine line – but an important one.

However, the news is 24/7, right?

And every minute needs to be filled up with some new scandal, some new story-of-the-day. This is how uncontroversial statements become provocative headlines – specifically provocative headlines that tap into a narrative the public already knows. These provocative headlines then quickly become talking points for someone as they attempt to use the news to push their message. So, for example, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer publish an op-ed in USA Today which – rather uncontroversially – claims:

Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.

Suddenly, the right wing begins complaining of the McCarthyite push for health care. (Pelosi called the Tea Party crowd “un-American”!!!!)

Now, again, John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor, writes in an op-ed for USA Today:

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill.

Relatively uncontroversial, you would think. But for those lacking the time to read this short piece, Jake Tapper summarizes it:

WH: Some Critics ‘Serving the Goals of al Qaeda’

Matt Drudge though saw the need to remove a few qualifiers in his big headline of the day:

WHITE HOUSE: OBAMA CRITICS HELPING AL QAEDA

The common thread here is this: in the midst of making an argument, an uncontroversial point is made. News reporters, eager to make their quota of new scandals for the day, remove all qualifiers from the sentence, take only a word or two, and recast the entire argument as pure demonization of the overall target of the piece.

This is one of the essential aspects of the Freak Show that is our Washington news.

——

Of course, some politicians seem to deliberately cross over these lines to make their points. Perhaps I’m biased here – and if so, tell me. But I think there’s a difference in how Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin often talk. At one point, for example, Cheney claimed that:

I think [the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad as a civilian is] likely to give encouragement — aid and comfort — to the enemy.

By rather directly describing the Obama administration’s actions as meeting the legal standard of treason, Cheney seems to be crossing a line. And of course, Sarah Palin famously “asked”:

Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?

I wonder – is it just my bias that makes me see the distinction between these two sets of statements? Or are they clearly of a different sort?

[Image by me and sysop licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

Why the Republicans Don’t Want to Go to the Obama Health Care Summit They’ve Been Demanding

[digg-reddit-me]When Obama agreed to the Republicans’ demand for a televised summit to discuss health care, Republican leadership was faced with a quandary: How could they say no and not look like the bad guys?

Their solution is apparently to demand that Obama preemptively give up the reforms he has been working for the past 8 months on (the framework of reforms that is broadly popular even though the legislation creating the framework doesn’t poll well). To make their demands even more unreasonable, they also demand that he tell everyone in advance what he plans on proposing to allow Republicans “at least 72 hours beforehand” to figure out reasons to oppose it and give up his only way to push his agenda without Republican support.

Eric Cantor and John Boehner – the Republican Whip and Leader – made these demands in a letter that didn’t include an ultimatum that they would boycott the summit if their demands weren’t met. But their tone was clearly meant to agitate. They must know that they didn’t come off well in their last televised back-and-forth with the president – and they must also know that despite recent polling, Democratic health care ideas are far more popular than Republican ones. But they also suspect – rightly in my opinion – that whoever the public blames for scuttling these talks will hold this against them.

The White House is eager to go forward – because it is difficult for them to lose this: The public largely believes reform is needed. The Republicans so far do not agree on an alternative. The Democrats – after great struggle – have coalesced around a “next step,” which is undoubtedly part of the reason the Republicans want this “next step” off the table. This plan the Republicans are trying to scrap is – indeed – similar to the Republican alternative to Bill Clinton’s plan, a point which the president has made. Yet the Republicans cannot endorse this – or any – alternative offered by the Democrats for partisan reasons because it will hurt their prospects in the 2010 midterms, giving Obama and the Democrats something to run on in 2010 and 2012. And in the long term, Republicans have even more to fear, as Will Kristol explained in a confidential strategy memo on the risks of allowing Clinton’s health care plan to pass:

It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle-class by restraining the growth of government.

Further, one of the core goals of these health care reforms finally agreed to by the Democrats is to cut the long-term growth of health care costs. The rapidly growing health care costs are the largest part of the unsustainable deficits America will be facing in the long-term. The prospect of this deficit though is one of the driving forces motivating the anti-Democrat and largely pro-Republican Tea Party. At the same time, the fiscal catastrophe that would result from failing to deal with the deficit is the conscious goal of the more ideological Republicans with their “starve the beast” strategy. The ideal outcome for the Republicans would be for the Democrats to force this plan through and for it to fail miserably, either as its implementation is sabotaged by the Republicans or on its own.

There is – in other words – absolutely no fundamental incentive whatsoever for the Republicans as a party to endorse any health care reforms Democrats might want.

The Democrats alternatively will be faulted for the perceived shortcomings of the bill should it pass or not in the 2010 elections, and stand to gain significantly if the bill does anything like what it has promised. Passing such a significant piece of legislation also gives them something to rally their base around, even if some portion of the Democratic base is disappointed with the bill itself.

The fundamental politics of this situation has determined what has happened and will happen: that the Democrats will seek a compromise, and be strung along by the Republicans who will never come to an agreement. The President’s summit on health care with the Republicans and Democrats seems the perfect venue to demonstrate these fundamentals to the public – which is exactly why the Republicans are seeking a way out.

Update: Ezra Klein suggests a brilliant counter-proposal for the White House to offer:

I think the administration should release a counter-proposal. They will agree to literally every one of the GOP’s demands — including the ones that don’t make any sense — in return for one, simple promise: The final legislation is guaranteed an up-or-down vote in the House and the Senate. No filibusters. No delays. No procedural tricks. If the GOP wants a clean process, I bet a deal can be struck here.

The problem is that this type of proposal would muddy the waters – and cause those individuals paying less attention to not know who to blame. Whatever the last deal offered was will be the primary focus of attention. Better it be this sham of a Republican proposal.

[Image by talkradionews licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Domestic issues Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

Why Bipartisanship Is Impossible: The parties are locked in a zero-sum struggle for control of the government

Ezra Klein:

The problem with the Senate is not that you can’t get 60 people out of 100 people to agree on something. It’s that roughly half the folks will lose any chance at a promotion, and they may even lose their job, if they agree with the other half. Bipartisanship isn’t impossible because people disagree on the finer points of American policy, though many of them certainly do. It’s impossible because the parties are locked in a zero-sum struggle for control, and you don’t gain an advantage if you give the other side a major accomplishment and then tell the American people they really did a good job reaching out to your and your colleagues. That’s the equivalent of saying to your employer, “Don’t give me a promotion, and in fact, think hard about whether you might want to lay me off next year.”

As I’ve said before, it is very near to impossible to build out an ideological model explaining why Republicans who voted for the deficit-financed Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit would vote against the deficit-neutral health-care reform bill. But it’s very easy to build out a model explaining why Republicans would vote for a bill that would help them if it passed and against a bill that would hurt them if it failed. Same goes for Democrats. Good-faith disagreement is not the explanation that best fits the data.

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Domestic issues Politics The Opinionsphere

Richard Shelby’s Brazen Exposure of Senate Flaws

I fear Josh Marshall was right in this prediction regarding the outrage over Senator Richard Shelby’s blanket hold of all of Obama’s nominees until he got a guarantee of some pork spending:

Perhaps, like so many other times, this will be today’s outrage that is the new normal by tomorrow.

Marc Ambinder gets the politics of this exactly right in his description.

Yet, the outrage seems to be dying down. The fact that someone like Shelby has this power doesn’t seem to disturb the general public as much as whether or not he is forced to go through the spectacle of using it.

Here’s hoping the Democrats find some dramatic way to showcase this dramatic exhibit of how off-the-rails the Senate has become.

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Economics Health care National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Must-Reads of the Week: Ezra Klein, Sleeper Issue of 2010, Success, Virtual Insanity, Abdulmutallab, Obstruction, and Madden

1. Ezra Klein on Rep. Paul Ryan, Health Care, and the Deficit. If you want a serious, policy-oriented daily take on health care and fiscal issues, turn to Ezra Klein. This week, he began the opinionosphere’s discussion of Rep. Paul Ryan’s serious attempt to balance the budget (which has no chance of being embraced even by the Republicans or Democrats.) Later, he interviewed Rep. Ryan – though it read more like a discussion between two serious people about fiscal policy and health care reform. Klein later attempted to see where along the political spectrum the Senate health care reform bill fell:

Take Rep. Paul Ryan’s health-care plan…as the conservative pole on this issue. Then take single-payer and place it on the other side of the spectrum. Where does the Senate bill fall?

It’s closer to Ryan’s plan than to single-payer. A lot closer, in fact.

Yet this basic fact – that Obama has taken a rather conservative approach to health care substantively similar to the 1994 plan Republicans counter-proposed to Bill Clinton – has been obscured by a Republican Party intent on obstructing Obama’s agenda to gain partisan advantage. As Klein explains, the problem is that the incentives for each party don’t line up:

[T]hat’s the underlying reality of health-care reform. Substantive compromise is easy. In fact, the bill is a substantive compromise. It’s a deficit-neutral, universal-coverage scheme that relies on the private insurance market and looks like one of the Republican alternatives from 1994. What’s hard is political compromise. Because there, the two positions are that Democrats are helped if a bill passes and Republicans make gains if a bill fails. There’s no way to split the difference between those positions.

At the same time, however, Klein castigates Democrats as well as Republicans for failing to put the national good over their own political situations:

The distinguishing feature of the budget conversation, however, is that it happens at a very abstract level. This red line needs to come down to meet this black line, and this huge number needs to eventually become this slightly-smaller number. That’s all fine for a floor speech, but when you start trying to muscle the red line into position or subtract from the very big number, things get real specific, real quick. Suddenly, you’re telling seniors that there are treatments they just can’t get and you’re telling workers that the insurance system is going to have to change. And just as Conrad doesn’t have much appetite for doing that to his constituents on the small things that most of them don’t notice, very few legislators have demonstrated much appetite for doing this to the country on the big things that pretty much everyone notices.

2. I do not accept second place for the United States of America. Edward Alden and E. J. Dionne comment on what is brewing to become the big issue of the 2010 elections, not coincidentally countering the main narrative put forth by the right wing.

3. A successful first year. Norm Ornstein and John P. Judis explain some of the significant accomplishments of Obama’s first year in office.

4. Virtual insanity. Andrew Sullivan’s main theme this week has been the virtual insanity of the Republican Party. He writes: “On every single major issue of the day, they are incoherent.” He quotes Daniel Larison:

Republicans have been treating temporary, tactical political victories as if they were far more significant, strategic victories, when, in fact, they have no political strategy worth mentioning.

Then of course are the highlights from that Daily Kos poll in which – for example – 59% of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached for something-or-other.

5. Reid v. Abdulmutallab. Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly gets some hard hits in on the ridiculousness of the Republican response to Obama’s handling of the panty-bomber. And Benen doesn’t even get into the fact that Abdulmutallab is now cooperating.

6. Obstruction. I examined some of the theories of why the Republicans are so uniformly obstructionist.

7. Madden vs. Real Life. As a football-related article for this Super Bowl weekend, Chris Suellentrop for Wired explored how the video game Madden is affecting the real game of football.

[Image by Doug Kim, used with permission of the creator, and in anticipation of the snowstorm that might rock Manhattan today as I’m commuting home.]

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Barack Obama Criticism Domestic issues Politics The Opinionsphere

Let’s keep all that talk of a failed first year in office to a minimum.

[digg-reddit-me]Andrew Sullivan pointed to two rather positive takes on the Obama administration over the past year from right wing Congress-watcher Norm Ornstein and liberal magazine reporter John P. Judis reporting on the regulatory agencies.

Judis in The New Republic:

[T]here is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for–but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.

The regulatory agencies, most of which date from one of the three great reform periods (1901–1914, 1932–1938, and 1961–1972) of the last century, were intended to smooth out the rough edges (the “externalities,” in economic jargon) of modern capitalism–from dirty air to dangerous workplaces to defective merchandise to financial corruption. With wide latitude in writing and enforcing regulations, they have been described as a “fourth branch of government.”

Judis explains several ways conservatives attempted to eviscerate the regulatory apparatus including appointing lobbyists for those being regulated to head the agencies and through the clever use of cost-benefit analysis:

The conservative version of cost-benefit analysis stressed costs rather than benefits and subjected only regulation–not deregulation–to cost-benefit scrutiny. Conservatives also sometimes adopted bizarre formulas for assessing costs and benefits. They assigned less monetary value to improvements or protections in poor communities because the residents were willing (that is, able) to pay less for them, and they used a spurious correlation between a society’s wealth and the health of its citizens to argue that the costs of regulation outweighed the benefits. Under George H.W. Bush, for example, OIRA argued that OSHA regulations on chemical contaminants would end up harming workers more than exposure to chemicals. Wrote James McRae, the acting head of OIRA, “If government regulations force firms out of business or into overseas production, employment of American workers will be reduced, making workers less healthy by reducing their income.”

(Presumably it was this article that Jon Stewart was referring to in his O’Reilly interview.)

Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute – no fan of Obama’s agenda – can’t deny the significant accomplishments of this Democratic Congress:

[T]his Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president — and that includes Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. The deep dysfunction of our politics may have produced public disdain, but it has also delivered record accomplishment.

The productivity began with the stimulus package, which was far more than an injection of $787 billion in government spending to jump-start the ailing economy. More than one-third of it — $288 billion — came in the form of tax cuts, making it one of the largest tax cuts in history, with sizable credits for energy conservation and renewable-energy production as well as home-buying and college tuition. The stimulus also promised $19 billion for the critical policy arena of health-information technology, and more than $1 billion to advance research on the effectiveness of health-care treatments.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has leveraged some of the stimulus money to encourage wide-ranging reform in school districts across the country. There were also massive investments in green technologies, clean water and a smart grid for electricity, while the $70 billion or more in energy and environmental programs was perhaps the most ambitious advancement in these areas in modern times. As a bonus, more than $7 billion was allotted to expand broadband and wireless Internet access, a step toward the goal of universal access.

And of course, this has something to do with Obama, as NPR reported:

In his first year in office, President Obama did better even than legendary arm-twister Lyndon Johnson in winning congressional votes on issues where he took a position, aCongressional Quarterly study finds.

As I wrote last week, listing some additional accomplishments:

He pulled the nation back from the brink of a financial crisis and recession without nationalizing the banks or bailing them out yet again. He moved America back from the panicked emergency measures adopted by George W. Bush in the aftermath of September 11. He salvaged some deal from Copenhagen despite the Chinese attempts to undercut America’s position. He appointed a moderate, liberal pragmatist to the Supreme Court. He has made many long-term bets in domestic and foreign policy which we have yet to see play out. And of course, there is his attempt at health care reform – combining the most significant attempt at cost control in a generation with the most significant expansion of access to medical insurance. (The two goals being surprisingly compatible as Milton Friedman acknowledged.) Though this last bill still has not had its fate decided, these are serious and substantial accomplishments that form the basis of a solid legacy.

(Of course, there are disappointments as well – but let’s keep all that talk of a failed first year in office to a minimum.)

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