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According to Politico's Mike Allen, President Obama made Ron Brownstein's non-naive-but-still-cheerleaderish party-line Orszagist praise for the Reid bill's cost-curve-bending "mandatory reading for all senior staff." TPM says Rahm Emanuel gave the homework assignment ...
1) Do they really believe in curve-bending, or do they just want us to think they really believe? Certainly the latter. But judging from Obama's earnest, respectable early David Leonhardt interview--where he easily equated curve-bending with denying grannies hip replacements--he really believes. Yikes.
2) Note that the best even the enthusiastic Brownstein can muster are sensible quotes from Robert Reischauer saying, in effect, "Hey, some of these ideas might work'. Take that to the bank! ...
3) Are these people in a cocoon? Wouldn't Obama would want to assign articles that didn't reinforce his pre-existing world view? That maybe raised plausible criticisms? You have to wonder if the reason the White House didn't delay the recent incendiary mammogram-cutback report was because they thought it would actually help them?
4) Is it a coincidence that ever since press secretary Gibbs announced a renewed emphasis on Orszag's "curve-bending" in early November support for health care reform has plunged downwards on an increasingly alarming slope? That's one curve they've bent! ... The pattern seems clear: They talk about curve-bending (in the spring) they get into trouble. They stop talking about curve-bending (in September), and health care is suddenly a fait accompli! They start again, and they're in trouble again. ... What was that about insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
P.S.: At least Brownstein, unlike Ezra Klein or the first rough draft of kausfiles, got the basic mechanism of the "Independent Medicare Advisory Board" right. Except he didn't. Brownstein writes that the
board would be required to offer cost-saving proposals when Medicare spending rises too fast; Congress could not reject its proposals without substituting equivalent savings.
No. Congress could reject its proposals without substituting equivalent savings anytime it wanted to (and could obtain the President's approval or override his veto). The Reid bill simply says Congress would have to substitute equivalent savings if it wanted to use a 'fast track' filibuster proof legislative pathway it sets up (a pathway that still allows a presidential veto). Future Congress' don't have to use that fast-track and no law Congress passes this year can make them, as far as I can see.. ...
P.P.S.: Brownstein does unearth what seems to be a second Broder-shaking delegation of sweeping rule-making power by Reid:
[I]n a little known provision, the bill authorizes the HHS Secretary to implement nationwide, without any congressional action, any reform that department actuaries certify will reduce long-term spending [E.A.]
Wow. So we've got the independent Medicare board slashing spending, subject to a formalized Congressional meddling process, and we've got the Secretary of HHS slashing spending, subject to ... any check at all? ...What if the recommendations conflict? ... I smell a new Czar! ...
P.P.P.S.: Do we really think the "IMAB" board and a grant of equivalent power to HHS will survive in the final bill? Will Congressmen really give up their power over sensitive issues like ... mammograms ... and let bureaucrats deny popular Medicare treatments to their constituents? If they don't--and if they strip or water down the provisions-- will Obama regret having made independent, expert "curve bending" seem like such an essential part of his health bill? ... Or is the purpose of making a fuss about Brownsteinian reforms just to get the bill over the hump in the Senate? ...6:27 P.M.
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[Update: This post has been corrected. New text has been underlined.***]
David Leonhardt, complaining that the House health care bill doesn't do enough to control costs, touts a particular model for imposing parsimonious changes on the nation's health care delivery system:
Twice a year, an outside advisory board sends Congress a list of suggestions for Medicare payment rates, based on the available evidence. Congress generally ignores them, in deference to the various industry groups that oppose any cuts to their payments.
We already have a wonderful model for how to avoid such interference. It’s called the Federal Reserve. The Fed is charged with setting interest rates based on economic conditions, not politics. The Senate bill would create such a commission for Medicare.
But does the Senate bill really have a cost-cutting commission that's like the Fed? The Fed is a highly independent agency whose actions take effect without approval from Congress. Maybe Congress could overturn a Fed action, but it would require a new piece of legislation, passed by both houses and signed by the president. In contrast, the current cost-cutting "MedPAC" panel submits proposals that then have to be passed as new laws by Congress or else they don't take effect (which, as Leonhardt notes, is usually what happens).
The logical middle ground would be to have an independent panel whose recommendations take effect unless they are somehow vetoed by Congress without presidential involvement,** or whose recommendations must be affirmatively passed by Congress but get the benefit of a streamlined, limited-amendment up-or-down fast-track "base closing" type of legislative process.
I assumed that the second of these obvious middle ground alternatives--rather than a "Fed" approach--had been taken when I read this description of the Reid Senate bill on Ezra Klein's blog:
The idea isn't simply that a panel of experts gets to dream up interesting reforms to try out in Medicare. It's that they are charged with making sure that Medicare hits certain growth targets, and their package of reforms has to achieve that goal. Those reforms are then sent to Congress, where Senate debate is limited to 30 hours, and amendments must be both budget neutral and "germane." This report, in other words, is exempt from the filibuster. So far as anything is ever easy to pass, this is easy to pass.
Then I read the bill. As far as I can see, it's actually a whole lot closer to Leonhardt's "Fed" model than I'd thought. In general, there is an independent panel ("IMAB"), and if Congress does nothing, its cost-cutting rules take effect. What's more, the "fast track" process described by Klein would not allow Congress to simply stop the board's rules, only to substitute its own plan to save the same amount of money. This would be a very powerful unelected board. David Broder may explode.
**********
You can read the law yourself--the relevant provision (Sec. 3403) runs from page 1000 to page 1053 here. But what it seems to say, specifically, is:
--The new 15 member "IMAB" board makes cost-cutting recommendations if Medicare spending exceeds specific targets.
--Congress then 'considers' these changes in bill form. But like other legislation, the president can veto this bill (and his veto can be overridden).
--The "fast tracking" provisions Klein discusses apply to this bill. But they also sharply restrict what the 'fast track' bill can do. Congress can't, under the fast track, just block the IMAB board's decrees. It can change them, but if it changes them it has to meet the cost-reduction targets in some other way. It's not allowed to not save money, apparently (though the Senate is allowed to do some unspecified things by 2/3 vote that I don't quite understand). In other words, the 'fast track' isn't designed to enable Congress to swiftly pass the new IMAB board's rules. The IMAB board doesn't need Congress' OK (see next paragraph). The fast track is designed to allow Congress to tinker with the IMAB board's rules as long as it reaches the same result. In this sense, the Reid fast track isn't like base closing, where Congress votes a package of cuts up or down in a special procedure. Voting down is not an option here.
--Key point: If Congress doesn't pass the fast-tracked 'tinkering' bill, the Secretary of HHS must implement the IMAB panel's recommendations.
--And Congress loses even its fast-track tinkering power after 2020, unless, by a 60% supermajority, during a specific window in the first half of 2017, while standing on one leg and humming Battle Hymn of the Republic, it passes a joint resolution discontinuing the whole process. Correction: The part about standing on one leg and humming doesn't seem to be in the final bill.
Complicated! (If I got it wrong, let me know.) The most obvious flaw seems to be this: Under the Reid bill, the way Congress react to the "IMAB" board's rules is by passing a law, subject to presidential veto, on a carefully-circumscribed "fast track." But Congress can pass a new law, subject to veto, anytime it wants on any subject, using its traditional "slow track" (or any faster track it feels like creating). The Reid bill can't stop future Congresses from doing that--passing a law simply throwing out an IMAB board recommendation, for example, without offering an alternative way to save money. Or killing the IMAB board completely (whether or not it passes this law in the first half of 2017). All the Reid reform can hope to do is prevent Congress from doing this via the specified "fast track." A meddling Congress, faced with constituents angry at Medicare cuts, might well say, in effect, 'take your fast track and shove it--we'll show you fast'.
Suppose, say, the "expert" IMAB board decrees that the feds won't pay for routine mammograms for women in their forties. How do you think Congress would react? ...
**--Several readers suggest that this "legislative veto" middle ground would be unconstitutional under the principles of INS v. Chadha. They may be right--which could be why the Reid bill envisions a fast-track legislative process that requires the President's signature, as with any regular law. But the Reid bill appears to rely on a legislative veto of its own--allowing Congress, by joint resolution, without the President's approval, to terminate the whole IMAB board in 2017. Why would it be unconstitutional to let Congress, acting alone, kill the IMAB board's rules, but not unconstitutional to let it kill the IMAB board? ... Paranoid thought: It's a trap. Proponents of a strong, Fed-like panel would love to sucker opponents into attacking it via a "joint resolution" mechanism that's later held unconstitutional and void. ...
***--Correction: Underlined words and sentences reflect a second, and I hope more accurate, reading of the bill. The "fast track" resolution is not designed to let Congress nix the board's rules, as I initially thought. It apparently only lets Congress substitute other ways to save the same amount of money. All the more reason Congress is likely to simply skip the 'fast track' entirely.
Cynical view: This entire "Fed for Medicare" provision, with its nanny-like restrictions on what Congress can do on the 'fast track,' isn't going to pass, and if it passes it won't last. It's mainly Kabuki designed to convince the CBO to "score" the whole health bill as a deficit-reducer. ... 10:40 P.M.
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Murder in the White House: I've read the Lloyd Grove's account and Steve Clemons' account and Elizabeth Drew's account--and I still don't have a clue as to why Greg Craig was forced out as White House Counsel--just that it was a bad, bad thing and was done by leaks. ... If you could force someone out merely by leaks, wouldn't Rahm Emanuel have been forced out of the Clinton White House in 1993? ... There's something here we don't know, no? Someone Craig pissed off, maybe. Someone unfireable from Chicago? (I'm just speculating, but that is the sort of thing that would fill the role of ninth planet here.) ...
Update: Time's account fills much of the void, portraying Craig as a politically tone-deaf civil liberties purist. Maybe there is another side to the story. But if Craig really did want to release photos of detainee abuse, that's enough for me. ... 11:49 P.M.
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Explainer Wanted: Why would a politician ever concede a non-blowout race until every last ballot is counted? The momentary frisson of good will can't be worth the possibility that the concession will turn out to have been a mistake--as it was for Jimmy Carter in 1980, Al Gore in 2000, and now conservative Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 congressional race. ... Hoffman will probably still lose when all the ballots are in, but his concession has already had real world consequences--it allowed Nancy Pelosi to swear in Hoffman's Democratic opponent in time to give health care reform its narrow House majority. I'm assuming the people who voted for Hoffman aren't happy with that. ... P.S.: Dick Morris claims, plausibly, that Pelosi had many Dem votes in reserve. Still, thanks to Hoffman's concession she didn't have to use them. ...
Update: Mystery Pollster answers.
One answer: They remember Ellen Sauerbrey Hoffman wants to run again next year, also counted right
I'm not convinced. You don't have to be nasty about it. Just say "Let's see how it turns out" and don't concede. ... 9:48 P.M.
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Things you thought you were getting in the auto bailout. ... Chrysler's showy electric and hybrid cars? Forget them. Now that Chrysler has your money, they're dead. ... GM's 2010 IPO? The one that was going to raise money to repay taxpayers? It's receding rapidly into the future. "It depends on how quickly we become profitable. ... I can’t promise a date," says GM Chairman Ed Whitacre. Translation: Not going to happen. ... Suckers! ... 9:40 P.M.
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Am I the only one who smells Kabuki in the reports that President Obama has dramatically rejected all the Afghan war options with which he was presented, demanding to know where the "off ramps" are? If you were about to recommend a troop increase that was unpopular, especially with your Democratic base, wouldn't you precede it with some drama like this to demonstrate that you are a) in charge, b) not being conned, and c) insistent on a withdrawal as quickly as possible? Just asking. ... 10:54 P.M.
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What's wrong with the upcoming Chevy Cruze? Production of the new compact has been delayed three months. The New York Times says the problem is "engine performance and the quietness of the Cruze's ride." AP, quoting the same GM executive, says the problem is the transmission ("No one was thrilled with where it shifted, how it shifted.") What if they're both right? ... P.S.: It's fine that GM postpones a launch for a car that's not yet up to snuff. But the NYT's Bill Vlasic is a sucker for buying the line that this sort of delay represents a dramatic "culture" shift:
In the past, G.M. rarely held back a product to add the extra touches that would improve its chances in a fiercely competitive market.
Please. GM's been peddling this line for years. See, for example, this U.S. News report:
Concerns over quality have substantially altered the way Detroit launches new models. A case in point is the line of luxury midsized cars planned for this fall by Cadillac, Buick and Oldsmobile. Transaxle problems with these front-wheel-drive C-body models caused GM to delay their introduction until at least January, and possibly spring. ''The car will have to tell us when it's ready," says Robert Burger, Cadillac's general manager. Notes a longtime industry observer: ''In the old days, that would be unheard of. They'd move the cars in the fall, whether they were right or not.''
That paragraph was published in 1983. ... 10:56 P.M.
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"CNN doesn't have a brand. It has a bland. It just got blander." -- Alert reader T. ... 11:36 P.M.
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Obama aide Anita Dunn, who started the White House war against Fox, is leaving her post. ... Meanwhile, Obama will give an interview to Fox's Major Garrett. ... Did Fox win? ... Or was it an October fundraising ploy all along? ... If Obama won, his communications shop certainly knows how to magnanimously make it look like he lost. ... Is that what Sun Tzu would do? ... 11/13 Update: Dunn a) declares victory on her way out the door("People took a step back and said, ‘Hmm, am I really wanting to go chase those stories?’”) b) lobs a few more shells c) suggests she had a White House pre-clearance to launch the war ("White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and perhaps even the president himself gave her the green light," says Sam Stein.) d) says “There are no confirmed television interviews in China," where the Major Garrett interview was reported to be planned. Won't that make it a bit embarrassing if it happens? ... P.S.: Still looks like a retreat to me, even if I agree with Dunn's underlying premise--that Fox News is in essence a different sort of animal from even MSNBC. ... 6:20 P.M.
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BriarPatch.org: From ABC's Note:
MoveOn.org is launching a round of TV ads this week targeting Democratic House members who voted against the health care bill over the weekend.
Thirty-nine Democrats voted against the bill, though MoveOn is starting by targeting only six fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats: Rep. Mike Ross, [D-Ark.]; Rep. Jason Atlmire, D-Pa.; Rep. Glenn Nye, D-Va.; Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va.; Rep. Larry Kissell, D-N.C..; and Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C. ...[snip]
A spokesman for the group said MoveOn plans to spend $500,000 on the ads, which come as liberals seek to pressure moderate Democrats in the Senate to support President Obama in his quest for health care reform.
Alert reader T. emails:
If you were a Democratic House Member from a relatively conservative district (especially if you've already taken a bad vote on cap and trade) how much would you pay MoveOn to come into your district and publicize your vote where you stood up to Pelosi and Obama on government-run health care?
True. But doesn't MoveOn know this? They still get to look tough, and raise money. Conservative Dems get to triangulate. It's win-win. ... 7:41 P.M.
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A very pretty mid-50s FIAT with a body by the late Elio Zagato. Note subtle grille graphics. ... 7:41 P.M.
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Tuesday, December 9, 2008
An early version of the New York Times story on the auto bailout deal said
[T]he bill seemed likely to stop short of authorizing the broad powers that some lawmakers had urged to allow what could have amounted to an out-of-court bankruptcy proceeding, in which the automakers’ creditors could be forced to accept reduced payments, labor contracts could be rewritten and executives could be summarily dismissed. [E.A.]
Hmm. Why shouldn't the bailout deal include an explicit reopening of labor contracts? If the new "auto czar" can order the companies to restructure, tell them to build smaller cars and veto any expenditure over $25 million, shouldn't he or she be able to require the UAW to give up the precious work rules that have rendered the domestically-owned industry inflexible and inefficient for decades? To be really effective, the bailout deal would have to "restructure" the UAW itself, so that union locals don't have an effective veto over productive labor practices proven in, say, the GM-Toyota NUMMI joint venture in San Jose, California.
I don't know what the actual deal contains (later NYT and other stories are vague), but this seems like a useful** bright line for opponents of corporatist bailout-creep to draw: If the taxpayers are going to foot the bill, then the goal has to be a successful industry in the long run--not a Congressional fix designed to protect the UAW from what it would face in a normal bankruptcy. That means rewritten contracts. If the UAW members didn't want that, they shouldn't have let their firms go broke--that is, they should have made the concessions they're making now, and more, years ago, when it would have made the difference.
Requiring painful, bankruptcy-style reopening would set a cautionary precedent. Just as Rick Wagoner's removal will warn timid management, it would warn unions that their function isn't to squeeze the absolute maximum possible from their companies every moment. They need to leave enough of a margin of error so that in a downturn their industry doesn't have to come running to the taxpayers.
It would also be a useful precedent for Obama. Does he really want to have to bailout every slow-adapting union that's contributed to the Democratic party's victory? When Reagan came into office, he was lucky enough to be presented with the air traffic controllers' (PATCO) strike. It was a lucky chance to demonstrate dramatically--at relatively little economic or human cost--that labor doesn't automatically win every strike. (In the PATCO case, the union not only lost, it ceased to exist--an even more effective precedent.) If Obama lets his fellow Democrats structure a deal that saves the inefficiencies in the UAW contracts, it will be PATCO in reverse--a signal to the Democrats labor backers that under Obama they can't lose. Even if they bankrupt their industry. ...
P.S.: I'm heavily influenced in these views by this article. Now if only the type were big enough to read. ...
**--By "useful" I mean sound policy. But wringing a big concession from the union (as well as management) would also be sound political theater, given the public opposition to the bailout deal. If you're a GOP senator sitting on the fence, don't you want to loudly and successfully demand a painful concession at this point? Then you'll have cover for a "yes" vote when it counts. ... 2:50 A.M.
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