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Selected and artificially augmented entries from the kausmickey Twitter feed:
Time's Tumulty says H. Reid quietly emasculated Obama's pet cost-cutting "Fed for Med" panel by fiddling with trigger. Heh! ... The idea that Congress would give up power over Medicare (think mammograms) to a panel of experts was always an Orszagian fantasy. Nor should we want it to. ... (If you believe Orszag will bend the cost curve you maybe also believe that Uri Geller bends spoons.) ... less than 20 seconds ago from web
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Could be key: An Ipsos pollster says big chunk of those who "oppose" health care reform do it b/c it doesn't go far enough. about 1 hour ago from web ... Update: MereRhetoric notes that "doesn't go far enough" could mean doesn't go far enough in a right-wing direction. In fact, 20% of conservatives in the poll said the reform "doesn't go far enough"--that probably doesn't mean they were really for single payer. ... But Mystery Pollster cites a CNN poll discovering that 10% opposed the plan as "not liberal enough." And that's not 10% of opponents. It's 10% of all those asked. Add that 10 to the 39 percent who support reform in the Pollster.com poll of polls and you have ... well, 49%. Almost a majority! ... P.S.: A big question is whether the ranks of these liberal dissenters has been growing more rapidly recently, as the bill is watered down. If so, that would give the Pollster.com graphic less of a menacing "jaws" aspect, at least to wavering pols ...
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Noah buries lede? Did Fed panel undercut Gawande's claim of large variation in Medicare spending? about 4 hours ago from web ... See J. Cohn response. ...
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Black Caucus vs. Obama: Some juicy speculation in this Dick Morris piece 1) Why flay Desiree? 2) Take care of Pierre! 12:03 PM Dec 4th from web
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CNN missing Lou Dobbs? Lou Dobbs is missing Lou Dobbs 1:39 PM Dec 3rd from web
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New Infiniti M Can't *anybody* design a good-looking rich person's car anymore? 12:55 PM Dec 2nd from web
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Facebook Post of the Day. This is great for GM. Makes public what happened in an unspinnable way. Clears the air. Now the onus is completely on Whitacre to make it work, Buck unpassable.Transparency! Accountability. ... If that was a GM PR team impersonating Henderson's daughter, they couldn't have done a better job. ...12:19 AM Dec 2nd from web
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Now they've gone too far! ACORN pushes speed bumps. 11:30 PM Nov 30th from web
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If the hed on this item doesn't bring the hits I give up! 6:51 PM Nov 30th from web Update: Hits!
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25:13 of Pain--Lou Dobbs on Telemundo Worse than "The Road"! 12:05 AM Nov 30th from web
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[Corrected 12/2--The CBO report isn't as grim as my emailer, or I, originally thought. The changes below reflect this. ] An alert reader (who is involved in the health care debate and, like me, favors Obama's reform) emails:
Most of the coverage I’m seeing today of the new CBO report on health reform’s effects on premiums is .totally in the tank for the Obama administration. CBO’s report argues (contrary to a recent paper by Jonathan Gruber, the Obama administration’s favorite health economist) that health reform will INCREASE the cost of private health premiums. There’s no other way to read the thing. Yet the NYT ["No Big Cost Rise in U.S. Premiums Is Seen in Study"] and Wash Post ["Senate health bill gets a boost"] and especially Ezra Klein ["Congressional Budget Office: Reform Will Bring Down the Cost of Health Insurance"] are all saying the report vindicates the Democrats on cost. That’s insane. (The WSJ’s ["Some Health Premiums to Rise"] is the only news account I’ve seen that reports it straight.).
How are reporters distorting this? Mainly in two ways.
1) They’re emphasizing that health reform will leave employer-based premiums largely unaffected. This is supposed to be a huge accomplishment. But health reform does virtually nothing to alter employer-based health care—it’s focused on the individual “nongroup” market—so to say it will have virtually no impact on employer-based premiums is like saying it will have virtually no effect on global warming.
[2) They’re] emphasizing that health reform will lower premiums for the majority of participants in the nongroup market by up to 60 percent. It will do nothing of the sort. It will INCREASE premiums in this market by 10 to 13 percent. That it will do so for good reasons (regulatory changes will require insurers to provide more actual insurance to customers) may justify the increase, but it doesn’t contradict it. Premiums will be higher because of health reform. The bill alleviates this for more than half of all participants in the new exchanges by extending income-based subsidies that will reduce the out-of-pocket cost of premiums by up to 60 percent as compared to what purchasers would pay without health reform. But that shouldn’t be mistaken for lowering the actual cost, which will still be borne by the nearly half of all purchasers who don’t receive subsidies. [E.A.]
When Ivy League universities raise tuition but pledge increased subsidies (i.e. financial aid) the headline usually reads something like "Yale Raises Tuition." ...
P.S.: [Corrections below] Klein seems particularly disingenuous, discussing the report as if premiums would rise only because newly empowered individuals would choose to buy better policies:
Premiums for the same policy in the individual market fall by 14 to 20 percent. But people in the individual market, who are largely low-income, will now have the opportunity to purchase better policies that cover more expenses and provide more security. That's a good thing. It's one of the reasons for health-care reform, in fact. And it is not analogous to health-care insurance becoming more expensive, any more than the fact that I could buy a nicer car after getting a better job suggests that cars are becoming more expensive. [E.A.]
But individuals--at least those buying new policies--won't be able to buy "the same policy" that they can now, as I understand it. The policies they buy on the new exchanges will have to include some state-mandated benefits ("mental health and substance abuse treatment") and they could not exclude preexisting conditions. Both changes make policies better, but also more expensive. If you are an individual without a preexisting condition who doesn't want to buy mental health or drug abuse insurance--sorry! Your premiums are going up anyway--and by more than the CBO's average 10 -13%, presumably, because that figure averages in all the people who now pay more because of their preexisting conditions. You'll have to pay for them anyway. Will that increase outweigh the premium-reducing effect of a) the efficiencies introduced by the bill's "exchanges," and b) the broader insurance pool created because young, healthy people are now required to sign up? It's not clear to me. It looks as if CBO estimates the cost increases due to mandated benefits as at least 9%, probably a bit more,** while the cost-reducing factors are 14-20%.But for an individual without a preexisting condition the cost increase would presumably be higher than 9%, since that averages in all the people who now pay more because of their preexisting conditions.
Plus, according to CBO, that apparently doesn't account for another factor that could push up prices--more people using more services because they'd have policies that require less cost-sharing.expanded insurance driving up health care spending overall, and encouraging the "accelerated dissemination of new medical procedures" (as happened when Medicare started, apparently).
These would be relatively small prices worth paying for the security of knowing that you can always get reasonably priced insurance. But it's silly to pretend that either premiums in the key individual market will never go up a bit (before being subsidized back down for some) or that if they do go up it will just be because people voluntarily buy the equivalent of "a nicer car."
The fear, of course, is that if the first thing already-insured, healthy individual voters see as a result of health care reform is a non-trivial hike in their premiums, they might not be very happy about the Democrats' achievement. Their unhappiness will be all the greater if they've been promised a premium cut, or if any increase is glibly dismissed as simply paying for benefits that they've now had the "opportunity" to purchase. ... The fate of the 1988 catastrophic health care insurance bill--passed, then repealed--offers a relevant, cautionary example, no? ...
Update: Clive Crook defends the MSM. He also addresses the "more important" question of whether the CBO report is right, worrying that premiums will rise due to a factor CBO pooh-poohs--adverse selection. ...
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**-- The 9% doesn't include involuntary increases when individuals who have policies that cover less than 60% of their projected costs are forced to buy policies that cover that statutory amount. Apparently there aren't many such people, but there are some. ... 4:17 P.M.
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Mary Katharine Ham, in the Weekly Standard, is the latest to blast Huffington Post for its practice of drumming up hits with NSFW pictures of naked and semi-naked women:
After all, The Huffington Post is run by a stand-up, professional, liberal, feminist woman—Arianna Huffington. Surely, her site would be irreproachable on such matters.
Hmm. One thing I've noticed about Arianna Huffington is that she tends to downplay the outrage over sex scandals, even Republican scandals like Mark Sanford's, more than I would like. I'm entertaining the possibility that this is a principled position--Huffington simply does not get censorious about sex, nudity, or even marital infidelity. I don't know if that makes her post-feminist or pre-feminist. But I think it gets her off on the charge of hypocrisy when she runs slideshows of celebrity breast implants. If you can find an example of Arianna getting huffy about objectification of women (or men) or sexual shenanigans--even Republican shenanigans--then I'm wrong. But I don't think you will. (First place I'd check: Clinton and Lewinsky.)
P.S.: Another typical argument against HuffPo goes like this: It's OK to have a news site, and it's OK to have a site for naked celebrities. But political sites and news sites shouldn't have naked celebrities.
"I'd argue that the kind of Internet traffic HuffPo trafficks in is below a political site of the caliber it purports to be, period.-"--Ham
"So, what do nipple slips and boob jobs have to do with liberal politics?"--Amanda Hess, Washington City Paper
This sort of argument seems open to the response Robert Nozick made when defending doctors who are in it for the money (as opposed to healing the sick). They're not doctors, you say? OK. Let's call them schmoctors. They are fulfilling the Aristotelian purpose of schmoctoring, which is to make a lot of money by treating people. Similarly, let's not call Huffington Post a "news" site, let's call it ... I don't know, a "views" site. Not opinion & news but opinion & news & newsy nudity! Sort of like a laundromat/bar or bookstore/coffeeshop. If that gives Arianna a competitive advantage over her more prudish, anti-objectification competitors ... well, maybe that's where the market will go. It's not like she's alone in pursuing this ... hybrid business model. So far, it seems relatively harmless to me. (If the site glorified boorish or worse behavior by men, which was the big problem with the Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson Supebowl incident, that would be different.). ...
P.P.S.: What's worse: funding your journalistic efforts by showing Beyonce nip slips, or funding your journalistic efforts by preying on the fears and ambitions of parents who'd like to use their financial resources to gain an advantage in the allegedly meritocratic college rat race? Discuss. ... 6:22 P.M.
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Latino voters overwhelmingly think health care should have priority over immigration reform. Only "14% mentioned immigration as the top issue." And if no immigration bill passes by the 2010 election, "42% would think it´s understandable" (while "28% would say the president reneged on his promise"). I don't see how that adds up to the "dire" consequences La Opinion foresees for Dems among Latinos if "comprehensive" immigration reform doesn't happen (especially if health care does). Seems more like the opposite: even among Latinos, Dems have some room to punt on the issue. ... 6:20 P.M.
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Reality Show Idea of the Day--from Dish Rag. "The Gate Crashers." As long as it's not just the Salahis. ... I'd tune in for the episode where secretly uninfluential faux-intellectuals try to crash the Worst Party Ever! ... 6:17 P.M.
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This page from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a chart that says more about the growth of food stamps than all 58 or so inches of the NYT's front page lead story on the phenomenon. The chart shows that, indeed, assiduous bipartisan bureaucratic attempts to remove stigma from food stamps have at least partially succeeded, and the program has expanded rapidly, roughly doubling since 2000. (Amazingly, the Times never bothers to tell readers by what percentage the program has grown recently, though it barrages them with unassimilable stats from select counties and tedious anecdotes.) The paleoliberal undermessage of today's NYT piece is basically: 'Hah, hah, you conservatives and 'values' Dems. When times are tough all your stigmatizing of welfare goes out the window. Americans are learning to to love the dole.'
But a stigma placed on cash-like welfare (which food stamps are) remains a positive sign of a healthy work ethic. If you came across two societies--Society A, in which food stamps were stigmatized, with families reluctant to go on the dole even if they were eligible, and Society B, in which they weren't, you would want to bet on (and live in) Society A. It's one thing to relax the stigma on welfare in times of epic economic decline. It's another if the stigma doesn't return with the possibility of employment. The CBPP chart would also have demonstrated that food stamp rolls have risen rapidly before--in the slump from 1988 to 1994--only to fall just as rapidly when the economy picked up in the mid-90s. Of course, at that time we had a President (Clinton) who was campaigning against "welfare as we know it."** It seems unlikely that President Obama will repeat the performance. ...
**-- Buried lede? Is old-fashioned straight-cash, AFDC-style welfare not growing with the recession? Says the Times: "[N]ationally the rolls have stayed virtually flat." This despite the Obama administration's attempt to encourage states to let them grow? Has that much Clinton-era stigma survived, at least? ...
Update: Matthew Yglesias thinks the program called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance should actually be ... nutritional. No more Coke and Cheetos. Don't tell Mayor Bloomberg. ... Yglesias also defends Society B, arguing that if it is better able to avoid "undernourished children" then it will have a "better-educated workforce, lower crime, less disability, and a generally better-off population and economy for years to come." ... If Yglesias really thinks the obstacles America faces when trying to achieve a "better educated workforce" are more nutritional than cultural (e.g., dependence, single parent families) and institutional (teachers' unions) then we have a serious disagreement. ... 12:33 A.M.
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"[B]iostatistics are not easy to understand, and harder to explain to a lay audience." If you're going to write sentences like that condescending to those Americans (81%) who in their "confusion" aren't buying the new mammography guidelines, you'd better do a better job of explaining them than this impressively unconvincing Atlantic piece by John Crewdson. ... Crewdson sure seems to be saying that the small, but real, savings in lives achieved by screening between 40 and 50 isn't worth the money it costs. But the task force that wrote the guidelines claims not to be taking cost into account. ... P.S.: See also this New England Journal of Medicine piece, by a non-lay audience member, arguing that the only way to understand the new guidelines is precisely as a weighing of benefits vs. costs. ... [Thanks to alert reader B.A.] 11:34 P.M.
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Bob Wright seems to feel he got too mad in our latest bloggingheads discussion. Some would say he got just mad enough! ... It's alarming, though, that his Afghan anti-terror strategy eventually boils down to, in effect, 'Hey, we'll catch Al Qaeda's nukes when they arrive here in shipping containers.' ... 4:05 P.M.
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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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Pink Is the New Blue: Maybe I'm out of it, but I was unaware that parents now want girls, not boys. That's the buried lede in Ruth Shalit Barrett's mildly horrifying Elle piece on "Gender Disappointment":
Seventyone percent of American families who use MicroSort—which is still in clinical trials—want a daughter. ...[snip] ... “The era of wanting a first-born male is gone, not to return,” founder Ronald Ericsson, MD, has said.
What’s behind the modern-day girl fetish? One explanation: Women envision a brighter future for their daughters than they do for their sons. Boys are practically the underdogs these days, having fallen behind girls on nearly every measure of academic achievement, from college attendance to high school graduation rates. ...[snip]
“The way society is now—I feel there’s a preference for girls,” says Linda Heithaus, a marine biologist from Hollywood, Florida, who has two sons and is contemplating doing IVF/PGD in the hope of getting a girl. “They can do everything a boy can do, plus you can dress them up. It’s almost like, to fit in, you need to have one.” Girls, in other words, are boys plus. They can play sports and have careers, and you can dress them in pink and take them to tea at the American Girl café. What’s not to like? [E.A.]
Others link the yearning to women’s belief that they’ll have a richer lifelong relationship with a daughter than a son. ...
Girls are boys plus? That's one way to look at it. I don't quite believe this trend (though some of my Westside yuppie friends confirm it). It seems to me men still have a lot of advantages, the lack of a mommy track being only the most obvious. But if true a) it would be an extraordinary example of relative changes in earning power affecting fairly basic and millenia-old socio-cultural preferences with startling rapidity--another victory for Vulgar Marxism; b) I see profitable arbitrage possibilities for Match.com's Chinese web service. ... Note to Maureen Dowd: Easy holiday column! Would be great to get your perspective! ... 2:29 P.M.
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Don't Look Now: James Carville and Stanley Greenberg often don't promote the polls that are bad for Dems, charges Brian Faughnan--and now there's another one just sitting on their website, unhyped, showing that fully 45% of likely voters describe themselves as "conservative." ... Carville and Greenberg even had a hot news peg they could have used--Lou Dobbs pulling 6% in a race against Obama, Romney and Nader. ... Obama gets 45%, Romney 38% ... P.S.: Better that they adjust the hype rather than adjust the polling. ... 3:02 P.M.
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Cenk Uygur's web TV show has 450,000 viewers? More than Morning Joe's daily audience? If true, that's impressive. ... 3:02 P.M.
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Ezra Klein:
If there are no circumstances under which Congress will reform Medicare, there are no circumstances under which the federal government will not go bankrupt.
No circumstances? Has Klein never heard of taxes? Is he an extreme supply sider who thinks increasing taxes will never increase revenues? Even under grim budget scenarios in which the medical cost curve doesn't bend at all, the federal budget rises to consume about 30% of GDP in 2050. You could, in theory, increase taxes to pay for 30% of GDP (they're a little under 20% now). You could also do something to dramatically shrink Social Security spending--the big non-medical driver of federal spending--by raising the retirement age and cutting benefits for those who don't need them (means-testing). It's hard to believe that some combination of taxes and means-tested Social Security cuts couldn't bring revenues and spending into long term balance even if generous Medicare spending goes unpared by Harry Reid's new panel of unelected experts.
Klein's exclusion of these obvious alternatives seems to be part of a new strategy to reconcile the Democrats health care plan with deficit-consciousness. The old argument--Classic Orszagism--claimed simply, if enigmatically, that the solution to the budget crisis was Obama's health care reform, because somehow only when the government insured coverage for all would it have the leverage necessary to "bend the cost curve" down. One problem with Classic Orszagism was that it scared the elderly, and near-elderly, who are hardly crazy to see the suggested restrictions on mammogram spending as the opening bid in an ongoing campaign to "scientifically" lower high-tech expenses (by playing up the "anxiety" caused by false positives, for example). Another problem is that if the government can bend the cost curve, the logical place to start is with Medicare--and, indeed, the powerful Fed-like "IMAB" board in Harry Reid's bill is mandated to cut only Medicare. But if we can cut Medicare, why not just cut Medicare--without also adding Obama's admittedly expensive subsidized coverage for the uninsured?
If all you cared about was the deficit, that would be your position: First see if we can cut Medicare, then talk about extending health care to everyone in a few years. The fierce reaction to the mammogram recommendations, though, reinforced an already amply justified skepticism of the governments ability to reduce treatments to constituents who see them as life-saving. Why do we have any expectation that the cost curve will be bent at all, ever?
Here is where Klein's new argument comes in: Curve-bending skeptics like David Broder have to be wrong because ... well, they have to be wrong. Broder's skepticism
is another way of saying that Congress can't cut health-care costs and the American government will go bankrupt. For one thing, that's not a very good reason not to at least try and avert that outcome. But if Broder's position is that we face certain fiscal collapse, then the only real question is whether we would prefer that 30 million Americans had insurance in the meantime, or went uninsured over that period.
It's Doomsday Orszagism: The government has to be able to bend the curve because the alternative, even without Obama's health care reform, is a fiscal apocalypse in which "the federal government will not be able to honor its debts." The asteroid is heading towards earth, and a mild mannered CBO wonk has his hands on the only plan for heading it off. You gotta believe!
But if there are other ways to head off bankruptcy--namely taxes and Social Security cuts--you don't gotta believe. An alternative argument for health reform would say: extending generous health coverage to all citizens is part of America's social equality. We don't deny people what they need to regain their health. We don't decide that some people are worth care and others aren't, British-style. We can pay for it--it's expensive, it certainly doesn't help the deficit picture, but it's not that expensive at the moment, maybe a hundred or two extra billion a year. It's worth raising some taxes and maybe denying the affluent government retirement checks (which is not such a necessary part of social equality). If we can do some reasonable curve-bending in the long-run to bring down the cost, even better. But we're not counting on it, since so far nobody's been able to do it.
Maybe the various versions of Orszagism--the confident invocations of curve-bending power--are the only way to sell health care this year, even though they've already (by raising the rationing issue) helped consign Obama's reform to seemingly permanent general unpopularity. Maybe it's even necesary to go further, in a Michael Bay-like direction, and claim disingenuously that Orszag's curve bending is the only way to save us all from horrific doom. BS sometimes works to pass legislation. But it's still BS. ... [Thanks to alert reader S.W. for the link to Keith Hennessy's chart] 10:29 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.
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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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GM "says it will begin to pay back U.S. loans." But of course it's paying back that debt to taxpayers with money from ... taxpayers. Even the new, nicer Truth About Cars isn't falling for it. GM got $50 billion from the government, after all, mainly for a 60% share in the company. It's planning to pay back $1.2 billion in December--basically a PR attempt, TTAC speculates, to erase its negative consumer image as a bailout baby. The only hope for the taxpayers actually being repaid for their entire $50B investment is an IPO. TTAC pinpoints 2010 as the ideal year, when the innovative Chevy Volt will be conveniently not yet released. "GM’s hail-mary will provide a speculative upside to GM’s value as long as it’s still just around the corner." ...
P.S.: Also, these financial results are not GAAP-ready. "North American Operations are still bleeding cash. And, as Henderson has admitted, the fourth quarter results for 2009 are only going to bring worse news." [TTAC again] ... P.P.S.: But GM will launch a company-wide sale this week to clear excess U.S. inventory. A sure sign of success! ... 2:58 P.M.
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New push for "comprehensive" (i.e. including amnesty) immigration reform:
1) Is it good for Obama's health care effort that this comes out now? Doesn't it potentially make 2010 midterm voters more uneasy about Dem overreach? Maybe it placates Hispanic lawmakers who might be upset at the treatment of illegals in the health bill itself--but that's Obama again playing the inside game of keeping Congress' factions happy. His problem is the outside game of keeping the public on board, no? ... Wait, I forgot. Health care reform is a fait accompli. Never mind. ... P.S.: Or maybe Obama has concluded that health care reform gets more unpopular when voters think about it, so he's changing the subject. ...
2) It seems like almost yesterday that the official, liberal pro-legalization position was that the decline in the number of illegals had little to do with increased enforcement. It was all the declining economy. (After all, illegals are here to stay and there's nothing we can do about that, right? But if enforcement works to produce a big demographic shift ....) Now Obama Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano is claiming that we can go ahead with legalization because "better enforcement" has indeed worked to produce a decline in the number of illegals. But wasn't that all due to the economy? I sense a contradiction. ...P.S.: Maybe another factor was the 2007 defeat of comprehensive immigration reform itself. Without the promise of a legalization and eventual U.S. citizenship, crossing the border seemed less worth the risk and sacrifice ...
3) If the economy is even a partial factor, shouldn't we wait until enforcement techniques survive an actual, illegal-attracting economic rebound--and court attacks by the Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic caucus and civil libertarians--before we proclaim those enforcement techniques enough of a success to withstand an illegal-attracting amnesty? Napolitano's speech never explains why the enhanced enforcement powers she says she needs--"tougher anti smuggling laws," greater penalties for "dishonest businesses" and immigration attorneys, etc.--couldn't be enacted without tacking on an amnesty. Maybe she has an argument, but she doesn't make it.
4) Are Democrats going ahead with immigration legalization in 2010 because they realize the way things are going they will have no chance in 2011? ...
Update: Mark Krikorian, noting the number of times Napolitano said the onus was on Congress to act, thinks I'm being unsophisticated if I believe the White House actually plans a significant amnesty push in 2010:
But with unemployment over 10 percent, among other reasons, Congress isn't going to do any of this, so the White House is giving itself plausible deniability.
String along La Raza, prepare to blame Congress for failure, and make sure it's all reported in the least-read newspaper of the week. As my colleague Jon Feere writes, "Amnesty is a year away, and always will be." [E.A.]
But in a year, it won't be a year away. Not after the 2010 midterms. ... 10:11 P.M.
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If California's neighbors--Arizona, Nevada and Oregon--are almost in as bad fiscal shape as California (according to this Pew chart) doesn't it suggest that California's problem can't just be high taxes. Nevada and Arizona are relatively low-tax states, no? Yet they're going broke too. Of course they still have public employee unions. ... P.S.: Maybe it's some regional phenomenon. Gee, what problem might these states clustered in the Southwest near the Mexican border have in common? ... I'm thinking! ... Update: David Berger notes that "CA, AZ NV and FL have something else in common - most overbuilt during the housing bubble." ... [Via John Ellis, who twitters more than I'd realized. Ellis, a Bush relative, is not a 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' kind of guy. He's a "Worry" kind of guy. Which is one reason he's valuable.]
P.P.S.: Like many people, I found William Voegeli's recent City Journal piece on the decline of the high-tax/high-service model of state government extremely clarifying. Nut graf:
Whatever theoretical claims are made for imposing high taxes to provide generous government benefits, the practical reality is that these public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good: their beneficiaries are mostly the service providers themselves, and their quality is poor.
In short, now we pay high taxes and get lousy services. Worse than Texas! ... But looking at that Pew chart I wonder if this is really the explanation of California's current fiscal trouble--as opposed to a more general explanation of why Californians would be getting a lousy deal from their union-dominated state government even if the state's books were balanced? (You have to think that Jon Corzine in New Jersey was a victim of the same phenomenon.) The fiscal crisis is mainly just a convenient news hook, no? ... 9:40 P.M.
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Man Doesn't Bite Dog! Detroit-bashing Truth About Cars catalogues Chrysler's assets--and discovers they're not nothin'. The biggest one: faster-moving management than the GM lifers Rattner left in place. ... 9:23 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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TTAC asks: Will today's recyclable cars fall apart? ... 5:36 P.M.
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Are you as sophisticated as Politico? Spot the weak point in Carrie Budoff Brown's optimistic health care reform report:
Reid also said he will deliver a final bill to the president by Christmas, meeting the White House deadline.
"We sure hope so," Reid said.
2:18 P.M.
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"Abortion Dispute Could Derail Health Bill": Do you really think an abortion dispute will derail the massive health bill? Me neither. I think if the Democrats are scared to pass the health bill they will let an abortion dispute derail the massive health bill. If they aren't too scared, the abortion issue can be finessed with a variety of possible compromises. (Sample: The Stupak Amendment with an opt-out for states that vote explicitly to allow private insurance premiums (on federally subsidized policies) to fund abortions.)
That goes for all the allegedly difficult House/Senate sticking points. Timothy Noah lists four, in addition to abortion: the public option, the government's ability to negotiate drug prices, the size of the lower-income subsidies, the tax that will pay for it all. I'm not impressed. It would take a conscientious conference committee, working in secret, maybe, what, two days to split the difference on most of them? Even if differences can't be split, they can be finessed, or kicked down the road. And even if that's impossible--well,nobody really believes that the left is going to sabotage a once-in-a-lifetime chance at health care reform over abortion, or the "robustness" of the public option, or the ability of illegal immigrants to get insurance.
The problem facing health care reform, as Dick Morris and others have been arguing for months, isn't these tediously subtle legislative complications. They're what we see on the surface. The problem is the crude, primal politics underneath them--the legislature's' "id." It's the fear, among power-lusting Democratic Congresspersons, that if they vote for health care they won't be Congresspersons much past November, 2010 (or that even if they win, they will no longer be in the majority party). They're not worried about Cadillac plans. They're worried about castration.
Note that Obama's House pep talk, according to John Dickerson, focused on the primal politics:
Before the House vote last Saturday, Obama made two key political points to Democratic House members. First, they needed to vote for health care because it would motivate the party base in 2010. Second, those who think they can run away from the president by voting against his signature legislative effort are kidding themselves. The president believes that a key lesson of the Republican rout of Democrats in 1994 was that Democrats who oppose their president can never get far enough away to survive politically. So if you're going to get stuck defending the president, you should get behind his plan and benefit from the political cover he'll work to give those who support him.
Of course, if the fate of health reform in fact turns on such non-wonk, non-policy analysis, reform supporters couldn't help but notice at least two danger signs:
1) The size of the House majority. 220-215 votes. It's hard to believe it was this close--that Pelosi didn't have more votes she could have called on in a pinch. But if (as reported) she really needed to agree to the anti-choice Stupak amendment in order to get past 218, maybe she did pull out nearly all the stops. If so, yikes! The thinness of Pelosi's House majority is a very bad sign--not because it shows the House doesn't have any room to negotiate with the Senate. (If the bill moves to the right by, say, dropping the public option, they'll cave.) It's a bad sign because it shows that even in the heavily Democratic, disciplined, liberal House the primal drive for health care reform just isn't that high. There is no room for more fear.
2) "[Y]ou should get behind his plan and benefit from the from the political cover he'll work to give those who support him," Dickerson has Obama saying. You mean like the cover he gave Jon Corzine in New Jersey? ...
Update: Matt Yglesias clarifies some of the Kabuki--
[I]nsofar as there are members who don’t want to take the political risk of voting “yes” on a comprehensive health care reform bill, but also don’t want to be seen as spiking the initiative, then developing a hard line position on abortion can be convenient. Like say Ben Nelson and Bob Casey say they can’t vote for health care unless it contains Stupak language, and then Joe Lieberman (Freedom of Choice Act cosponsor!) and Olympia Snowe say they can’t vote for health care unless it doesn’t contain Stupak language. Well, then health care dies. And yet nobody has to take the blame for having killed it if a constituent gets mad. [E.A.]
It's also true that if you don't want to take the political risk of voting "yes" on a comprehensive health care reform bill and also don't want to take the political risk of developing a hard line position on abortion then it's in your interest that others, like Ben Nelson, develop that hard line position and cause a train wreck. You can't be blamed, of course. You supported health care! You were nowhere near the scene of the crash! It just kind of happened. Terrible thing, just terrible. ... But maybe you will quietly thank Nelson in your prayers. ... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of course, was accused of engineering just this kind of train wreck on "comprehensive immigration reform" in 2007. ... 2:23 A.M.
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Is it an accident that Rep. Alan Grayson, despite his respectable resume, turned into a flamboyant hey-look-at-me bombthrower after hiring famously intemperate blogger Matt Stoller as "policy adviser"? (Here's Stoller displaying his laid back personality on bloggingheads.tv.) The NYT, which puzzled on Grayson's transition a week ago, missed this angle. ... Or was Grayson intemperate before--and that's why he hired Stoller (and why Stoller went to work for him)? Hard to see which way causality runs. Could run in all directions, of course. A vicious circle of hotheadedness. ... 1:48 P.M.
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FFT-NY-23: Was the NY-23 race--in which conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman's surge suddenly unsurged after the GOP candidate dropped out--an example of the Feiler Faster Thesis (which holds that voters now comfortably process new information and events with a speed that matches the speeding up of the news cycle)? Here's Mark Blumenthal:
Experience tells us that when a candidate enters a contest's final weekend with both a lead and as much apparent momentum as Hoffman, they almost always win. By the end of a long campaign, voters have spent weeks or months acquiring information and pondering their choice, and most have made up their minds by the final weekend.
In this case, however, the voters experienced "man bites dog" news twice: First, the Republican nominee [Dede Scozzafava] dropped out, then she endorsed the Democrat. I am guessing that the unprecedented news made a significant number of these habitual voters sit up and take special notice, especially those who had until that moment experienced the campaign mostly through television advertising.
So here is my hunch: When confronted by a pollster's call over the weekend, many were simply not ready to make a final decision. If pollsters pushed hard for a choice, some voters may have fallen back on an initial preference that they were now in the process of reconsidering. For those who shifted to Owens that weekend, however, the campaign had started anew. Their final decisions were probably not made until they cast a ballot on Tuesday. [E.A.]
NY-23 voters certainly seem to have processed a lot of dramatic new information very quickly, the essence of the Feiler Faster Thesis. Upshot: Not only is momentum not what it used to be--a venerable implication of the FFT--but dropping out or switching candidates a few days before an election doesn't seem to annoy or confuse voters. Rather, it can have its intended effect (for Scozzafava, the intended effect of defeating Hoffman). Prediction: We will see a lot more of these dramatic last-minute drop-outs and support switches. I wouldn't even be surprised to see it happen in a presidential race.**
**--In October, 1988 I thought the flailing Michael Dukakis should drop out and let his then-popular VP pick, Lloyd Bentsen, become the Democratic candidate. I snuck the idea into a Newsweek piece, and then felt vaguely embarrassed. When I argued to my friends that it was the best chance to beat Bush, people looked at me like I was an unsophisticated high schooler, Presidential candidates didn't pull stunts like that. It was simply too late for Dukakis to avoid inevitable defeat. If he bailed, voters would only be confused and demoralized. Democrats might stay home--and then down-ballot Dems would suffer along with Dukakis.
That may have been true in 1988. Not sure it would be true today. ... 12:19 P.M.
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Canary Ejects from Coal Mine: Robert Reich sure seems to be saying that Obama should have focused on the economy and put off health care reform:
a) Reich's test of success or failure seems to be whether "the Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress in the midterms." His analysis of why this might happen (benefits of health plan won't be felt, lack of jobs will) appears sound. But if Obama had focused on the economy, what measures, exactly, could he have taken to avoid a midterm massacre? A larger stimulus? Obama got as big a stimulus as he could last spring, no? Maybe Reich thinks Obama could have gotten a second tranche earlier this fall if he'd delayed health care. But Reich more or less admits that now it's too late for any measure to have a big impact before the election. So why not get health care reform? The way things are going, it's not like Dems will have another chance in 2011.
b) Reich's clearly still miffed that President Clinton rejected his stimulus plans in early 1993, choosing instead to lower the budget deficit and interest rates. As a result, Reich declares, "the Clinton years produced few if any major social reforms." Hmm. I can think of one. Actually, two and a half (work-oriented welfare reform coupled with the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and medical care for poor children). Even if Reich perversely won't count that as a "social reform," Clinton's rejection of Reich's advice was followed by the longest economic expansion in our history. The combination lowered the child poverty rate from 22% to 16%. Never trust content from Robert Reich.
c) You could say it's a bad sign for Obama if Reich has ejected from the health care express. On the other hand, if there were a theatrical, left-cultivating, personal-branding semi-economist who was going to get attention for himself by jumping ship, it would be Robert Reich. He's sort of a canary in the coal mine in this respect. The canary has jumped! But at this point it's only the canary. ... Any metaphors left? [Shark-ed Well, Reich's chances of returning to power in an Obama administration are now close to zero. Maybe he's jumped that too. ... ] 9:01 P.M.
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Allthumbsucking: From WaPo reporter Michael Shear's exceptionally gauzy and correct "analysis" of Obama's "challenges"--including handling the aftermath of the Ft. Hood mass shooting:
And the incident -- clearly out of Obama's control -- comes as the president appears nearing a decision to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. Explaining that decision to the public will be a critical job for Obama during the next several months, and Hasan's actions can only make that more difficult. [E.A.]
"Only"? Really? If Obama wants to send thousands more troops to bottle up radical Islamic terrorists who would like to bring violence to America, it seems as if this violent incident might make explaining it easier, no? ... P.S.: I'm not saying it necessarily makes it righter--just easier to win support for. ... 9:01 P.M.
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The Obama Administration will find a way to blow health care reform yet. Mere Rhetoric notes a report that Obama aides plan to address Tuesday's election defeats by resurrecting Orszagism, the doctrine that health care reform is the way to control the deficit because it will enable the government to "bend the cost curve" down without compromising care. From Josh Gerstein:
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted Wednesday that the White House plans no changes whatsoever in its legislative strategy or agenda as a result of this week’s contests. However, a White House aide told ABC that the administration will seek to bolster moderates by returning to an argument that health care reform will curb the deficit—a talking point Obama aides have de-emphasized in recent months in favor of a focus on making the insurance system more secure and predictable. [E.A.]
If I recall, the White House had"de-emphasized" Orszagism because those who heard the argument tended to fall into roughly two camps: 1) Voters who thought it was at best pie-in-the-sky and that the government probably couldn't "bend the curve" over the next two decades--the way it hasn't been able to do with Medicare, for example; and 2) Voters who thought the government could indeed "bend the curve" and were terrified by the prospect, because the argument seemed to be that only if the government controlled virtually the entire health system could it really turn the screws start denying treatments initiate a "very difficult democratic conversation" over which treatments were really cost-effective, including treatments at the end of life. ...
It was only when the Orszagism was in fact de-emphasized (over the summer) that opposition to health care reform stopped its relentless upward rise and actually fell for a brief period. Why go back to the debacle of last Spring? Vague policyspeak about curve-bending has already, unnecessarily, cost health care reform the support of the elderly. Does Obama want to give reform's opponents the ammo to drive opposition above the 60% line? Go ahead. Make Dick Morris' day. ...
P.S.: I should make it clear that I am in camp #1--I don't think Americans will tolerate draconian, or even semi-draconian, denials of service. As a result I don't think the curve (which is driven mainly by advances in medicine that yield expensive treatments) will be bent. That's why I'm for health care reform. But Orszagism is still lousy politics, because lots of voters will fall into Camp #2. ...
For more: See kf's extensive fall Orszagism collection. ... 12:06 A.M.
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Another seemingly grim health care poll--49/39 against, compared with 42/40 earlier in the month by the same pollster (Ipsos/McClatchy). The new poll eerily resonates with Rasmussen's increased margin of 54/42 against. But, again, part of the drop in support could come from erstwhile reform supporters worried about the status of the "public option." I'd be interested in the breakout of independents and Democrats--but I can't open the file. If you can, feel free to let me know. Mickey_Kaus at msn dot com. ... Mickey's Assignment Desk: Mark Blumenthal--maybe you can help. Why are the health care polls going south? Unaffiliated voters worried about the deficit? Libs worried about the public option? Seniors worried about death panels overzealous cost containment measures? Everyone worried about rising premiums? ... Or any combination of the above (including voters betraying their stereotypes--e.g. liberals worried about overzealous cost controls or deficits?) ...
Update: Thanks to all who sent the numbers. Opposition to reform appears to have held steady among GOPs. but risen among independents by 15 percentage points (from 38% opposed to 53%) and also among Democrats by 7 percentage points (from 18% to 25%). Less clear is what could have provoked these drops. It's hard to say "lack of a public option," given that the public option seems to be in better shape today than early in October--though the poll was taken immediately following Sen. Lieberman's filibuster threat. ...
More: CNN is out with another grim survey-- 53/45 against, a sharp change from the 49/49 tie CNN reported in mid-October. ... On the other hand, Rasmussen has moved slightly in the pro-reform direction (it's now 7 points down instead of 12). The Rasmussen poll is fresher, by a week, than CNN's. But it also was taken the very weekend the House passed it's version of the bill (with an anti-abortion amendment)--so it may record a potentially short-lived bounce. ... 4:27 P.M.
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Conservatives against prayer ... Or, rather, against requiring health insurance in Obama's "exchanges" to cover prayer treatment ("religious and spiritual health care"). a) Yes, a government-run plan will always have to contend with this sort of pressure, in addition to pressure to cover experimental procedures and expensive mental health treatments. These pressures are often harder for our political system to resist than for private insurers to resist; b) But if the government can avoid covering Christian Science prayer treatment under Medicare you'd think it could avoid covering it under the smaller health insurance exchange plans envisioned by the Dems, no? c) Wonder which way Sarah Palin comes down on this; d) Can the Scientologists be far behind? ... 12:18 P.M.
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Hugh ("only time will tell") Sidey has a worthy successor: Eugene Robinson in this morning's WaPo:
Reading too much into Tuesday's off-off-year election results would be a mistake, but reading too little into them would be wrong as well.
[Thanks to reader J] 12:08 P.M.
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Chrysler to break out new "Ram" line of trucks. If they'd called it the Rahm line I'd really start to worry about politicization. ... P.S.: Chrysler has now "projected that it will double its sales over five years." Do you believe that? Me neither, though I guess if Chrysler sales keep falling (down 39% so far this year from last year, which wasn't so great itself) they'll eventually be able to double their sales just by selling another one. [Update: They put an actual number on what they expect to do--increase sales from 1.3 million in 2009 to 2.8 million in 2014. With this? Okeydokey.] ... 12:04 P.M.
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What Liberal Bias? This is the main headline on the L.A.Times web home page:
From staff and wire reports | 9:42 p.m.
The GOP fares better in Virginia and New Jersey as both states elect Republican governors.
* * * * * *
Thanks to alert reader KL, who speculates that not even the conservative Washington Times would try something that disoriented. I think it would be a stretch for Granma. ...
Update: As of an hour later the headline was "Democrats win Congressional victories in California, N.Y.." with the same subhed. ...10:48 P.M.
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