Why I support President Obama without reservation in 2012

Lately, when I've criticized the Obama administration on specific issues where I've disagreed with policy (such as Afghanistan or the extension of the Patriot Act) there are those, especially on the left, who have asked why I still want to see him re-elected, whether it's because I duly admit to being a party hack or simply because he'd 'just be better than the Republicans.'

Although both of the above are true (I am an elected Democratic county party first vice chair, and have no doubt that any of the leading Republicans would continue all of the policies I dislike as well as do many other things I would't like) I am enthusiastically, and without reservation ready to work for the re-election of President Obama in 2012. He is the candidate most qualified to serve as President of the United States during the next four years.

Let me address three main topics as to why the President should be re-elected for another four years, and I will talk about the President here, not about why Republicans are bad.

1. The economy

2. Health care

3. The President's personal temperment and how it relates to the job.

THE ECONOMY

Let's start with the biggest issue, the economy. The criticism from the right about President Obama is two-fold. They argue that he has failed to fix the problems that they acknowlege that he inherited from the Bush administration, and they also argue that he has made things worse by running up the deficit with massive increases in government spending.

In regard to not fixing the problem, it is true that when President Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate was 7.8% and it is today 8.6%. However, at the time he was inaugurated the U.S. was teetering on the brink of a Depression. We were hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs per month with no end in sight. The President took a Keynesian approach and negotiated the Stimulus bill with Republicans. These negotiations resulted in a bill that was 43% tax cuts (while major elements of spending, such as on school construction were removed from the bill in order to gain GOP support.) Despite these concessions, the GOP followed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's "top priority to make President Obama a one-term President". Therefore the bill, heavily loaded with GOP-sponsored tax cuts as it was, received zero GOP votes in the House and only three in the Senate. Republicans like to claim they were right, and that the stimlulus was a tremendous waste of money that did not work. They cite an erroneous projection made by a staffer (made even before President Obama was inaugurated) that if the Stimulus was passed then unemployment would top out at 8% vs. 8.8% without the Stimulus (which it arguably had exceeded even before the Stimulus took effect.) That the recession was far deeper than even some of the President's economic advisors had foreseen is not the same thing as claiming that the Stimulus didn't work. In fact,
the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has backed up the administration's claims regarding the impact of the Stimulus. So when Republicans claim it did not work, that is what it is-- a claim, not backed by data. It's difficult of course to prove something which did not happen would have, and it is true that the country got out in front of the situation more quickly (TARP) than in 1929, but it is certainly a reasonable conclusion that the Stimulus and other actions taken by the Federal government saved the nation from a Depression similar to the one in the 1930's. What the administration failed to do was take enough credit for the effects of the Stimulus. It was sent out to states with permission for the Governors to spend it as needed in their own states. Some Governors have given the Federal government the credit but others have claimed that there was some kind of economic miracle in their own state without crediting whatever portion of it was due to the stimulus (this means Rick Perry especially, though Jan Brewer here in Arizona is guilty of taking the money without saying thank you too.)

The recovery since then has been bumpy but it is on the upswing. The November 2011 jobs report marked the fifth consecutive month in which private sector job growth has exceeded 100,000. In fact, it would look even better if public sector jobs weren't being cut at a record pace (so if the recovery is slow, it's not a failure of Keynesian economics, but of anti-Keynesian economics of slashing government payrolls in the middle of a down economy.) The Stimulus then was a success, in that it helped the economy land as softly as possible at the bottom of a very deep hole, and we are now crawling out at a steady and gradually improving rate. I believe that as a steward of the economy, President Obama has indeed lived up to his ideals of 'hope.' Things are getting better slowly, but they are getting better and in most states unemployment has fallen substantially over the past year. President Obama does in fact deserve credit for turning the direction of the economy around, from 'declining' to 'growing.' He deserves a chance, having done so, to work on getting it all the way up to speed. The following graph of job gains/losses in the critical period before and after the Stimulus bill passed makes it very plain.



The other area where Republicans have been critical of the President's economic policy is in the area of spending and the deficit. It is true that the Stimulus bill cost $862 billion which was added to the national debt (though as described above, it was necessary because the Depression it was designed to prevent would have been far more deadly to the overall economy.) And the President has conceded that although the Stimulus (as well as TARP) was necessary spending, in the long run the deficit needs to be reduced. I believe that given his explanation for the initial round of spending (and his acknowlegement of why he did it) that's all the explanation that is needed. He spent when he felt it was necessary to spend, so there is no reason to believe he wouldn't cut when he felt it was necessary to cut.

FINALLY let's apply the metrics I used in this post from the day President Obama was inaugurated to see how his economic record is so far:

1. The stock market. The Dow closed at 8281.22 on its last close before Obama was inaugurated, and continued down on that day to close at 7479.09 (a sense of where things were headed.) Today it closed at 12,169.65. This is not only 50% higher than it was when the President took office, but even above the 10,587.60 it was at on January 20, 2001 when Bush was inaugurated. Anyone who says this is anything less than a success (albeit on the narrow metric of how the folks that invest in stocks are doing) clearly has an agenda of running down the President no matter what the numbers say. And sales of luxury items like yachts and luxury cars are doing extremely well this year, bearing this out. Of course, as we've seen though 30 years of 'trickle down' just because the 1% are doing well, does not mean that the 99% are. However it is also true that millions of ordinary Americans are seeing their retirement accounts, IRA's and pensions in much better shape than they were a couple of years ago because of the booming stock market.

2. The Euro exchange rate. When Bush was inaugurated the rate was that it cost $0.94 to buy one Euro. After the economy tanked with Bush in the White House that was $1.32 per Euro the day Obama was inaugurated. Today it is just under $1.31. I'm willing to concede that this is not good news. Essentially the dollar (which represents faith in the American economy) has made only a very small gain against the Euro, which of course we well know that the European economy is now in a severe crisis. The exchange rate had dipped as low as $1.16 per Euro when it looked like a Greek default could be imminent but it has recovered substantially.

3. Net job growth. During the eight years after Bush was inaugurated, we had a net total job growth of 3.8 million jobs. This works out to about 40,000 per month on average. It is true that more than 2 million jobs were lost during the first two years of the Bush administration, so if you take that away then you have a gain of about 6 million jobs in 72 months, or about 83,000 jobs per month after the initial recession (which Bush apologists like to blame Clinton for even though the only big piece of legislation that was passed during the first couple of months of the Bush administration were the tax cuts, which they claimed would spur growth but it did not.) HERE IS THE KEY: even though those who pump up Bush's number by blaming his first two years on Clinton like to fully credit the first year of job losses starting in 2009 to President Obama, as we can see from the chart above the rate of loss turned around almost immediately when the Stimulus was passed, and today, despite the GOP around the country forcing public-sector job CUTS the rate of net job growth (over 100,000 now for the past five months) is STILL substantially higher than the average for the Bush administration AFTER the first two years of recession (!) In fact, during the few occasions when the Bush economy WAS producing substantially more than 100,000 private sector jobs (remember it is still over 100,000 even with the public sector cuts subtracted out) Republicans were trumpeting the same kinds of numbers as a success! Now, I will grant that we need more job growth than this, but the President has gone from a loss of -700,000 jobs per month to +100,000 and going up, so clearly his record on the economy deserves a deeper look. Even in some of the highest unemployment regions, hiring has been picking up and the unemployment rate is lower than it was last year.

4. Price of crude oil. This is the one where Obama takes the biggest hit. It was $34.20 when he took office and a barrel of Brent crude closed at $107.89 today. I was critical of Bush when crude oil prices hit $140 per barrel during his term. While some issues are clearly outside of the ability of the administration to do anything about (Arab spring, increased demand from China and India) it does push energy issues to the forefront. The Obama administration has invested in light rail, higher energy efficiency standards for automobiles and green energy. Those are all long term solutions and perhaps the biggest threat from a GOP Presidency is the threat that all of those things will be reversed and we will be back to the fossil fuel-dependent status quo on energy. That said, conservatives DO have a point that we have to feed our need for oil now. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Keystone pipeline now that it has turned into a political football. Its projected route is in fact unacceptable because it crosses some of the most sensitive regions of the aquifer which supplies the state of Nebraska with everything from drinking water to water needed for wildlife. The question is whether the route can be made environmentally safer. There is an eastern route which crosses only a small, and less sensitive portion of the aquifer. The administration must look for how, given that they will now have only a sixty day window to make that decision, they can mandate that the pipeline misses the aquifer, entirely if at all possible. Similarly, drilling is now resuming in the Gulf of Mexico, but the question is whether the safeguards are in place to prevent another spill. Sadly, there is no evidence that they are. And as we know, there is no plan in place about what to do if such a spill occurs. Maybe they should invent something that will stop it before they go back to deep sea drilling.

5. National debt. It increased under Bush from $5.8 trillion when he took office to $11.8 when he left. Yes, it has continued to increase under President Obama. However, this is one area where he makes perfect sense. There was an immediate crisis when he took office (the loss of more than 2/3 of a million jobs per month.) He did what he had to to stanch the job loss. Yes, it increased the deficit. He's fully owned up to the fact that it did, and is now saying he wants to look for ways to bring it back down in the future. Good. His opponents also like to point to the health care law as 'big spending.' Only that is not supported by the facts: The non-partisan CBO found that the PPACA actually REDUCES the deficit by $143 billion over ten years compared to if it had not been passed. Further, when the new GOP House came in the same CBO found that their attempt to repeal the law in its entirety, if it happened at the beginning of this year, would ADD almost a quarter of a trillion dollars to the deficit! So when a Republican uses 'health care' interchangeably with 'deficit spending' they show they haven't a clue what they are talking about.

HEALTH CARE

Nothing that has happened during Obama's first term is as controversial as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA.) It is true that the final bill does not include a public option (as the President himself had wanted) and that it does include an individual mandate to purchase private insurance (which candidate Obama clearly stated his opposition to during the campaign, and which contrasted him with Hillary Clinton who favored an individual mandate.) Conceded, readily. Given unified GOP opposition, the President needed the votes of all sixty Democrats. That included Blanche Lincoln who stated flatly that she would never vote for anything containing the public option, and Independent Joe Lieberman (who represents a state that is famously the home of several large insurance companies) who was looking for any excuse at all to vote against the bill, even signing onto an agreement that included a Medicare buy in at 55 that he was on record as supporting but then backing out and refusing to back the plan. As we know too, Democrat Ben Nelson (whose state is home to the Mutual of Omaha insurance company) refused to vote for the plan until it included special treatment for Nebraska (the so-called "Cornhusker kickback.") So the plan we got was the plan that was necessary in light of unified opposition from the right and the need to placate, therefore, every single one of fifty-eight Democratic and two Independent Senators. Yes, getting it passed was ugly, but also yes, it did get passed.

Given that there is room for improvement, let's consider what it does do. It sets up exchanges so those who can't afford insurance will receive a subsidy to help them buy it. Maybe we would have preferred a public option (or even single payer if we could get it) but achieving universal coverage (though granted universal coverage that excludes undocumented immigrants, but that's a topic for a different discussion) is a good and firm step in the right direction. When it was passed, there were 51 million Americans without health insurance. Because of changes that have already gone into effect such as an end to pre-existing exlusions and recissions and allowing parents to continue to cover their kids while they are in college, that number has already gone down by two million despite the slow recovery in the economy. When the bill is fully implemented, there will no longer be two classes of people in the emergency room: those who are insured or can pay cash, vs. those who are uninsured and poor and generally have to wait far longer until the people in the first category have all been seen. THIS IS A GOOD THING and those, particularly liberals, who suggest otherwise because of some esoteric argument that the health care bill isn't 'better' are wilfully blind and probably have never been uninsured themselves or know what that means if you are sick or injured but stacked on the back rack waiting for hours on end or sometimes even days to be seen.

Further, the first President to propose and push for a national health care system was Teddy Roosevelt. He left office more than a century ago. That's how long we've been trying, and that's how long conservatives have blocked any kind of insurance reform. THE FACT THAT THIS GOT PASSED AT ALL is, in the words of Vice President Biden, a "BFD." Certainly an achievement for the President.

THE PRESIDENT'S PERSONALITY IS SUITED TO THE JOB

Let's end with the President's basic temperment. He's both thoughtful and careful in thinking through his response to crises and but also willing to be bold and accept the consequences and see things through once he's made a decision. This was first put on display just a couple of months into his term when Somali pirates kidnapped and held for ransom the captain of an American freighter. President Obama gave negotiaters the chance to act but finally when the captain's life was in danger he gave the order to the SEALS to rescue him and use lethal force if that was what it took. Then a couple of months later, when bankruptcy loomed for Chrysler and General Motors, President Obama used TARP funds to aggressively intervene and preserved the core of the American automotive industry, and under American ownership. The success of the two companies since then has vindicated his decision but at the time it was not clear at all that it was the right decision. We've since seen other similar reponses to a crisis (Libya*) or when an opportunity presented itself (bin Laden.) This mixture of coolness when considering options followed by boldness and resolve once it's time to act is exactly what we need in a Commander in Chief. I believe President Obama passes this test while the leading Republicans do not. Mitt Romney is undeniably cool, but his past history to equivocate on issues and (as we saw in the 2008 campaign) adjust his strategy reactively instead of keeping a steady course does not inspire confidence in how he would respond to a crisis. Newt Gingrich has a history of impulsive, 'fly by the seat of his pants' decisons. While his ability to improvise is certainly bold, one has to be concerned about whether he would make the same decision he would make if he took time out to think through his position. His statements on Libya earlier this year highlight this concern. On March 3, Gingrich criticized Obama for not intervening in Libya unilaterally. After Obama, with the backing of the U.N. and the Arab League, participated in a joint intervention with France, Britain and other nations, Gingrich flip-flopped and criticized the intervention. It's perhaps understandable in that as a GOP candidate Gingrich felt the need to criticize the President no matter what he did, but the sudden, whiplash reversal makes one wonder for how long Gingrich really thinks anything through before responding.

President Obama has both characteristics: coolness when it is time to think things through and make a calculated decision, then boldness when it is time to follow through on that decision and see it through, including all consequences and fallout that may result.

So yes, for these reasons I believe, despite my sometimes copious disagreements with the President, that he deserves to be re-elected.

*--I myself questioned the Libya intervention once it took longer than he predicted, but I do give him credit for keeping his commitment to not send any American ground forces and getting completely out once it was done.

What happens if the SCOTUS overturns only the mandate and nothing else?

It seems as though we are always having an 'all or nothing' debate on the health care law. Democrats seem compelled to follow the position of the administration that the whole Affordable Care Act should be defended, while Republicans are just as adamant that it should be repealed-- every jot and tittle.

It is true that because of the political realities in Washington during late 2009 when the bill was put together, it was a carefully crafted piece of legislation designed to appease both patient groups, medical providers and the insurance industry.

In particular, a key piece of the bill was the individual mandate-- the requirement that starting in 2014 all Americans must purchase health insurance or face tax penalties. Candidate Obama in 2008 had only supported the mandate for children (on the theory that children were unable to make their own decisions as to whether to purchase insurance or not and their parents should not have the right to put their childrens health and lives at risk by not purchasing insurance.) However, he had specifically opposed the mandate for adults (which helped distinguish him from Hillary Clinton in the primaries, as she supported it.) However, as the bill was warped to fit through the hoop of what was possible in the Senate (and key parts such as the public option were jettisoned) the mandate made its way back into the bill.

The reason why it did was the perfectly logical contention by the insurance industry that other provisions in the bill, which curbed their worst practices (like recission, the act of canceling someone's policy when they got sick; pre-existing condtion exclusions which effectively meant for example that cancer survivors could never buy health insurance; and lifetime caps on treatment) would drive up their costs as they were forced to cover the sickest patients and pay for their care. While it certainly can (and should) be argued that the purpose of health care is to take care of the sick, insurers did have a point about the cost. So, the mandate meant that they would in return vastly expand their market, by virtue of more people paying premiums. While they would now be required to cover sick people who previously could not get insurance, they would balance this with premiums paid by mostly young, healthy people who right now don't have insurance (and gamble that they won't suffer an accident or unexpected illness.)

There are some good reasons why one could argue for the mandate of course. Some people who could afford insurance choose not to get it now (you know who I'm talking about because you've met him too-- the young, indestructible stud who spends all his money on a hot car he can barely afford to put gas in.) Then, when they are in an accident from hot dogging it down the freeway they are unable to pay the hospital bill, and we all end up paying for it when they pass it on via exaggerated charges to us, the insured (which then the insurance company jacks up our premiums to get their loss back.) This kind of thing has been going on for years and it's why a lot of hospital administrators lose their hair early. But-- the mandate remains unpopular (after all, nobody wants to be told they HAVE to buy something) and it has been a point of attack by opponents of the law.

Adding the mandate to the bill helped nail down the votes of two key Senators with strong ties to the insurance industry, Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (for a long time Hartford, the capital of Connecticut practically defined the insurance industry and is still the home of many major insurance companies) and Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska (whose state is the most Republican one in the nation to elect a Democrat to the Senate, and also the home of Mutual of Omaha, still a major player in the insurance industry.)

Almost from the moment the ACA was passed on March 21, 2010, Republican candidates at all levels have pledged to repeal it. And recognizing how politically balanced it was, they have pledged to repeal the whole law, but in arguing that it should be repealed have focused their rhetoric like a laser beam primarily on one particular provision-- the mandate. However, promises to repeal are essentially political posturing. Doing so would be a mammoth undertaking, and it is a fact that no matter how successful the GOP is at the ballot box it is virtually certain that there will still be at least 41 Democrats who voted for the law in the first place left in the Senate-- enough to mount a filibuster and prevent a repeal effort from going anywhere even if there is a GOP President, pen in hand, ready to sign it. And it's hard to see how promising to go back to the broken health care system we've had for the past couple of decades is going to be seen as a panacea if they repeal it (I know they said 'repeal and replace' but repealing it and then passing a different reform law is even more hard to visualize than just doing the first half of that and going back to start.)

More significantly, various Republican groups (most notably a coalition of Republican state Attorneys General) have filed suit in courts all over the country attempting to overturn the law.

So far, at the level of the federal appeals courts, the results have been decidedly mixed. Six rulings have so far been issued. Three of them have upheld the law, and the other three have ruled against it. This is likely to end up in the Supreme Court next year and everyone is basing their thinking on the assumption that the court will either rule for the entire law or against the entire law.

BUT-- ONLY ONE of the three rulings against it overturned the whole law. The other two overturned the individual mandate only and upheld everything else of significance (including the reforms mentioned above preventing insurers from denying coverage and insurance exchanges where people who couldn't afford it otherwise could buy private insurance with premiums that are partly paid by the federal government.)

Well, it took a former Senate Republican-- and a formerly very influential one at that, former Majority Leader Bill Frist to ask the obvious question:

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS ONLY THE MANDATE and leaves the rest of the law intact?

After all, the Supreme Court has a long history of ignoring whatever the legislative dealmaking was in getting laws passed and overturning certain provisions while leaving others alone.

The first thing that will happen in that case is that the insurance industry executives will need their own services after having a heart attack. Suddenly faced with not getting the increased revenue they have been counting on but still on the hook for universal coverage, they will try to make this up in one (or more probably both) of two ways:

1. Significantly increase premiums. This would increase costs both to people who pay them, and also to the government. As passed, the OMB found that because of a number of taxes included in the bill the ACA actually reduces the projected deficit by $143 billion (another irony in Republican calls to trim the deficit, when this is something that actually more than pays for itself.) But if the mandate is repealed all bets are off the table because the necessary government subsidies on insurance would spike upward sharply and begin to play into the deficit.

2. Begin an intensive lobbying campaign to be relieved of the burden they now have (and as part of the overall package were willing to accept for a few years) of caring for the sickest without revoking their insurance, turning them away or limiting the total cost of their care.) While it is conceivable they could convince Congress and some future administration to repeal the rest of the law, I believe this is unlikely because many of the provisions are not only popular, but are well ingrained by now. Passing a bill that explicity gave insurance companies the right to screw people (even if it's how they used to screw them) would be very unpopular and no politician will want to touch it. So instead of that they might have more success if there was some other way in which these very sick patients who were no longer profitable to treat could be taken off their ledgers. But that would require that they be given to someone else to pay for. And clearly no insurance company will want to only get people who have been rejected as too costly or too risky by other insurance companies. So that leaves-- that's right, the government. So, in that case it's entirely plausible that the insurance industry itself would end up pushing for a public option (albeit one only open to people the insurance companies don't want.)

Nevertheless this is a good thing. If the Supreme Court throws away the mandate we could end up in a society in which you may not be compelled to buy insurance but insurers are compelled to sell it to you and on top of that we get a public option after all.

The party that cried 'wolf.'

The right had an opportunity to oppose healthcare from a position of principle, and to give their best argument about the morality of the bill, the ideals of individualism vs. a collective modality, or about why the free market could solve the vexing problem of insuring the uninsured if Government were not involved. Though they still might have lost such an argument, they might not have, and would certainly have made their ideals and principles well known through that effort.

But instead, they threw bombast about Marxism and Death Panels. Instead of principled defenders of their faith, we got shrill talk show hosts coming across as the angry, bitter old men that most of them are. Up until the last (and even after that) the 'tea partiers' have come across as a bunch of whiny juveniles. And in having lost that debate they have set themselves up for more problems in the future.

Had opponents of health care reform won, they would in fact have been able to back up every word and prediction they said about it by saying, 'Look what we saved you from.'

But they did not prevail. And the harsh rhetoric they used has probably painted them into a corner. People will be looking for the government takeover of hospitals, insurance companies and the rest of the health care system. They will be looking for a Stalinist police state. They will be waiting for their ration cards before they can see a doctor. They will be waiting with terror for the Death Panel to come knock on their door in the middle of the night.

Of course none of this will happen, and when it doesn't then you will have to wonder how many people will listen the next time the GOP cries 'wolf.'

Get Health Care Done, Now.

The GOP and the paragons of the right hve been trumpeting the special election victory of Scott Brown in the Democratic state of Massachusetts as a reason why we should give up on the Obama agenda, starting with health care reform.

However, it means almost the opposite of this.

A lot of the voters who voted for Obama last year and stayed home this year (or in some cases, even voted for Brown) did so because really not much is that different from if John McCain had won last year's election. Obama has hired far too many Wall Street bankers and Federal Reserve retreads to set the course for the nation's financial policy. The Bush wars are continuing. Little has been done on the environment. And health care reform has been continually dragged out and watered down to the point where it is almost unrecognizable. And even this looks like it may be taken off the table and replaced by a bill that everyone can agree on which may clip around the edges of the problem, say by getting rid of the pre-existing condition exclusion but probably leave loopholes that in the end will make it just 'feel-good window dressing.'

In fact, Brown himself made the best case for why the public still wants meaningful health care reform. He pointed out that the voters in Massachusetts already have universal coverage, so they would only be essentially paying extra taxes to extend to the rest of the United States a benefit they already enjoy. He specifically did not call for the repeal of the Massachusetts law, which despite its warts seems likely to remain in place. Well, as Tip O'Neill said, "all politics is local" and Brown was able to take avantage of a progressive local law and turn it to his advantage. He also was very careful not to criticize the President directly, as Obama remains popular in Massachusetts.

The answer is to get health care reform finished. According to some reports, house and senate leaders were 'hours away' from an agreement when Brown's election caused some to get cold feet. They should go ahead and finish the agreement and push it through while Democrats still have sixty Senate votes.

The idea that moving to the center will save Democrats is foolishness. To win, Democrts have to give voters a reason to vote for them, and right now, they haven't yet. Throwing in the towel on health care would make the problem worse, not better.

Democrats are right to lock Republicans out of health reform conference committee

Normally, I'd be in favor of following protocol involving conference committees. President Obama was elected on a promise to make Washington a more civil place, and it is absolutely certain that Democrats will therefore receive some flak for bypassing the conference committee and excluding Republicans from the final negotiation on health care.

WASHINGTON – House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass traditional procedures when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said Monday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and reduce their ability to delay or force politically troubling votes in both houses....

Democratic aides said the final compromise talks would essentially be a three-way negotiation involving top Democrats in the House and Senate and the White House, a structure that gives unusual latitude to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

These officials said there are no plans to appoint a formal House-Senate conference committee, the method Congress most often uses to reconcile differing bills. Under that customary format, a committee chairman is appointed to preside, and other senior lawmakers from both parties and houses participate in typically perfunctory public meetings while the meaningful negotiations occur behind closed doors.

In this case though the White House, Reid and Pelosi are absolutely right. If there was a chance of reaching a consensus that Republicans could support then they should work with Republicans. But since it is now abundantly clear that the GOP is fixated on a single goal-- to defeat the bill-- there is no point in watering it down even further than it already has been in exchange for exactly nothing, because that's how much support any compromise with Republicans would get from the right side of the aisle.

Consider last year's stimulus bill early in the Obama administration when we were literally teetering on the brink of a total financial collapse and a second Great Depression. President Obama broke precedent by traveling to Capitol Hill to meet with Congress, including several meetings with Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate. Democrats made numerous changes in the bill to accomodate Republicans. We ended up with a watered-down stimulus (one reason economists are now saying we should pass another one this year) that was 43% tax cuts (including several breaks that Republicans specifically asked be included) and money that was supposed to be spent on needed school construction and renovation (and which would certainly have created jobs and boosted the local economy everywhere) was axed to keep Republicans happy. The price for the vote of Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) was to get rid of funding for pandemic preparedness.

So after reaching out to Republicans and making all of these concessions, how many Republicans actually voted for the bill? Zero in the House and three in the Senate.

When the health care reform bill was in committee, the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee entertained and ultimately accepted over 200 amendments proposed by Republicans. But even with the amendments in the bill, every single Republican voted against it. Then Senator Max Baucus spent the summer meeting with three Republican Senators to try and craft a bipartisan bill. He at least did get one Republican on his committee to vote for the final committee bill-- Maine's Olympia Snowe. But in the process all of the compromises that were written into his committee's bill-- most notably the lack of a public option-- were supported by Republicans but in the end they voted against the finished product.

So then during the floor debate in the House and especially in the Senate we saw Republicans do everything they could, not to reach an accord on the bill, but simply to delay the bill. And in the end, stripped of a public option and with abortion language that undermines the stated promise to end gender discrimination in pricing in order to placate Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, the bill passed with one Republican vote in the house and none in the Senate.

It is now abundantly clear that rather than trying to help craft a health reform bill that is more to their liking, Republicans, who would need to prevent Democrats in the Senate from reaching sixty votes on the final passage of the conference committee bill have instead bet the farm on making it fail. Their best hope is to try and delay the bill until some Democrat breaks ranks, or maybe they are hoping that Robert Byrd has a heart attack next month, or heck who knows what they are hoping, anything to make it fail.

Under these circumstances there is no reason at all to talk to Republicans. They will vote against it anyway and their entire agenda is delay, not serious negotiation. You'd have a better chance of trying to convince the chief Ayatollah of Iran to become a Mormon.

Republican Senators forced to defend 'back then it was standard practice not to pay for things'

Remember the 2003 medicare prescription drug benefit? The one which cost a trillion dollars and which was not paid for at all, just added to the deficit?

Today there are still 24 Republicans in the Senate who supported it, and some of their explanations for how they can be against the current health care overhaul sound strained, to say the least.

Six years ago, "it was standard practice not to pay for things," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question." His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit "has done a lot of good."

It has done a dubious amount of good (mainly to pharmaceutical companies' bottom line) but it's hard to suggest that a bill which clearly does much more good, extending coverage to the uninsured, is less worthy of Sen. Hatch's vote than the medicare prescription bill. And given that the CBO has projected that the current bill does in fact pay for itself and doesn't raise the deficit, how is it a defense to say that six years ago it was standard practice not to pay for things??? I mean, (pardon my French), WTF?!!?!?

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said those who see hypocrisy "can legitimately raise that issue." But he defended his positions in 2003 and now, saying the economy is in worse shape and Americans are more anxious.

No doubt, the economy is in worse shape. But that's largely because of the policies espoused by the same administration that brought us the prescription drug bill.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said simply: "Dredging up history is not the way to move forward."

The simple answer: those who have been proven wrong always say that.

At least some conservatives recognize how absurd this whole argument is:

"As far as I am concerned, any Republican who voted for the Medicare drug benefit has no right to criticize anything the Democrats have done in terms of adding to the national debt," said Bruce Bartlett, an official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He made his comments in a Forbes article titled "Republican Deficit Hypocrisy."

Bartlett said the 2003 Medicare expansion was "a pure giveaway" that cost more than this year's Senate or House health bills will cost. More important, he said, "the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers. One hundred percent of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit."

The pending health care bills in Congress, he noted, are projected to add nothing to the deficit over 10 years.

This bill is responsible in that it does pay for itself and it benefits far more people than the prescription drug bill. So really (though they won't say it) the only reason they are opposing it is purely political. They want to inflict a defeat on the Obama agenda. End of story.

Health Care Reform is not about being popular, it's about doing the right thing

Now that it looks like health care reform is on its way to passing the Senate, the next hurdle down the road, Republicans are claiming that Democrats are ignoring the will of the people, citing polls saying that a majority don't like the Senate bill. NRC chairman Michael Steele even came out today and accused Democrats of 'throwing the finger at the American people.'

This is ridiculous. First, the polls simply ask whether people support the current Senate health care plan. Well, the truth is, I don't like it a bit in that I support a robust public option like the one that is in the house bill. So if you asked me if I support the Senate plan I'd say 'no.' But that's not to say I agree with Republicans who don't want to do anything. Further, as a number of people who were around in 1994 said this week, 'don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.' In 1994 a number of liberals opposed HillaryCare because they felt it didn't go far enough, and in the end we got nothing. So this time around liberals held their noses at some of the more odious aspects of the bill and voted for universal coverage.

And for that matter if you insist on looking at polls, the most recent poll by CNN indicates that support for reform is now gaining again.

This bill does, even if through mechanisms I may not like seek to achieve universal coverage. That has been a big problem for years, as we have a two tier health system, of the insured versus the uninsured. I don't like mandates, much prefering a single payer system up front but at least the mandates are backed by large government subsidies that will make the premiums affordable to people who are uninsured and living on a limited income.

And this is huge. Simply put, universal coverage is something that we've been striving for, for a long, long time. Maybe how we get there isn't perfect but it is undeniably going to be a very good thing. And the United States will no longer stand out as the only industrialized country in the world that fails to make health care coverage available to everyone. Other countries, such as Japan, have systems similar to that which we are now on the verge of passing, in that the insurance itself is offered through private companies even while premiums are heavily subsidized by the government.

Further, as one supporter of the bill pointed out, this is a foundation. It can be added onto in the future if problems are found wanting.

But most importantly, this represents a fundamental change for America, and a change for the better. It ranks with programs such as Social Security as representing the finest in America, the idea that we can provide for all of our citizens. And at this historic moment, if only Democrats will vote for this, then so be it.

Let me play off the 'let not the perfect be the enemy of the good' statement. Let me say also, 'let not the popular be the enemy of the right.' Often doing what is right is not popular. But it is still right, and for that the Senate Democrats (and yes, grudgingly even Joe Lieberman) should be commended for last night's vote.

House health care reform bill passes

Today the house passed an historic health care reform bill.

The roll-call vote is right here.

The debate was fluid during the day. At one point Bart Stupak (D-MI) pushed through an amendment that will ban a public option from paying for abortions. This is clearly an anti-choice amendment (after all private insurance companies routinely cover abortion) but it also had the effect of forcing Stupak and several other anti-choice Democrats to support the bill once the amendment was included and counting the votes at that moment Pelosi pounced and pushed for a vote on the whole bill.

The vote was 220-215 in favor of the bill. However, as Lyndon Johnson once said he liked winning with small margins because then he knew he'd gotten everything out of it that he could. Pelosi got the votes of 219 Democrats, one more than she needed, and an unexpected gift-- one Republican who braved the wrath of John Boehner and voted for the bill (Anh Cao, R-LA, who represents an overwhelmingly Democratic district and got elected at all last year mainly because his opponent was corrupt congressman Willie 'cold cash' Jefferson.) After voting with the party line on the stimulus as Boehner tried to prevent any display at all of bipartisanship, apparently being asked to go against the wishes of his constituents again was too much for Cao.

I'm not thrilled with the Stupak amendment, but strategically it makes sense-- given the closeness of the vote it is entirely possible that the whole vote could have failed without Stupak and his compatriots. And as the debate moves forward to the much tougher Senate phase at least the Stupak amendment cuts off one line of attack for the right.

However, all in all, this is a good day.

Result being spun as exactly the opposite of what it was

Republicans are saying that Tuesday's election results, especially in Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell crushed Democrat Creigh Deeds, are a referendum on the Obama agenda. It is true that McDonnell won by 18 percent in a state that Obama last year won by seven-- a twenty-five point swing. They claim that voters wanted to 'send a message' to Washington on health care. And it is true that Obama campaigned for Deeds in the Hampton Roads area of southeastern Virginia only last week.

However, a closer look at the numbers suggests otherwise. To begin with, start with the exit polls of the race.

To begin with, Deeds only lost the Hampton Roads area by 54-45%. This is signficantly better relative to Obama last year (who won it by a similar margin) than he did anywhere else in the state. So if anything, it appears that the Obama appearance may have helped Deeds hold his margin of loss in the region down, because he lost more voters in other parts of the state.

Furthermore, buried down towards the bottom is a question about what the primary issue was that voters were voting on. A quarter answered it was health care. And among those who did, Deeds WON by 51-49%. Keep in mind this is a candidate who was losing big, still narrowly winning among voters who are concered about health care (McDonnell's voters incidentally cited the economy and taxes as their biggest issues.) So if anything, this seems to suggest support for the Obama agenda on health care, certainly not opposition!

There is no question that Creigh Deeds ran a very poor campaign, attempting to focus on Bob McDonnell's 20 year old master's thesis while McDonnell was talking about jobs. However there is another point to be made here: Deeds tried to run as a 'moderate' and separate himself from the Obama agenda even as he was asking for the President's support. Clearly that strategy backfired since he did not win very many votes from conservatives but the electorate that showed up included a majority of voters who had voted for John McCain last year-- in other words a lot of Obama voters decided not to vote rather than vote for a conservative Democrat like Creigh Deeds.

Nevertheless the exit poll results show clearly that if the mainstream media did more than scratch the surface they'd see that if anything the results suggest support for, not opposition to, the Obama health care plan.

Keep in mind too that Bill Owens, who won in NY-23, pledged during the campaign to vote for the health care bill now before the house (and he is being sworn in today, so he will have a chance to do that too.) So that issue was front and center during the New York campaign, and if the district voters really wanted to stop health care reform they could have voted for Doug Hoffman.

CBO scores house plan with 'robust' public option to cut the deficit

The CBO came out today with projections for a House plan that does include a 'robust' public option.

Their score is that the plan would cost $871 billion up front and when savings are included would actually reduce the deficit.

Notice that this is not so far from what the Baucus bill produced after a two month delay in the Senate Finance Committee would cost and save, only that bill was claimed as some kind of a 'breakthrough' because of cost savings that could allegedly attract GOP support. Which it did, exactly one Republican.

The claims that health care reform with a public option will run up the deficit have been punctured by today's report, in fact deficit hawks should jump on it as a way to cut tens of billions of dollars out of the long term projected deficit. This means then that there is no longer any good reason for opposing health care reform, including a public option. The only real reason anyone would is if they are still putting the interests of the insurance industry ahead of the interests of American patients (which will sooner or later by virtually all of us.) A distressingly large number of members of Congress are indeed going to be doing just that, but this pretty much makes it clear that that is what they are doing in that case.

Support a Nataline's law provision in health care legislation

Remember Nataline Sarkisyan? If the name rings a bell, it should. Nataline was a seventeen year old girl who needed a liver transplant. Only when they finally found a donor her parent's insurance company, CIGNA, which provided full coverage through her father's insurance refused to pay. After a lot of bad press they relented nine days later but by the time the procedure was performed, Sarkisyan was literally hours away from death and did not survive.

Her parents went to court to sue CIGNA for damage caused by the company's denial of their daughter's transplant. The court threw out the complaint, not because they hadn't caused her death but because of a 1987 Supreme Court decision that prevents victims from suing over coverage decisions. The decision relates to 1974's Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, which governs employee retirement funds and benefit plans.

So last year Nataline's parents, Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan went to CIGNA's corporate headquarters on October 29, 2008 to ask for an apology. What they got was a front man who came out and told them that he was very sorry but that the company would not even offer them an apology, and further that the CEO or anyone involved with the decision would not come out and talk to them. Not that they didn't see someone higher up, of course. What they got was the man upstairs throwing them 'the bird.'

Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan are not giving up in trying to change things though.

The catalyst for this came not only in the judge being forced by the 1987 court decision to have to dismiss Nataline's wrongful death suit, but also from CIGNA's official press release after this.

"Cigna said the dismissal of the wrongful-death case in April showed that the court "agreed with our position that the Sarkisyans' claims regarding Cigna's decision making were without merit."

In fact, the court did not consider the merits of the family's wrongful-death claims. Instead, it decided those claims could not be heard.

Not heard because of the Supreme Court decision!! If it were based solely on the merits of the case then it could be heard. The pure and unadulterated arrogance and contempt on display CIGNA, knowing very well that they have nothing to fear if they do kill someone, is stunning.

The Sarkisyans have proposed 'Nataline's law,' whereby Congress would put in place a mechanism by which insurance companies like CIGNA will be held accountable (even if it is by fines rather than by direct compensation to victims or their families) for injuries or death that it can be proven was caused by withholding payment for a procedure.

According to the linked article, at least one CIGNA employee did have a conscience and quit his job so he could stand with the Sarkisyans:

"ERISA is a license to kill," Glovsky said. "The companies know that they can deny treatment with the sick or dead member having virtually no recourse."

Wendell Potter, a Cigna spokesman who quit after handling the publicity surrounding the Sarkisyan case, agreed.

"HMOs and insurers are largely free to deny access to care without fear of reprisal or financial consequences," Potter said in a speech to the Civil Justice Foundation in San Francisco.

Right now, as Congress debates health care overhaul it is time to undo the disastrous ERISA provision. The truth is that tort reform is long overdue-- instead of aiming lawsuits at doctors whose hands may well be tied by the knowlege that some procedures will likely be denied even if they ask for them, maybe the truth is that it is the insurers who should be included in these suits.

Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog sent a letter to key congressional leaders urging them to undo the ERISA ruling, and group President Jamie Court said Nataline's case shows why such a move is crucial to any healthcare reform.

"If the insurer decides they don't want to pay for the treatment because they can save a lot of money, there is not a dime available in damages if the person dies or is injured," Court said. "It's cheaper to kill you. If you die, you can't go to court.

Baucus bill is a bad one, go the reconciliation route.

I'm certainly not a fan of the Baucus Finance Committee bill, which as I've noted before would force people who can't afford it to pay for insurance anyway-- the same formula as MittCare in Massachusetts, which has not succeeded in that state either. It also would only insure about half of the uninsured today in America.

The fact that the CBO has claimed that it will cost $829 billion over ten years and have a net effect counting savings and new taxes of reducing the deficit by $80 billion still doesn't appeal to me, because I still think it's a lousy bill, period.

That said, it is interesting to hear what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had to say today.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fired back that Democrats have yet to craft a package that can win 60 votes and, until they do, any claims that the package can dramatically shrink the ranks of the uninsured while lowering the budget deficit are "irrelevant."

Translation: He's still planning to filibuster any bill, and it doesn't matter what is in it or not.

Under the circumstances then it makes more and more sense for Democrats to throw out the half-measures, mandates and tax increases in the Baucus bill and go with a more liberal bill that they push through using reconciliation.

A century already, and the GOP still wants 'more time?'

Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal is the latest to publish the notion that the President should hit the 'reset' button on health care. This notion, pushed by Republicans, is that if he and Democratic leaders simply threw out everything that has been done already and returned to the table on health care reform, they could come up with a wonderful, bipartisan bill that would make everyone happy.

Only I don't believe that this would happen. The real test of how the GOP would react to the Obama administration came back in the first few weeks as Congress debated the stimulus plan. There was a palpable sense of urgency as the economy was in free fall and jobs were being lost at a record pace. Economists gave us dire warnings that if the Government did not put together a stimulus bill quickly then we would almost certainly face a second Great Depression.

Against this backdrop the President took the unusual step of going from the White House over to Capitol Hill and sitting down with Republican leaders to try and work something out. And in the end he did work out a 'bipartisan' bill, in which the original stimulus was shaved down by 20%, all funding for new school contruction was thrown out and he got a bill that is 43% tax cuts. After this, zero Republicans in the house and three in the Senate (including Arlen Specter, who has since become a Democrat) voted for it. In other words, Republicans, including many in the house, were happy to suggest compromises, many of which were included in the bill, but then they lined up and voted uniformly against it.

Given this history, do you really believe that the GOP would really negotiate in good faith on health care?

If you do, just ask Max Baucus. For months he and two other Democrats on the Finance Committee met with three Republicans on the committee, supposedly to work out a bipartisan compromise. Despite word back in late July that the group was nearing a 'consensus' and pressure from the Senate leadership to at least come up with a committee bill by the August recess, he at the request of the Republicans agreed to continue negotiating and come back after the recess. Then two of the three Republicans he had been talking to, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) both came out during the recess and all but pledged to vote against any bill.

Yeah, 'good faith' with these guys is a knife in the back. Baucus was duped into doing what they wanted-- delaying the bill-- and by the time he came back was essentially down to one Republican he might have been able to convince (Olympia Snowe of Maine.) Snowe couldn't support his compromise for other reasons (some of which I agree with, such as the fact that individuals might be forced to pay more than they could afford just to buy insurance.) However, it is clear now that the whole GOP strategy of delaying action on the bill was what was behind Grassley and Enzi even pretending to negotiate.

As far as taking more 'time' because it's better to 'get it right than just get something done' (lofty sounding words often spoken by Republican members of Congress) a bit of history is useful here. As President Obama mentioned in his speech last week, this effort to reform the U.S. health care system and give everyone coverage began under Theodore Roosevelt. That means that there is nobody alive today who was even an adult when this started. We know that's what happened in 1993-1994 also. Republicans asked for more 'time' to be spent on the legislation but even while they were asking for time they were attacking the whole concept of reform from every angle in a (successful) bid to kill it. Then, if the GOP was really interested in 'reform' they had six years when they had control of the House, Senate and White House when they could have done something if they wanted to. So the cry that we need to take more 'time' is disingenuous at best. Senator Jim DeMint made it clear that the GOP wants to make this "Obama's Waterloo." He could give them all the time in the world and they would use it to make sure he lost, not that anything meaningful got passed.

It does seem likely that we will have a bill passed by using reconciliation (probably meaning a more liberal bill; it will be much easier to pass a bill with the public option and be able to lose up to eight Democrats than it would be to pass a bill without the public option at this point since zero Republicans will vote for it either way.) If the use of the reconciliation process is unfortunate, then so is the fact that there does not seem to be any other path forward.

And the GOP has made it that way by blocking every other path.

Baucus plan may fail in committee; reconciliation more likely

The last Republican who was working with Max Baucus on his vain attempt at producing a bipartisan bill in his Senate Finance committee, Olympia Snowe of Maine, has apparently given up on supporting Baucus' plan.

As I pointed out the other day, the Baucus plan is a bad one, featuring mandates that would drive up the cost of health care for poor people (and not enough offsetting tax credits, even for those who could afford to pay insurance premiums upfront in exchange for a tax credit next year.)

Snowe cited that objection (making her more reasonable on that point than Max Baucus) and also how the plan to tax expensive health plans would probably cost many of her constituents in Maine where insurance is already among the most expensive in the nation.

The Baucus plan also has no government option, which caused one of the committee's liberals, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to say he won't support it. If the rest of the liberal Democrats on the committee follow Rockefeller's lead then Baucus may suffer the embarrassment of having delayed work on health care reform for months while chasing a compromise only to see it fail in his own committee, done in by a coalition of Republicans and liberal Democrats.

The truth is that Baucus' vision of a bipartisan bill was an illusion from the beginning. That became clear during the recess, when the other two Republicans that Baucus had been negotiating with, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) both made it clear that they were against reform, including the bill that Baucus was supposedly working with them on. In contrast to Grassley and Enzi, who I believe simply strung things out as part of a GOP grand strategy to delay, deflate and defeat any significant health care reform bill (which we know very well they've been angling for all along, as Jim DeMint made clear a couple of months ago,) I think that Snowe was probably sincere, but she can't support the Baucus bill for the same reason I don't support it. If you're going to force people to buy health insurance then you have to help people who can't afford it pay for it up front, period.

What this does mean is that whatever goes to the floor of the Senate will probably much more resemble the bill that came out of the Health, Education and Labor Committee several weeks ago. That bill does include a Government option.

Because it does a handful of Democrats (Baucus, Kent Conrad, the two Nelsons, Evan Bayh, Mary Landreau and possibly independent Joe Lieberman) have expressed some doubts about whether they will support such a bill. Because the death of Ted Kennedy leaves Democrats with one less vote than needed to break a filibuster even if they do get all their members to sign on to something, it seems likely that Harry Reid will resort to reconciliation. Reconciliation is a parliamentary tactic that will mean that only 51 Senators will be needed to pass a bill, and a clause in a bill passed earlier this year gives Reid the option to use it after October 15 to pass a health reform bill. Republicans did the same thing in 2001 in order to push through the Bush tax cuts without having to break a filibuster.

And really, there is no reason anymore not to use reconciliation. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell says it would amount to a 'declaration of war,' and that the Senate GOP would do everything they could to block health care and the rest of the Obama agenda. And if McConnell and his caucus had done anything less than that since the President has taken office that threat might have to be taken seriously. But whether it is declared or not, McConnell and the rest of the Republicans in Congress have already been marching in lockstep against the Obama agenda, they have already bottled up virtually all of Obama's judicial appointments and many other appointments and they have already signaled their intent do everything they can to delay, disrupt and obstruct the President's agenda. Health care reform was supposed to be 'Waterloo,' remember? So the Republicans have already been fighting a scorched earth, take no prisoners kind of war against the Democratic agenda. So WHY NOT use reconciliation? Max Baucus is learning the hard way that there can be no compromise with this crew, so if he's smart he'll realize that the only way forward is to reconnect with his fellow Democrats.

If nothing else though, the apparent failure of the Baucus attempt should make it clear to everyone that any appeal to bipartisanship is folly, and it will take a long time to revive it. Four committees (three in the house, one in the Senate) got a bill out of committee before the August recess with party line Democratic votes. In contrast to that in the Finance Committee, the Democratic leadership (Baucus and Conrad) led a serious attempt at bipartisanship, and it's taken much longer and now they may not even get any bill out at all.

Just write that down and pull it out next time some Republican complains about 'cramming something down their throats.' Because using the muscle of the majority to cram stuff down the GOP's throat is about the only thing that works anymore.

It's time for the President to lead

With the health care debate in full swing, with members of congress and Senators out there seeing their meetings being disrupted by organized action by the right wing, I think that a lot of Democrats have at least been wondering why the President isn't taking more advantage of the absence of congress from Washington to control the news. And he could be saying (or at least have his administration saying) plenty: As Nate Silver points out, the administration has already cut taxes on 98.6% of working Americans. But not very many people know that because no one in the administration has actually bothered to point it out. In fact, with Republicans out there screeching about hypothetical tax increases that haven't even been written by anyone yet, probably more people incorrectly think the administration has already raised taxes than correctly know the administration has lowered them. This administration should also point out that a relatively modest investment in auto bailouts plus cash-for-clunkers (which total less than the amount given to just a couple of banks) has saved hundreds of thousands of jobs in factories, parts suppliers and dealerships. What are they waiting for? To win an "aw-shucks" award for being humble?

After all, isn't this the time when he has the podium all to himself if he wants it? I will grant that there are certain events (such as the North American summit and the annual presidential speech to the VFW) that he is obliged to attend, and last week was a good time for him to go on vacation, with the Senate still in session and focused on confirming Justice Sotomayor.

But that's done and over with now. Now is the time for the President to lead, to inspire. And if he wants to talk about health care then he shouldn't just go out and spout statistics like he did in the news conference a few weeks ago on the subject, he should be talking about the battle his mother had with insurance companies just to get her cancer treatment covered (that resonated on the campaign trail.) He should be talking about how our lack of preparedness for the swine flu coming back this winter is exacerbated by the fact that people with no insurance may not seek treatment right away and in the meantime could spread the virus rapidly throughout the whole population-- darn right, this is a national security issue. And one which will in the end also cost a lot of people some serious money. He should be talking about people like my neighbor who was recently ripped up by two pit bulls only a block from my house and had to be helicoptered to and spent a full week in the hospital(story is here) as she saved the lives of her young children by taking the attack herself, and why she shouldn't have to worry whether she can pay all the bills for something that was no fault of hers.

The President is at his best when he is talking about the big picture, with passion. And it's time for him to be at his best.

If they really had a case against health care reform they wouldn't have to throw spitwads like this

I'm deducing that the right doesn't have much in the way of arguments for why we shouldn't have health care reform. Sure, they have a point about the cost, but not a very good one since they had no problem with running up the deficit by at least a trillion dollars three times during the Bush administration: for the $1.3 trillion Bush tax cuts, for the Iraq war and for the medicare prescription drug 'benefit' (which actually benefits the pharmaceutical industry, but I digress.)

So having nothing else to go on, they are resorting to trying to scare people about something that isn't even in the bill.

What the bill does say as that every five years seniors are entitled to VOLUNTARILY consult with a physician about their long-term health and to go over whether they have a living will, etc.

But you wouldn't know that if you listened to conservative talk radio or watched their television ads.

They have deliberately distorted a small, voluntary and logical provision in the bill to claim that seniors will be denied health care and even up to and including forcibly euthanized.

Not that there is anything at all in this bill about even voluntary euthanasia (which is still illegal in 48 states and there is absolutely nothing in any of the various health care bills to come out of committee which changes that.) But hey, if you can't get away with just a small lie I guess they figure that a whopper is better.