Negotiating toward Non-Agreement on Health Insurance Reform

The president announced over the weekend plans to hold a bipartisan session to discuss moving health care legislation forward. Minority Whip Eric Cantor is reported to have responded that "unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about." Further, "Republicans have offered the only plan, that will lower health care costs, which is what the President said was the goal at the start of this debate." The Republican leadership followed up these comments with a letter seeming to demand that the Democrats admit that their whole effort to reform the health care system was a mistake and agree to start over, otherwise Republicans may not participate.

To enter a negotiation saying that the Democrats' plan (versions of which have already passed BOTH the House and the Senate, and need only to be reconciled to become law) is unacceptable, and the minority plan is the "only" acceptable plan, does not sound like a promising way to kick off a genuine bi-partisan debate. Either the Republicans are merely posturing, and some may eventually support a revised bill, or they are still just trying to kill reform.

On the Democrats' side, one has to guess that their plan is either to push or cajole some Republicans into supporting the eventual bill, or more likely, to expose the Republican opposition as unable to meet the administration's announced criteria for reform. Either way, the Democrats hope to increase public support for the health insurance overhaul, which will provide Congressional Democrats with enough cover that they will be able to vote for the final bill without undue fear of losing their seats. Thus for both sides, actually making a deal with the opposition may be a secondary goal to influencing public opinion. That means we should not expect the upcoming meetings to be conducted like a real negotiation, but should instead view them as an educational exercise for the public. What other kind of debate would we expect to see in an election year?  We might as well sit back and enjoy the show.

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How that Hopey Changey Thing is Working Out for Me

Sarah Palin's keynote speech at the tea party convention asked Obama supporters exactly how that hopey changey thing is workin' out for us.  Given the title of this blog, I feel an obligation to respond.  From a purely selfish point of view, I could look at the 27% return my retirement account achieved last year, making up a substantial part of the losses I sustained in the market collapse of 2008.  Looking at the economy more broadly, we see a growth rate of about 6% in the last quarter as opposed to a decline of about the same amount around the time President Obama took office.  The economy is still losing jobs, but at a much, much slower rate than a year ago.  General Motors and Chrysler are still in business, as are the major banks, when a year ago many thought these institutions would collapse and send the nation into a second Great Depression.  Instead we seem to be in the early phases of a recovery.  The housing market is still weak, but prices have finally stabilized and appear to be heading back up.  States are facing substantial budgetary problems, but those would have been a lot worse without the relief to the states that the stimulus bill provided.

I am pleased that the president appointed a progressive, well-qualified judge to the Supreme Court, in addition to his many well-qualified Cabinet and other appointments.  I am thrilled that we have a constitutional law professor in the White House, and tea party supporters should be also, given that they claim to have so much respect for the Constitution.

I was proud that the president was able to get the UN Security Council to agree unanimously to reduce nuclear weapons, reached out to the Muslim world and helped start a counter-revolution in Iran, and that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.  I am satisfied that we are on a more sensible course in Iraq and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that we have regained the support of our NATO allies.  I see progress in respect of human rights both at home and abroad. I am also proud that the United States is once again ranked as the most admired country in the world.

I am worried, however, about whether Congress will follow through with health care reform legislation after the tremendous achievement of passing significant reform through both the House and Senate, something no previous president has achieved.  Premiums for the health insurance I provide for my office employee have been skyrocketing and threaten to escalate further under our current system. I am disappointed that the opposition party has taken such a negative attitude toward everything, instead of trying to work constructively toward solving pressing problems, but I am encouraged by the president's recent efforts in his State of the Union message and his talk with Congressional Republicans, to engage in a positive dialogue. I am still afraid of the hate and fear and lies being spread by the right, and of a lot of the negativity on the left. I am concerned about whether we are doing enough to deal with worsening environmental problems.  But for the most part the hopey changey thing seems to be heading in the right direction, and thank you very much for your concern, Sarah.

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Republicans vs. the Military

Steve Benen commented yesterday in the Washington Monthly on how remarkable it is that Republican political leaders increasingly seem to find themselves at odds with the judgment of top military commanders.  General Petraeus and Defense Secretary Gates say that terrorists should be tried in federal court, not before military commissions.  Senator McConnell disagrees.  These same military leaders support closing Guantanamo; most Republican politicians oppose it.  The military opposes the use of torture; many politicians continue to advocate torture.  Then there was Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, testifying forcefully yesterday in support of repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.  Most conservative politicians continue to oppose changing this policy.  Perhaps these criticisms just represent the Republicans' shift from being the defenders of the past administration, to the opponents of the current administration, but this change in role sometimes veers into blatant hypocrisy, such as when Republican leaders like Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani, attacked the Obama Justice Department for reading the underwear bomber his rights, and preparing for trial in civilian court, when the Bush administration treated the shoe bomber the same way. 

When Republican politicians start criticizing the Pentagon brass, however, something stranger is going on.  As Benen states:

Keep in mind, it wasn't too terribly long ago that Democratic politicians simply weren't supposed to say that Petraeus, Gates, and intelligence leaders were wrong about national security matters. Indeed, for Dems to say that they knew better than Petraeus, Gates, and intelligence leaders -- that their judgment was superior to military leaders' -- was grounds for mockery, if not condemnation.

And yet, Obama has spent a year following the guidance of military leaders, and Republicans have spent a year breaking with the judgment of the military establishment.

It's a fascinating dynamic. On everything from civilian trials to Gitmo to torture, we have two distinct groups -- GOP leaders, the Cheneys, Limbaugh, and conservative activists on one side; President Obama, Gen. Petraeus, Secretary Gates, Colin Powell, Adm. Mullen, Adm. Blair, and Gen. Jones on the other.

Remember when Move-On had the audacity to take out ads criticizing General Petraeus before he testified before Congress on the surge policy in Iraq? Congress fell all over itself, not to have an honest debate about the validity of the criticisms, but to condemn this organization for daring to criticize a distinguished general.

Of course I'm not saying that anyone should question the patriotism or the judgment of a politician, just because he finds himself in disagreement with military experts. The whole point of civilian control of the military is to make sure the judgment of military commanders is subservient to the democratic process. I'm just saying that it is . . . interesting, that many of those who did question the patriotism of past dissenters during the Iraq war, and who did argue that we must follow the views of the generals on the ground, now feel free to criticize some of those same generals, and feel no need to explain why their past deference has changed.

(New York Times photo)

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The Elder Bush Pays a Visit.

Here we see a nice illustration of the difference between old school casual (blazer, grey slacks and tie) and new school casual (suit with no tie).

(White House photos on Flickr)

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Obama reveals his post-presidential plans!

After he leaves the White House, he will be doing play-by-play for college basketball.

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High Speed Rail Ready to Take Off

Personally, I can't wait to take this trip!

($2.25 billion awarded to California for high speed rail)

(Check out California High Speed Rail Blog)

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The President Attempts to Tame the GOP.

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Here is the President giving Congressional Republicans what I would call the full University of Chicago treatment. For those not familiar with the traditions of that institution, you should understand that the University of Chicago prides itself on tolerating a wide range of intellectual viewpoints. It is a place that not only values freedom of thought and expression, but one that actually encourages students and faculty to listen carefully to opposing points of view, and to debate them in a civil tone. I attended law school at the University of Chicago, and Barack Obama later taught there part time for quite a few years. It was a bastion of conservative thought when I was there, but still included students and faculty with a wide range of views. I never met as many smart Republicans as I did when I was in law school. Probably the most valuable thing I learned at the U of C was that it is possible to have a civil and respectful conversation with people with whom you strongly disagree. Anyplace that encourages those kinds of conversations should be treasured. Watching this video, I wondered whether the President is trying to bring that atmosphere to the United States Congress.

It is important to understand that holding this kind of dialogue doesn't require that you pull any punches, or that you concede anything to your adversaries, other than what you have to concede if you want to be intellectually honest. People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the president's idea of bi-partisanship requires that he give up his principles, or roll over for his opponents. As can be seen in this video, however, that is not at all what the president is doing. He is forceful and hard-hitting, and makes as strong a case as he can for his positions. The only thing he asks is that the tone of the debate be respectful: that participants listen to the other side, find areas of agreement where they can, refrain from ad hominem attacks, and try not to misrepresent each other's positions. In other words, let's have an honest and fair debate.

Is it possible that such an approach could succeed in making a few Republican members of Congress think twice about the strategy of blanket opposition to everything the administration proposes? The President makes a good case that not only is such opposition difficult to defend on the merits, it may not even be good politics, because it backs the Republicans into a corner where they cannot even support positions that they know are useful and necessary. But more importantly, Obama makes a good effort at demonstrating that facts and logic may be more powerful tools in exposing your political adversaries than hyperbole and counter-denunciation. Let's hope this effort helps tone down the negativity, and ushers in some civility to political debates.

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Things are Looking Up.

It is hard to see how anybody could spin this economic data as anything but good news.  According to the latest figures, the GDP grew at a rate the last quarter that is much higher than anyone predicted.  So while the right keeps raising alarmist cries about how the new administration hates capitalism and is hell-bent on wrecking the economy; and the left is belly-aching about how the administration is still pandering to the fat cats on Wall Street; and while the average person is still wondering where their bail-out is, meanwhile the economy is just ripping along at a pace that has to help practically everyone. 

Does anyone want to give the administration credit for steering a steady course that is leading to solid improvements? Of course there are still problems left to solve. We still have high unemployment. We still need new regulations to prevent another potential financial meltdown. We will need to bring the deficit under control. But in the meantime, we ought to be encouraged by economic growth that makes other improvements possible.

(New York Times chart)

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The President Attempts to Tame the Senate.

The United States Senate has a long and inglorious history as the graveyard of reform.  Its members are the only elected body in the United States chosen in a deliberately unrepresentative way, with two Senators per state, regardless of population.  The Senate has long served as the clubhouse for a bunch of large egos, most of its members believing that they should be president themselves.  And its rules permit these childish and egotistical windbags a huge amount of latitude to grandstand and delay.  President Obama, having spent a little time in the Senate, knows of its penchant for inaction as well as anyone. 

At times, the President's State of the Union message tonight sounded like a lecture aimed squarely at the U.S. Senate.  Three times he went out of his way to thank the House of Representatives for passing important legislation--a jobs bill, financial reform, and an energy bill--and then implored the Senate to do the same.  (I noticed Nancy Pelosi smile each time.)   Near the end of the speech the President issued an even harsher rebuke to his former colleagues:

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

Shaming the Senate into action may work, but only if the people get behind the President's program, and place the blame for inaction where it belongs.  Senate Democrats have already surprised a lot of people by getting 60 unanimous votes for health care reform.  After the election in Massachusetts, and the probability of a much smaller Democratic majority after this year's elections, the President knows that he needs to crack the Republican facade of negativism in order to keep the reform agenda on track.  By attempting to reassure independent voters that he is responsive to their concerns, and by placing the responsibility for continued progress on Congress, President Obama's State of the Union message seemed to be designed to scare the foot-dragging, self-important Senators from both parties, into constructive action.

(Senate illustration from Florida Center for Instructional Technology)

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Corporate Free Speech

Today the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC, overruling established precedent to declare unconstitutional statutory restrictions on the ability of corporations to pay for political advertisements. Back in the day when free speech cases concerned obscenity or civil rights or anti-war protests, the more liberal members of the Court would take the side of the First Amendment, while the more conservative members generally supported restrictions on speech. So today, when the five most conservative members of the Court are extolling the virtues of free speech as protected by the Fist Amendment, you have to wonder whether this case is really about free speech at all.

One problem with the decision is that the Court seems to have conflated the issue of free speech with the issue of the money that is spent to air political advertising. Granted that you sometimes need money to get your message across, restrictions on the amount of money that corporations can spend to air political advertisements do not seem the same as direct restrictions on speech itself. The campaign finance laws that the Supreme Court struck down today represented an effort to limit the impact of money in determining the outcome of elections (in other words, the amount you can pay to get your message seen, as opposed to the kinds of messages you can create). These laws obviously did not limit all of the unfairnesses of the current system, of course (wealthy individuals, for example, still have a tremendous advantage in using their personal fortunes to run for office), but is the solution to throw out all campaign finance restrictions, so that election contests become complete financial free-for-alls? I'm sure the tv networks will appreciate all those new advertising dollars, but is the elimination of all advertising restrictions really the best way to promote democracy? Can corporations really be trusted to spread messages that are in the people's best interests?

What also gets conflated in this decision are the rights of corporate "persons" and the rights of natural persons. I'm not saying that we should dispose of the legal fiction of corporate personhood entirely. In fact, there are good arguments for treating corporations as persons under the law. It may even be necessary for the law to have adopted that legal fiction in order to hold corporations legally accountable for their actions. But does it necessarily follow that fictional persons should have exactly the same rights as human beings? I heard a talk by an economist named Raj Patel last night. He mentioned a recent documentary, The Corporation, that attempted to answer the question of what kind of person a corporation would be if corporations were actually human beings. Strangely enough, a corporation seems to fit most, if not all of the criteria the medical profession uses to label patients as psychopaths. But you don't have to agree that corporations are evil to wonder whether corporations should have exactly the same rights as actual humans. Should corporations be allowed to get married, for example? I think the Supreme Court would say no.  As Justice Stevens stated:

[C]orporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. . . . [T]hey are not themselves members of "We the People" by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

So what kind of world can we look forward to if Congress cannot find a way to scale back this decision?  I imagine a world in which the networks are flooded with corporate political advertising to the extent that most people will probably distrust most of it, even more than they already distrust advertising.  Jesse Ventura has suggested that politicians be required to wear their corporate sponsorships on their clothing like NASCAR drivers.  Maybe in the future world of politics, we will become more aware of the corporate money bankrolling various election campaigns, and we will know which of our representatives were brought to us by Exxon or Archer Daniels or Wal-Mart.  Fortunately, other ways have emerged, most prominently on the internet, in which competing voices can be heard even without large amounts of resources behind them.   Youtube levels the playing field to an extent.  In the so-called marketplace of ideas, all sources of information, including the demagogic, the salacious, the corrupt, and the idealistic, get their chance to broadcast.  One hopes that people can be discerning enough to understand what it means when a political message carries corporate sponsorship.

(photo by Kevin Labianco on flickr)

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The Power of Backlash

While the Republicans are justifiably celebrating Scott Brown's amazing win of the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, what will the Democrats be doing?  Doing what Democrats do best, of course.  Fighting among themselves.  Some will blame Coakley's inadequate campaign.  Some will blame the Congressional leadership.  Some will blame the president, either for trying to do too much, or for compromising too much.  Is any of this blaming and hand-wringing constructive?  I doubt it.

The Democrats are suffering right now from a situation they created, but for the most part could not have prevented.   The new administration had to do some very unpopular things to get the country out of recession, such as increase the national debt by a couple of trillion dollars, such as rescue the banking system, such as bailing out General Motors and Chrysler and AIG.  (It doesn't matter that some of these actions were begun under the prior administration, or were attempts to clean up the mess left by the prior administration.  The party in power still has to take the heat for anything bad that takes place during its watch.)  The administration also chose to try, in its first year, to push through a health insurance reform package that is complicated and unsettling to most people. On top of all that, the housing crisis is not over.  The economic recovery seems shaky.  Unemployment is still high, and people are understandably unhappy about that.  Regardless of how the new administration chose to tackle all of these problems, they were bound to provoke a strong counter-reaction.  The same thing happens in nearly every other presidential administration.  And it happens regardless of whether the new administration tries to govern from a left or right wing doctrinaire position, or whether they try to govern from the center.  Reagan escalated the arms race, and was countered by the nuclear freeze movement in reaction.  Clinton raised taxes and allowed gays in the military, and gave rise to Newt Gingrich's Contract with America.  And Barack Obama, regardless of how he had chosen to govern, probably could not have avoided creating the tea party movement.

The campaign experts can spend their time analyzing Martha Coakley's mistakes, and whether different strategies or messages by the Democrats might have had more success.  I think it would be more in keeping with Ted Kennedy's legacy, if the Democrats would instead pick themselves up, keep working for what they believe in, and move on.

I should also recognize that Scott Brown was surely right when he said the seat he ran for was the people's seat, not Ted Kennedy's seat.  We should still celebrate democracy even when it doesn't always produce the results that some of us might like. 

(photo by Nicola Burnell of Coakley signs stolen and burned by Brown supporters in Hyannis, from Cape Codders for Martha Coakley blog)

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Help for Haiti

I had some experience years ago helping Haitian refugees in New York obtain political asylum in the United States. Although the dictatorship that caused those problems has since fallen, the country still suffers from corrupt government, massive deforestation, terrible poverty, and neglect. On top of all that, they are hit with the worst earthquake in the area in perhaps hundreds of years. Here is a chance for the United States to provide needed massive assistance to some very unlucky and unfortunate people.

1/14/10: After hearing what Rush Limbaugh said about Haiti, I take back every nice thing I said about him in my post below. As for Pat Robertson, I think he is the last man that God would confide in if He wanted to punish any group of people. Sadly, there is still a segment of public opinion that just seems to hate Haiti and the Haitian people. This hatred and fear of Haiti goes back to the time of the Haitian revolution in 1801, when black slaves overthrew their French masters, striking fear into the hearts of plantation owners in the United States, whose worst nightmare was that a similar slave rebellion might take place in this country. People like Limbaugh and Robertson obviously have the mentality of those pre-Civil War plantation owners.  Yet even such plantation owner-types should be expected to show some compassion for the people of Haiti after a natural disaster.

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The Rules of Terrorball

It takes Jon Stewart and John Oliver to explain why the Democrats seem to score much lower than Republicans when it comes to stopping terrorist attacks. 

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Of course, to be fair, Stewart and Oliver note that Democrats always score higher on racial issues because they are "good at black people."

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