If you were locked in a closet all week, or if you have sensibly given up on politics and moved on with your life, you may not have noticed that the Senate Health Care Reform bill now appears dead in the water because the House can’t summon enough votes for a bill that so many Americans still don’t understand. And the President appears to have officially turned his back on his own proposed legislation. But sometime next week the Senate bill could be revived.
No one can agree on what could be achieved through reconciliation, even though Ezra Klein has made some interesting suggestions, as explained in the last newsletter.
But in the meantime, there are, frighteningly, higher priority issues for which many of us have been separately advocating since March, and which the President finally appears to be warming up to. (More on that below.)
The reason this newsletter isn’t going into all the back and forth on what might happen now: The direction for Congress and the White House is probably going to change several times before and after the State of the Union speech on Wednesday. Hold onto your hats. Why is there so much back-and-forth? Trust me, you don't want to know.
In the meantime, we’ve included your comments and Professor Deborah Leveen’s detailed note on what she’d like to see happen with HCR.
1. Top Comment of the Week: A Nurse on Medical Relief
2. Your Comments: Doc and others weigh in on SCOTUS Decision in “Citizens United”
3. What Would JFK Have Done?
4. Your Comments: Important Single Payer Action This Week
5. Why I’ll Take Another Chance On Obama
6. Eliot Spitzer in San Francisco!
7.Your Comments: Deborah Leveen on Where Do We Go From Here?
8. Last-minute Update from L. at MoveOn.org
1. Comment of the Week: A Nurse’s Reference Point on Medical Relief in another former French Colony
“Thank you so much for making me aware of Partners In Health! I sent a donation immediately and am on my way to the bookstore to purchase Mountains Beyond Mountains. Many years ago, I spent a year working as a nurse in Guinea, West Africa, which had been a French colony. I always say, when telling people about my time and experiences there, that I left half (if not more) of my heart there when the ship sailed away and all of our Guinean friends were waiving farewell from the dock, many of whom would not survive when all of the medicines and supplies we left behind for them were gone. As I watch the heart-wrenching coverage of the Haitian tragedy, I wish I were young again as I would give anything to be among those able to be there and helping in person.”
It’s really a treat to be involved with people like you. Thank you.
2. Your Comments: SCOTUS Decision on Citizens United
I was quite moved by the article that many of you sent on the response of “Granny D.” to last week’s Surpreme Court decision. For those who don’t know, Granny D. is the centenarian who, at age 90, walked across the country in support of campaign finance reform. As Granny explains it:
“The Supreme Court, representing a radical fringe that does not share the despair of the grand majority of Americans, has today made things considerably worse by undoing the modest reforms I walked for and went to jail for, and that tens of thousands of other Americans fought very hard to see enacted. So now, thanks to this Court, corporations can fund their candidates without limits and they can run mudslinging campaigns against everyone else, right up to and including election day.”
A Times Editorial, “The Court’s Blow to Democracy” also explains what a sick decision this was.
One of our docs wrote in:
“The Supreme Court's decision this week, giving corporations "super citizenship" and relegating us to second class citizens is a tragedy. It is time for us to stop the corporate takeover of the USA. This decision will even give foreign owned corporations unfettered influence on our electoral process.
“Please pay close attention to this mater, whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent. We were all sold out by this terrible decision. Fight back!”
Jeff described it as: “The beginning of the end of the American Experiment in Democracy.”
Another wrote in:
“Have you ever watched a photographer reload his film inside a black bag? It's ancient technology, but it's still practiced. When working with unexposed film, one must protect it from the light. Thus photographers must learn how to do this by touch inside an opaque bag.
“The five judges who subverted our democracy to corporate interests today operated with similar disregard for the value of sunshine, allowing a concept to take the place of the vital interest of us citizens and our commonweal. Woe is us.”
I say “woe is us” if we can’t organize a million-person march on Washington this Spring to protest this decision. Non-partisan note: One of my conservative friends wrote that he was upset, but not at all surprised about this. “That’s what I was trying to tell you back when they decided Kelo v. City of New London! You brushed it off! The Supremes don't care about ordinary citizens.”
But with the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court has morphed into science fiction. Yet another U.S. decision that corporations are magically welcome to the rights of citizens. Corporations equivalent to human beings? Sci-fi territory.
3. What Would JFK Have Done?
Frank Rich reminds us that it wasn’t just FDR, Truman and LBJ who had to fight hard for their legislative agendas:
“Kennedy didn’t settle for the generic populist rhetoric of Obama’s latest threats to “fight” unspecified bankers some indeterminate day. He instead took the strong action of dressing down U.S. Steel by name. As Richard Reeves writes in his book “President Kennedy,” reporters were left “literally gasping.” The young president called out big steel for threatening “economic recovery and stability” while Americans risked their lives in Southeast Asia. J.F.K. threatened to sic his brother’s Justice Department on corporate records and then held firm as his opponents likened his flex of muscle to the power grabs of Hitler and Mussolini. (Sound familiar?) U.S. Steel capitulated in two days. The Times soon reported on its front page that Kennedy was at “a high point in popular support.” Can anyone picture Obama exerting such take-no-prisoners leadership to challenge those who threaten our own economic recovery and stability at a time of deep recession and war? That we can’t is a powerful indicator of why what happened in Massachusetts will not stay in Massachusetts if this White House fails to reboot.”
And historian Garry Wills suggests that Obama is ashamed of his homely friends who voted him in (them's would be us!)
“…he will not fight, though the American people love a fighter—Teddy Roosevelt going after the trusts, Franklin Roosevelt mocking the “malefactors of great wealth,” Harry Truman for “giving ‘em hell,” attacking the Do-Nothing Congress and his media foes. Whatever their other faults, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush were applauded when they proved to be fighters. Bush was never apologetic about playing to his base, while Obama has acted as if he were ashamed of his. They are repaying him in kind.”
4. Your Comments: On Single Payer
Don Bechler wrote in about how important this week is to a chance for state-wide single payer system in California – please go straight to his website for more info.
5. Why I’ll Take Another Chance on Obama:
I’ve been one of President Obama’s most vocal critics, but not without loyalty to the vows he made to all of us - progressive and conservative - during the campaign. (Full disclosure: I have a significant number of moderately conservative friends who voted for Obama, and who also had hope... until the AIG counterparty list was released last spring.)
In the wake of the Coakley loss, President Obama has been forced to face the music. Will he abandon the health care reform effort now? Frankly, as an uninsured American who thought the Senate bill was nothing but an expanded regulatory capture, I’m not exactly heartbroken to learn that the House doesn’t want to vote for it. Sure, we lost a year and the public option because there was a gross leadership vacuum in the White House, and because the Senate is so fantastically corrupt. But I’m ready to move on to higher priority issues, which the President seems finally ready to recognize.
Jobs.
Ever wonder why the tea parties are so loud and crowded? Idle hands are the tea parties’ workshop. Get them to work rebuilding this broken country. Many on our side could use jobs, too.
Bank Reform.
Why is bank reform important than health care reform? As Simon Johnson, former Chief Economist of the IMF has warned for over a year, if you let the banks, (which are post-bailout bigger than ever and taking even more risk than ever), crash once more, there will be no one left to bail us out. Thus, health care reform will be a moot point. That is how a former banking sector worker like myself found herself organizing a large “progressive” anti-bank-bailout rally last spring. (Deep thanks to the 250 left-leaning hippies and the baker's dozen of libertarians who showed up! Now THAT's bipartisanship, but not one that the President has shown any interest in.)
Eventually, my concerns about Tim Geithner were confirmed by even The Wall Street Journal.
I am now cautiously optimistic that Obama has released the banking reform giant Paul Volcker from the attic where Tim Geithner and Larry Summers had hidden him. Let him do his work – it won’t be easy or fun, but this mess needs to be resolved.
And the American people – right and left - are overwhelmingly in favor of bank reform.
In a decent world, there would be a real shake-up at the White House in the aftermath of the Coakley defeat. Former Goldman Sachs consultant Rahm Emanuel, who has proven entirely incompetent at the job he was hired to do, would be fired from his Chief of Staff position. Tim Geithner and Larry Summers would be eased out the door, replaced by Simon Johnson. Good folk like Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bair and Bill Black would be given more power to protect this country
I'll wait to see what Obama says in Wednesday’s State of the Union.
6. Eliot Spitzer:
I have ONE extra $20 ticket for bankster-bustin' Eliot Spitzer's sold-out appearance at The CommonWealth Club this Tuesday evening.
7. Deborah Leveen’s comment, from her letter to Senator Feinstein:
"I know how difficult it will be to develop and agree upon “a way forward” at this point. However I believe the option of having the House pass the Senate legislation (HR 3952) coupled with a simultaneous “corrections bill” using the reconciliation process, it should be possible to win some of the House provisions which I believe are much stronger than the Senate bill and which I believe a majority of Senators may be willing to support. Below I’ve listed what I see as the key provisions: I believe they will bring greater affordability, better coverage, and much more effective insurance regulation (another provision which for you have provided strong support2). And I believe a stronger bill, which delivers clear benefits to all Americans, will win stronger public support, putting us in a much better position to counteract the kind of backlash expressed in the Massachusetts election.
"The key provisions I would argue to include from the House bill in the final legislation—in a “corrections” bill if that is the way forward—are the following:
"1) Higher subsidies for low-income groups: Since 2/3 of the uninsured have incomes below twice the poverty level (Kaiser Family Foundation), those higher subsidies are much more cost-effective than higher subsidies at the higher income level.
"2) A national health insurance exchange! Only a national exchange will have the clout needed to implement strong new insurance regulations—including rejection of excessive premium increases—and the market share to compel insurer participation.
"3) A national public plan within the national exchange: The best way to offer cost-effective coverage and to generate the price competition necessary to lowering insurance premiums.
"4) System-wide insurance reforms: The Senate bill allows too many exclusions from its insurance reforms; the House bill simply says all plans must meet the new requirements—including benefits standards—within five years. That guarantees real protection to all Americans. (And it’s certainly simpler to explain to the public!)
"5) A real employer mandate. “Play or pay” for all employers. It ensures better coverage for workers, raises more revenue, and creates structural incentives for employers to seek lower insurance premiums and support stronger cost containment measures.
"6) Fair financing: the House income tax surcharge is fairer and far more effective in raising revenue than the Senate excise tax.
"7) Reproductive rights: The Hyde amendment is bad enough: we can’t make it worse.
"8) Immediate progress! We must do more sooner to demonstrate to the public the real benefits of health reform. Your December 23 statement emphasizes many of the immediate reforms: we all need to do more to publicize them. And given yesterday’s election, I think we need to try to provide even more provisions that will produce immediate results.
"Finally, I support the inclusion of the Senate bill’s Independent Payment Advisory Commission in the final bill: it is a first step toward the kind of global budget caps which are essential to long term cost control."
Deborah LeVeen, PhD
8. Last-minute update from L. at MoveOn.org: Eva, there are now 139 rallies planned for MoveOn -- 254 folks are registered to appear on street level of Feinstein's office this Tuesday. Check out the link.
Thanks to everyone for hanging in there.
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