"Major Power Brokers On The Left"

Last night, Rachel Maddow tells me broke some news.

We can report exclusively tonight that two major power brokers on the left have told MSNBC that they are encouraging a Senate strategy now in which the leadership would revoke chairmanships and other leadership positions from any Democrat who sides with a Republican filibuster to block a vote on health reform. Regardless of how individual senators would vote ultimately on the bill, committee chairmen or subcommittee chairmen who allowed Republicans to force a 60-vote requirement for passing health care...under this type of strategy would be in danger of losing their chairmanships.

I don't know what that means. "Two power brokers on the left"? Who? Senators? Fundraisers? People who want health reform? I'm encouraging this, am I one of the power brokers? If it's Senators, this isn't really news, as Tom Harkin said this about Max Baucus back in July, even before the vote. Jay Rockefeller has intimated it as well, with respect to having a vote on leadership and chairmanships instead of using seniority. And with Rockefeller and Baucus not even speaking to each other before this critical vote, I'm assuming that hasn't changed.

Mind you, I'd LOVE for this to be the strategy. It wouldn't take effect until 2011, and I don't know if it can filter down to subcommittees - Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu don't chair any committee, for example - but it's one of the tools in the shed for the Senate caucus leadership. I hope they use it. This report doesn't convince me they will, however.

Nelson Playing Possum?

Chuck Schumer remarked yesterday on the dynamic facing moderate Dems with respect to health care and the public option:

So if you have a conference committee where the House has it strongly, almost rock solid, in their bill, and the Senate...if we don't have it in the bill there are 54, 55, 56 Democratic senators for it, how are they going to report back a bill without it?

This is the key question. Everybody wants to agree on jettisoning the public option, but the debate got so far away from the White House and Congress that the public option became synonymous with reform, and now nobody wants to be the one to excise it from the bill. You've even got Shep Smith going off script and slamming Republicans for distorting the public option debate. Nobody wants to put the stake through its heart.

But before everyone congratulates themselves on how health care reform "won" because conservaDems wouldn't dare to kill it, check out what Ben Nelson told Brian Beutler earlier today:

With a 60-seat majority in the Senate, Democrats are poised, theoretically, to prevent Republicans from filibustering key agenda items. Liberals and health care reformers see that as a potential bulwark against Republican obstruction and are pressuring party leaders to enforce unanimity on key cloture votes, so that nominations and major bills (like health care) can be decided by a simple majority. And just how are they doing on that score?

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), one of the Senate's most visible centrists, tells me leadership hasn't said anything about it to him.

I asked, "Has leadership been in discussions with you and other moderates about voting with the party on procedural votes?"

In a statement that will bedevil liberals, he responded, "I don't know about others, but not with me."

There's almost no way that's true. And if it is, the Democratic leadership should collectively resign. There's almost nobody in the caucus whose vote needs to be assured OTHER than Ben Nelson. My suspicion is that Nelson is deliberately misreading what's been said to him to set himself up with the ability to leverage his opposition into concessions. With 60 Democratic votes, it really only takes one to vote down cloture. Everybody has the potential to demand something from reform. And Nelson is just allowing that to continue.

Meanwhile, he's being smartly squeezed back at home:

The Nebraska Democratic Party put the state's senior senator, Ben Nelson, in an awkward spot on Saturday by passing a resolution making support for a government-run insurance option a central aspect of its platform.

In a nearly unanimous vote at a committee meeting in Fort Omaha Metro Community College, about 70 attendees approved language that urges members of Congress "to vote for such health care reform proposals that contain a robust public option at all stages of the legislative process including conference and reconciliation, and encourage legislators to pass such reform."

Nelson remains one of the highest-profiled U.S. Senate Democratic holdouts on the public plan, even recently declining to commit to voting against a Republican filibuster of legislation that included the provision.

Officials at the Nebraska Democratic Party said the committee vote was not meant as a rebuke of the senator, who has historically taken a conservative approach to public policy issues. More an encouragement to all Democratic state legislators.

North Dakota Democrats just did the same thing, putting pressure on Kent Conrad - the resolution actually supports single payer with a public option as a "fallback". I don't know if these Senators are reachable, even by their home states, but it's worth a shot.

Point being, I don't think we can just assume that the Dems have 60 locked up for cloture just yet. There's a long way to go.

The Wanker Caucus

Ben Nelson thinks that the health care crisis is worth taking our time, and we should cut focus on cutting everyone's coverage for now and wait until later to expand coverage. Because those 47 million uninsured can wait. He also offered a stirring defense of minority rule:

Nelson appeared to settle on 65 Senate votes as a figure that would provide him a comfort level in terms of establishing a level of bipartisan support for a bill.

"I think anything less than that would challenge its legitimacy," he said.

A minimum of five Republican votes would be required to reach a total of 65 senators.

Sixty votes would be sufficient to clear a Republican filibuster and win passage of the legislation.

"It would be a tremendous mistake to jam it through with 50 votes" under the Senate's arcane budget reconciliation process, Nelson said.

Yes, it would be a mistake to assert the proposition that majorities can pass legislation. That would be an assault on democracy.

As David Kurtz, notes, Ben Nelson has never received 65% of the vote in his elections, so I'm sure he'll resign.

But Nelson is practically a single-payer advocate compared to Artur Davis.

Davis, D-Birmingham, said Democratic House leaders should listen to their members and President Barack Obama, who has said there is room for compromise on the public option.

"The idea that it's the holy grail of this debate is wrong," Davis said.

"Public option can't pass the Senate," Davis said. "I'm interested in something that can pass and Barack Obama can sign." [...]

"We need a new bill. The Senate is moving in that direction," Davis said. "Unfortunately, the House is not moving in that direction. What I see in the House is some hardening of the battle lines. That's discouraging."

"I'm not for penalizing any of our small businesses or any businesses ... especially during a time when you have an ongoing recession," Bright said, a point Davis echoed.

"Frankly, the House leadership seems wedded to keeping that in," Davis said. "And the more you look at it, the more indefensible that is."

Artur Davis is running for Governor of Alabama. He'll probably introduce a bill to hang immigrants before too long.

Trigger Happy Jack

Over the weekend, Ben Nelson, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate and as such a decent bellweather for where the health care policy might go, appeared to support a trigger for the public option, as long as it wasn't a "hair trigger." DougJ surmised that his conception of a hair trigger would be one that might actually go off, and he would prefer a trigger that just remains hypothetical forever. And he's right. There's a trigger in the 2003 Medicare Part D bill that would allow the government to sell prescription drugs through a public option if the drug companies couldn't do it properly themselves. And that trigger never got pulled. So Ben Nelson wants that same dynamic play out in the overall health care bill.

Ezra Klein argues that the public option on offer would not equal cost control because it doesn't use Medicare bargaining rates and its own pool of customers is too small to bargain for anything meaningful. Which is true - ask Ian Welsh - and why I support both using Medicare bargaining rates and opening up the exchanges to those who get coverage from an employer. It's also true that getting a public option into place will increase the possibility that it can be opened up or paired with Medicare rates in the future, whereas no public option on this go-round will make it nearly impossible to get one later - basically the same exact heavy lift as we're seeing now. There's also a distinction to be made between cost control to the federal government and cost control to the individual premium purchaser. A non-profit public option that still uses the Department of Health and Human Services to bargain for rates will have a lower cost to the individual in that market. The CBO estimate of 10 million subscribers is just an estimate - but it should be said that even with those numbers, the CBO saw the public option as a net savings of $150 billion over ten years, contra Tom Brokaw. If the public plan can offer the same basic coverage at a lower cost, people will buy it. And insurers will lower their premium costs to capture more of the market share. They call it "price wars" in other industries, and it's been virtually non-existent in the insurance market forever. The Swiss version of regulated insurance mandates works because basic coverage is provided entirely by non-profits.

As Matt Yglesias says, Switzerland is a country which "came late to the universal health care game thus did it in a way that involves a lot of compromises with existing interest groups." The single-payer countries all enacted their proposals in the early postwar period at the latest, when the health industry wasn't as large and powerful and medicine wasn't as advanced. It has clearly gotten progressively harder to outflank the more entrenched special interests. That's what we're seeing today with the move toward a trigger that will never trigger itself. That may be evident in the House bill even though it has a public option, considering the meager nature of that option and the too-low coverage subsidies.

But this is a game of inches. And we need to enact as much as possible in this moment of opportunity, and move to the cost controls and refining of the elements later. We need to inscribe universal coverage in the American system with a major check on for-profit insurers. That's why the wavering from House liberals desperate to bargain is extremely troubling.

Amid fresh signs that the White House is preparing to back a scaled-down health care overhaul that would only include a public insurance option as a fallback plan, several House liberals told Roll Call that they could support such a bill depending on how it was structured.

The “trigger” approach has been considered a deal-killer by liberals on and off Capitol Hill, and the willingness of some Congressional Progressive Caucus members to entertain it reflects a recognition that a bruising August recess has imperiled prospects for reform and redrawn expectations for what is possible.

“This is a way to get a bill,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said. “I believe it’s worth listening to because I want legislation that is going to, in some shape or form, expand coverage and bring down the cost of health care.”

Liberals stressed that the shift does not amount to an abandonment of their commitment to a “robust” public insurance option. They said they would only support a trigger if that approach guaranteed the same access, quality and affordability.

“I don’t want to give the impression that I’m so flexible that I’m willing to compromise away meaningful reform,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said. “But there may be a variety of ways of getting there than the one I originally formulated in my mind.” [...]

“We’re the caucus that least marches to a unified drummer — that’s not what we do,” Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Mass.) said. “I’m serious about increasing access and quality, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a grand slam home run. I’ll take a ground-rule double if that’s what it takes. I’m happy to compromise if that’s what it takes. But compromise is compromise — it’s not rolling over.” [...]

Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), a Progressive Caucus member, said he did not support the approach but did not foreclose on it, either. “It depends on how strong that trigger is,” he said. Farr said he has seen triggers implemented effectively in California. “Triggers work, but they’ve got to be really clear as to how they operate,” he said. “The only way I could see it getting progressive votes is by making sure the public option is strong and goes into operation.”

(Farr's actually right, but he won't be writing the bill and the language on the trigger, and surely he knows it will be written to never come into existence.)

There's just no reason to even participate in an article like this. It only serves to weaken the position of the caucus. Mike Capuano in particular clearly has no negotiating skills whatsoever - telling the world that the Progressive Caucus has no unity?

I recognize that these members want a reform bill badly. But use your poker face, fercryinoutloud. The other side of the caucus certainly is.

...They could play it like John Conyers:

“It is clear that real reform means injecting real competition into the insurance market to improve affordability and drive down health care costs. The centerpiece of this reform is a robust Medicare-like public health insurance plan tied to the Medicare provider system. Like many of my colleagues in both the House and Senate, I will oppose any health care reform bill that lacks such a plan. I will also oppose any legislation that seeks to replace a robust public health insurance option with health care cooperatives or which ties the availability of the public option to a trigger mechanism. In this effort, I stand in solidarity with House progressives, the majority of my friends in organized labor, millions of health care providers, and 72 percent of the American people.

The Nelson/Landrieu Conundrum

A recent AARP poll shows 79% support for a public option competing with private insurance companies, although the poll question is kind of odd and doesn't reflect what's on offer. Nevertheless, other polls that accurately depict the public option show support in that range. However, that is not equally spread throughout the country. For instance, in a conservative state like Nebraska, more people don't support a public option (by a plurality) in health care reform, for whatever reason, and Democrat Ben Nelson gets 56% support for his handling of health care thus far. We don't have hard data on Louisiana, but Mary Landrieu, who has actually more strongly opposed a public insurance option than Nelson, may also be more in line with the interests of her state than some realize.

Speaking before what was described as a friendly crowd at the Monroe Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Sen. Mary Landrieu said she was opposed to much of the Democrats' legislative agenda.

Asked under what circumstances she would support a public option, Landrieu responded, "[v]ery few, if any. I'd prefer a private market-based approach to any health care reform that would extend coverage," according to the Monroe News Star.

"I'd like to cover everyone -- that would be the moral thing to do -- but it would be immoral to bankrupt the country while doing so," Landrieu said. The public option as currently conceived is expected to be a deficit reducer.

Dishonest? Absolutely. But out of step? Perhaps not.

What can we realistically expect from Democrats like this in red states? Obviously, under a "split the bill" scenario, they could signal support for the more broadly popular elements of reform, like insurance regulations, while opting out of the more controversial elements that only require a 60-vote standard. Or, they could simply opt to allow cloture, the wish of the majority of their caucus, while voting against the final bill. Markos polled this in the case of Nelson:

If Ben Nelson joined Republican Senators in filibustering and killing a final health care bill because it had a public health insurance option would that make you more or less likely to vote for him or would it have no real effect on your vote?

	More	Less
All	21	15
Dem	7	24
GOP	31	9
Ind	19	15

We can assume Nelson will vote against any bill with a robust public option. The big question is whether he will join Republicans in filibustering such a bill. Nebraska Republicans would sure love that, but at the end of the day, they'll vote for a real Republican in a contested election. Nelson would gain a small sliver from Independents, per this poll, but his real danger is among Democrats -- where he would lose a full 17 points of support [...]

If Nelson was to play this properly, he'd vote against any robust public option (and be justified doing so, given his constituency), but allow an up-or-down vote on the bill. Given the political realities of his state, that's the best we could hope for.

How can we position this so that Nelson comes around to this reality? I would look at how Republicans are pressuring Chuck Grassley. Grassley has something only the caucus can give him - the ranking membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee or the Budget Committee. And so he feels the pull from his members to not join in any bipartisan deal. Nelson and Landrieu both have pretty low seniority at the moment, although there's been a near-historic amount of turnover in the Senate recently. But if they have any designs on better committee assignments, or eventual chairmanships, the caucus should inform them of how they would do best to stay in their good graces. This pressure, by the way, should theoretically be much stronger on a Max Baucus or Kent Conrad, who already have that seniority. In addition, Landrieu and Nelson should be asked, pointedly, if they want to go down in history as having stopped access to health care for all Americans for a generation.

Breaking The Dam

I'm going to have to pretty much agree with Thers' take:

Like I said over at the Cerulean Cherub's place, getting a health care bill passed through reconciliation would be great fun even if it were a crap bill [...]

From a democratic (small d) perspective, the Senate has been asking for it for a long time now. The filibuster is not a constitutional tradition, and as we've seen, amply, is a safeguard of made-up Senatorial principles, not democratic principles, and the public good be damned.

Yes, we need sane healthcare, but we need lots of sane things that we're not getting because of the absurdities that the Senate enables -- Max Baucus directly represents fewer than a million people, and has extensive power over the healthcare of over 300 million Americans. Why? Because he's a fucking healthcare maven genius! Or not! It's all amazingly silly.

A case could be made that whatever the content of any specific bill, a punch to the solar plexus of the pudgy, complacent Senate would be good for the nation. The nation's health literally rests at the whim of a very small number of individuals who are only directly accountable to a very, very small percentage of the nation's voters. Whatever this is, it's not democracy.

The Senate has basically gotten completely out of control. It was conceived as a saucer to "cool the cup" of the passions of the House, but there's a fine line between that and freezing the cup and throwing it into a meat locker. If the Senate were instituted after passage of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court would likely have found it unconstitutionally in violation of the equal protection clause. California has 69 times as many citizens as Wyoming, and yet their citizens get the same amount of Senate representation. The Senate was a bad compromise put in by the Blue Dogs of the 18th century.

What's more, it's gotten worse, as runaway egos and peculiar Senate rules have completely paralyzed the legislative process. The filibuster has only recently been transformed from an occasionally used temper tantrum to a de facto 60-vote supermajority requirement. This recent development is a significant intrusion to the ability of the country to govern itself.

The filibuster, however, has undergone little-noticed changes. Even as successive generations have weakened it by creating the option of cloture, the filibuster itself has become more present in everyday legislative maneuvering. The political scientist David Mayhew argues that we've misremembered our own past on this matter. He's written that Senate has never faced “any anti-majoritarian barrier as concrete, as decisive, or as consequential as today’s rule of 60."

That seems strange, of course. After all, the filibuster was stronger back in the day. But it wasn't used to create a de facto 60-vote majority. It used to be more akin to a temper tantrum. Mayhew looked at FDR's court-packing scheme as one of his examples. The filibuster hardly figured into the discussion. “General opinion is that the [bill] will pass,” wrote the conservative Portland Herald Press, “and sooner than expected, since votes to pass it seem apparent, and the opposition cannot filibuster forever.”

Its elevation to the decisive rule in the U.S. Senate is a recent development, and one that has taken a countermajoritarian institution (both in its structure and representation) and saddled it with a supermajority requirement. The product is an almost impossibly obstructed legislative body. We tend to assume this will work out fine, as we've had the filibuster forever, and we're still around. But the evidence is that the filibuster did not really exist in this form before, and so it's very hard to say whether it will work out fine. And those who think that the political system will always respond to emergency, and that countermajoritarian rules don't matter, should really take a look at what's going on right now in California.

Reconciliation may or may not be able to produce a bill worth a darn; YMMV. But if the fallout from using it produces a demystification of "Senate process" as some kind of holy writ, the effects would be profound. Process changes have often preceded substantive policy changes. Unless you want health care reform and financial regulatory reform and climate change and energy and all the rest in the tender hands of President Ben Nelson in perpetuity, it may be worth breaking the dam that's holding back the country.

Everyone's Leaving Their Options Open

Lynn Woolsey let Rahm Emanuel have it yesterday over his comments on a trigger for the public option. I get the sense that Rahm still craves capitulating to the insurance companies on this one, but he's being invited to recognize the contours of the debate, and the fact that there aren't enough votes for a health care bill without a public insurance option.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reassured House Democrats on Tuesday night that President Barack Obama strongly backs a government-run health insurance plan, seeking to quell a firestorm among liberals upset at Emanuel’s comments in the Wall Street Journal that suggested such a plan could be delayed.

Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) warned Emanuel that he would lose the caucus’ votes if the White House compromised on the issue and included a “trigger” that could delay a public insurance plan indefinitely. The trigger idea is backed by conservative Democrats but is anathema to liberals.

“We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game,” Woolsey said she told Emanuel. “People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives.”

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was reassured by Emanuel. “He doesn’t stand by that trigger,” Waxman said. “He said the president and his administration and he are for a public plan as one of the options.”

Of course, Emanuel stands by the public plan as "one of the options." They have no line in the sand drawn on that, and everything's open to negotiation. Still, if the Progressive Block holds, even a weasel like Emanuel can figure out the math. They cannot take progressive votes on this for granted, and that's a good message to push.

The other message getting pushed over in the Senate by Harry Reid and the leadership is a variation on Bernie Sanders' suggestion, that all Democrats in the caucus should agree not to join Republican filibusters as a matter of course and out of respect for the majority's agenda. The most conservative Democrats don't agree, incidentally.

Landrieu:

However, she flatly refused to rule out filibustering any bill, including health care and climate change legislation. “I’m going to keep an open mind, but I am not committing to any procedural straitjackets one way or another,” she said.

Nelson:

“I’m not a closed mind on cloture, but if it’s an abuse of procedure, if it’s somebody trying to put a poison pill into a bill, or if it’s something that would be pre-emptive of Nebraska law, or something that rises to extraordinary circumstances, then I’ve always reserved the right to vote against cloture,” Nelson said.

Reid's next step should be to remind his colleagues of the tools available to him as Majority Leader. Namely - not approving any bills of individual Senators for floor votes; throwing members off of prized committees in the next session; refusing to contribute to members' re-election campaigns through the DSCC; not respecting members' holds on legislation; using manager's amendments to simply rewrite bills coming out of members' committees; and on and on. These were some of the tools of persuasion used in the 1950s and 1960s, under far more preocedural hurdles, to pass progressive legislation:

I recently read a book called "The Liberal Hour" about the Great Society. And the authors there made the point that one of the important underlying factors to Johnson's ability to move Civil Rights legislation and Medicare and Medicaid was a change House Speaker Sam Rayburn made to the Rules Committee when John F. Kennedy was president. He expanded it to give it a more liberal majority. And there have been a couple moments like this where legislative change is preceded by procedural change.

One of the things that brings up is that it's interesting how central the filibuster has become to not only how the Senate operates, but also how the House operates, as much of the legislating is done in recognition that it'll have to pass the Senate. As political scientists will tell you, of course, this centrality of the filibuster is actually a relatively recent innovation. So I'm curious how much you think it's actually possible to achieve these changes under the current system. Even with a popular new president and a large House majority and 60 Democrats in the Senate, it seems unlikely we'll actually solve these underlying problems. We might get legislation. But it's not likely to avert the existence-level fiscal threat from health-care reform or the existence level environmental threat from climate change. But if not now, then when? And if Congress can't respond to challenges of that magnitude, doesn't it suggest that something is quite wrong?

I think we need to be open-minded and think about the possibility in changes of process as well as policies. We shouldn't be so burdened by the past that we can't face the future. The seniority system in the House was traditionally dictated by members who didn't like the speaker having so much power over the committees. But when I came to Congress, if you were the senior member, you became chairman no matter how competent you were, no matter how in sync you were with the majority caucus. That was enormously advantageous for many of the Dixiecrats who remained Democrat for that reason, to take advantage of the seniority, but who aligned themselves on policy with the Republicans, and created a situation where even when Democrats had large margins, there was this sort of Southern Democrat-Republican coalition that ruled.

The fight by Sam Rayburn to allow the Rules Committee to be controlled by the leadership was an enormous and brutal fight, but a necessary one. The chairman before that time was Judge Smith from Virginia, who wouldn't let civil rights legislation go to the House floor because he was a segregationist himself. That meant that even when the Judiciary Committee proposed a bill for civil rights, members of the House couldn't vote on it.

There are anti-democratic rules that need to be changed. In some ways, the filibuster is an issue we might want to look at more closely. It is a two-edged sword. But I come from California, where to pass a budget you need a two-thirds vote. And they've been unable to pass a budget for years now able to deal with the fiscal problems. And it has thrown the state into chaos because they can't get the two-thirds vote.

The filibuster used to be a two-thirds requirement, and it wasn't until 1975 that they changed it to 60 votes. Well, that was a move in the right direction. For sure.

This speaks more to the ability to recognize the ability for procedural change, but the other story of the 1950s and 1960s was how the Master of the Senate, Lyndon Johnson, used everything at his disposal to break 2/3 majorities, unlock the strangehold from Dixiecrats over major committees, and generally pass his agenda, as Majority Leader and then as President. Political leaders have more power than most people think they realize today. So while Mary Landrieu and Rahm Emanuel and Ben Nelson and Max Baucus think they can have their way in the Senate, it's simply untrue. This begs the question as to whether the leadership WANTS to hold their conservative flank accountable. It's the question of what their priorities are.

...Evan Bayh, too.

Change Happens From The Bottom Up

Ceci Connolly overheard the President telling Senate leaders that he would prefer the progressive hits on Democratic members of Congress to stop.

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.

"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

I'm wondering how Connolly knows this much about what appears to be a closed strategy call. My assumption is she knows what the White House wants her to know. So going on the assumption that it's true, I'll say this:

Of course this is what Obama would tell Democratic leaders in the Senate about attacks on Democrats in the Senate. He doesn't want those attacks to have his direct sanction, these are lawmakers he has to work with now and in the future, and so it makes perfect sense for him to play good cop. He can take the pose of just wishing these attacks would stop, without intervening directly in the activities of outside organizations (which would be illegal, I believe). It's a classic Obama middle path.

At the same time, this is also nothing new. He essentially drained progressive groups of funding during the 2008 campaign. So that past set of actions is part of this statement, too. It's one thing to make the idle "I wish they'd jump in with the home team for the big victory" comment, it's another to make it secure in the knowledge that he could move it from "I wish" to "do this or some of your biggest fundraisers might get a phone call."

Obama wants to control message and have all these outside groups pushing alongside him for "reform." But his vision of that reform includes a broad set of principles and a glaring lack of specifics. The Presidential candidate who said "change begins from the bottom up" should be the last one as President to expect his supporters to follow him blindly.

What's more, progressive pressure has worked.

But there is no question that these hard-hitting campaigns representing breast cancer survivors and others have been successful, and they have been instrumental in backing Ben Nelson and Kay Hagan off their opposition to a public plan. The memberships of these organizations are in clear support of their efforts, and with 76% of the country in support of a public plan, the President seems to be one of the unhappy few who oppose their tactics.

I could probably find about 1,000 quotes from candidate Obama about how it's time for Americans to once again participate in their government, and how we are the change we've been waiting for, etc. You cannot empower people for months and months to take action and then try to stage-manage that action. Activism doesn't have an on/off switch.

I was actually at this event where Maxine Waters expressed admiration for the DFA ad against Mary Landrieu ("I'm going to be in New Orleans this weekend, telling everyone about it") and said, "Let me just say to all of our friends out there, that a sustained effort, directed at public officials, demanding no less than a public option, can be very successful. So go to work." I believe this work will continue, even if it makes the President uncomfortable. He didn't create this monster, but he certainly drafted off it during 2008. People want to be actively engaged in politics again. It's a shame for anyone to try and cut them out.

...as expected, progressive groups won't be stopping their ad buys anytime soon. Via email, DFA's Charles Chamberlain said that his group hasn't received any calls from the White House to pull back, nor will they be doing so, and he thinks that "this article is a very good sign that what we are doing is working. If Senators and Reps weren't afraid of us, they wouldn't be asking for us to stop."

Health Care Reform's Enemies Taking Heat

The difference between 1994 and today is not that there are no longer forces who wish to undermine reform and keep the health care sector safe for the profiteers, it's that this time, somebody responds.

Example #1: Ben Nelson boldly claims he will never support a public option in health care. Change Congress and other advocacy groups hammer him relentlessly and run ads in his state. Nelson decides he will not filibuster a health care bill with a public plan.

The Nebraska Democrat, who has skeptically approached the idea of a government or publicly-run insurance program, additionally told state Democrats not to assume that he will oppose such a proposal in a final reform package.

"He's not against anything right now," said Bud Pettigrew, the chair of county chairs for the Nebraska Democratic Party, who fielded a phone call from Nelson on Monday. "But he does want to read the plans that come out first and then make a judgment."

"He is open to some type of government plan but he wants to see the details first," Pettigrew added. "He wishes the liberals would give him a chance."

And yet, even if Nelson were to oppose the final bill, his vote may not hold as much significance as expected. According to Pettigrew, the senator said he will not be the 60th Senator to sustain a filibuster on a bill that he ultimately would oppose. "If it comes to cloture I would vote for it," Nelson said, according to Pettigrew. "I will not be the deciding vote."

Adam Green has done incredible work on this. According to Pettigrew, Nelson told him that "the liberals are kicking him in the ass right now and he is feeling it."

Example #2: Third Way, a milquetoast moderate group, put together a hyper-incrementalist and lame plan for a public option that wouldn't be public, wouldn't be available to everyone, and wouldn't be able to use bargaining power to control costs. Bloggers call them out on it. The aforementioned Adam Green rallied people to call the Third Way leadership. Ryan Grim finds out that the plan was written by "policy analysts with longtime connections to the health insurance industry." Third Way is forced to respond:

Third Way is committed to helping the President and Congress succeed in enacting meaningful and comprehensive health care reform.

Currently one of the most discussed aspects of the President's reform effort is a public plan option. In a draft Third Way memo that has been widely circulated and mis-characterized, we propose a number of policy ideas that would help ensure that a public plan is crafted in an effective way -- and can garner the votes needed to advance broad health care legislation.

There is an urgent need for real health care reform in America. Health care in our country has not worked for average Americans: it is too easy to lose coverage, it is too easy to see premiums rise, it is too easy to be denied access to care. Third Way's latest report found that only 64% of working age Americans have had the high standard of health care coverage: 4 years of uninterrupted private health care.

That is a crisis.

That's why we need health reform that provides stable coverage, stable cost and reliable, quality care for all Americans.

That's a backtrack. They now have absolutely no credibility on this topic.

Example #3: The Blue Dog Caucus puts out a letter laying down their principles for health care reform, including a "trigger" option that would hold back the public plan unless insurers failed to meet certain conditions. In any other time, this would immediately become the only available option in the debate. This time, Health Care for America Now, which had gotten 20 Blue Dogs previously to endorse a public plan without a trigger, called the Blue Dogs' bluff, members of the coalition jumped ship, and the Blue Dogs had to backtrack from their initial hard position, calling it instead a "starting point" for negotiations.

In the face of relentless progressive advocacy, the forces that would rather keep the status quo turn to jelly.

However, I still fear that progressives aren't aiming their guns at all the targets. Inside that HuffPo piece on Ben Nelson, he acknowledges that he opposing capping the employer deduction for health care benefits.

In addition to telling Pettigrew about his take on the public plan, Nelson also relayed word that he opposed a measure to end the tax exemption for employers who provided health care coverage to their workers. That proposal, which has gained some traction in Congress (including with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus), is seen as a practical way to help pay for reform.

That idea has not been properly explained to the public and will get crushed if the situation persists, leaving a yawning gap of funding that nobody seems to want to pay for. And Steny Hoyer has already objected to using MedPAC to lower Medicare costs, again a policy that has been ill-explained to the public and will cause a revolt in Congress without popular support.

I love what progressives are doing around health care, but if they don't target the funding mechanism it won't pass.

How The Goalposts Moved On The Public Plan

Lots of big news on the health care front over the past 24 hours. There are a million issues, like small business group reform so that small businesses can bargain in tandem for lower costs, something at which the health care industry has balked. But the main battles are being fought on two central fronts: One over the public plan, and the other over short and medium-term funding. Let's look at each, starting with the public plan.

In his letter to key members of Congress, President Obama announced his full support for the public option as a way to "keep insurance companies honest."

"The plans you are discussing embody my core belief that Americans should have better choices for health insurance, building on the principle that if they like the coverage they have now, they can keep it, while seeing their costs lowered as our reforms take hold.

"But for those who don't have such options, I agree that we should create a health insurance exchange -- a more market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that's best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can. None of these plans should deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition, and all of these plans should include an affordable basic benefit package that includes prevention, and protection against catastrophic costs. I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest."

That is a remarkably new thing. Obama has not previously included the public option in his list of fundamental principles. He's talked about the public option in this way in the past, but the public option always existed on the fringes of the debate, as something to be bargained away. Ezra Klein notes that there has been a change:

The White House, which seemed relatively unsinterested in the issue a few months ago, has begun pushing hard for it.

And that, in my reporting, is what seems to be underneath the change. A few months ago, most observers thought the public plan was a bargaining chip. It had a lot of public supporters but few real friends. In recent weeks, that's begun to change. The White House seems genuinely intent on including a public plan -- or at least some form of public competition -- in the final bill. And that's changed the incentives for senators down the line. The public plan was safe to oppose so long as the powerful players weren't really interested in its survival. Indeed, when the policy was going to be bargained away anyway, the incentives were to try to convince the health industry that you'd been their key ally in that victory. But now that the White House has put some muscle behind the policy, opposition has potential consequences. And that's making the policy's opponents rethink their stridency.

A few months ago, I would have bet against the presence of a public plan in the final bill. Now I'd put my money in favor of it.

We're obviously not done here. The idea of a trigger option for the public plan remains under consideration, which would seemingly give people an additional choice but not until the insurers got a chance to solidify their monopoly. Conditioning a public option to certain market conditions would kill it - mainly because the trigger would be tied to some unrealizable standard. Progressives are fighting back against this sham reform, and that's where the new battleground has been set.

But Ezra misses one key fulcrum point in this debate - when the House Progressive Caucus laid down their marker and said there had to be a public option in the legislation. Until then, I think Congress and the White House felt they could get away without having one. But suddenly, the dynamic changed. And then progressive activists were unleashed to whip up votes on it. Ben Nelson has had to put out umpteen different statements to mollify his constituents that he was open to a public plan. Max Baucus has had to backtrack and hold meetings with single-payer advocates. Basically, that action changed the dynamic, and put us on a more progressive course.

It's not FULLY progressive, of course. Single-payer remains off the table. And the corporate interests are seeking to kill the public option in different ways. But we did see a change for the better. So the Progressive Caucus should learn from this, and step up on other Obama agenda items to make them as successful as possible.

Assaults On The Status Quo

If we're going to get meaningful health care reform in this country, it will be because people talked to their neighbors, rebutted the smears and advocated so loudly that they became impossible to ignore. There are some small stories that can make us hopeful but much work to be done. When Blue Cross of North Carolina started readying Harry and Louise-style attack ads to scaremonger Americans on a public option, the outcry was sufficiently loud that the White House forced the insurer to back down and scrap their plans. When compromisers tried to create a trigger mechanism that would introduce a public option only if insurance companies don't voluntarily reduce costs and expand coverage, health care advocates widely disparaged the idea, arguing that the trigger has already been met, and the talk cooled.

But the forces protecting the status quo won't stop. A brand-new conservative group with links to none other than the teabaggers will launch an ad campaign comparing the US system to (horrors!) Canada's. According to their ad, government bureaucrats in Canada make decisions on coverage and treatment. Good thing we live here in America, where only private insurance bureaucrats get to make those decisions!

And Rick Scott, the corrupt former hospital CEO who paid the largest fine in American history for defrauding the US Government for billions, is planning to run a 30-minute infomercial after "Meet The Press" in Washington, DC designed to influence elite opinion with slanders and lies about health care reform.

Rick Scott will likely continue to mislead viewers about the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, a newly-created entity by the economic recovery package signed into law by President Obama in February. Mr. Scott will likely make a specific claim: "not only could a government board deny your choice in doctors, but it can control life and death for some patients." This statement is demonstrably false. In reality, the powers of this so-called "government board" are clearly defined and cannot do what Mr. Scott claims. The statutory authority of the Council specifically excludes the power "to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer." It is worth noting that even under President Bush, the National Institutes of Health already had an annual budget of $355 million to conduct precisely this type of research. Plainly, this has not led to the sort of catastrophic consequences in America that Mr. Scott warns against.

The advertisement will likely deceive viewers by blatantly misrepresenting the positions of two physicians. While the advertisement paints both as opponents of any role for government in health care reform, in reality, just the opposite is true. Both physicians are in fact supporters of universal health care. What they are opposed to is the U.S. ‘two-tiered' system that already rations health care based on the ability to pay. In fact, Mr. Scott misrepresented Dr. Day's comments, and Dr. Day openly mocked the ineffectiveness of the U.S. health care system. What Dr. Day is opposed to is Canada's outdated funding model, not Canada's healthcare system. Dr. Day actually advocates reform of the funding structure to preserve Canada's healthcare system, not dismantle it [...]

If Scott's 30-minute "documentary" contains any falsehoods, NBC will be liable for an FCC violation. Furthermore, Meet the Press needs to know that they're being used by Rick Scott, and will be tarnished by his swiftboating.

Sign the petition, blah blah.

In addition, groups are going after the real source of where any downfall in health care reform will lie, President Nelson and the ConservaDems, who will try their best to please their contributors and friends (Ben Nelson ran an insurance company, incidentally) by stopping anything meaningful.

Centrist Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.) is under attack from an advertising campaign that criticizes his opposition to President Obama’s healthcare plan.

The Web and direct-mail ads specifically take on Nelson for opposing Obama’s proposal to create a public health insurance program consumers could choose instead of private plans. The $10,000 ad campaign is paid for by Change Congress, an advocacy group that is calling for publicly financed elections.

The Change Congress ads charge that Nelson’s opposition to a public health insurance plan is linked to campaign funds he has received from health insurance groups. Citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the ads say Nelson has accepted $2 million from health insurance companies over three Senate campaigns.

Taken alone, a $10,000 ad buy, even in Nebraska, won't do much. In combination, only a sustained assault on the status quo from all advocacy groups will get reform of this type done. That's just an historical fact. And while it's welcome that the President will deploy the Organizing for America email list for health care, it's going to take progressives concerned about the policy details to drive the discussion.

...Keep pushing...

Earlier this month, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) declared that he was against including a public option in health care reform, calling it a “deal breaker.” But Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim reports that in a meeting with health care advocates in Nebraska yesterday, Nelson said that he was open to including a public plan:

Nelson, according to two people in the room, told the group that he was open to a public option, the primary Democratic goal of reform and anathema to conservatives.

“The good news for all sides involved is that he’s open mined,” said Barry Rubin, the former Executive Director for the Nebraska Democratic Party, who was in the meeting. “He’s not closed minded about a public option.”

Nelson's afraid of his constituents. Good place for progressives to have him.

Ben Nelson Looks Forward To Learning

A noncommital, tepid response to the Supreme Court announcement by the Senate's most conservative Democrat:

"President Obama is to be commended for selecting a nominee with a significant breadth and depth of legal experience to replace retiring Justice David Souter. I look forward to learning more about Judge Sonia Sotomayor's background, record and qualifications -- and to meeting with her to discuss her judicial philosophy -- as this important United States Supreme Court nomination moves forward. "During my tenure as Nebraska's governor, I appointed 81 judges, including the entire Nebraska Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. As Nebraska's senator since 2001, I have voted on numerous judicial nominees. In each case, I nominated or supported judicial nominees who convinced me they would follow the law, rather than manipulate the law to promote an activist agenda. While my personal views differed from some nominees, I applied no litmus test to them on issues. My main test has always been and remains: Will the nominee follow the law and not make law to fit his or her views?

"Concerning Judge Sotomayor's nomination, I look forward to examining her entire record and commitment to upholding the law and Constitution of the United States in the coming weeks."

This actually represents a step forward for Nelson, who over the weekend said that Gitmo shouldn't be closed and torture's OK with him. Brian Beutler has a bunch more. Nelson has seen the vacuum for a moderate that can hijack the Presidential agenda and stepped right into it - giving himself a lot of glory and cable news appearances. He's like a force of nature, as well as a creature of the peculiar institution of the Senate.

Dawn Johnsen A Pawn In The Student Loan Privatization Game?

We now have a clear picture of why Dawn Johnsen has not been confirmed to head up the Obama Administration's Office of Legal Counsel. Key legal questions on Administration policies are being left unchallenged by a true civil libertarian because a couple Democrats refuse to allow an up or down vote.

Here are the numbers as they stand right now:

Votes Against Johnsen: 37 Republicans

Votes for Johnsen: 57 Democrats plus Indiana Republican Richard Lugar

Undecideds: Republicans Olypmia Snowe and Susan Collins and Democrats Arlen Specter and Ben Nelson

Reid frames the issue by saying he needs a couple Republicans to cross the line before he has the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster. But as the numbers show, it's just as much an issue of Reid not being able to muster the entire Democratic caucus in support of Johnsen.

Specter has been noncommital on whether he would vote for cloture. But Ben Nelson is basically opposed entirely and that's holding the whole thing up. During the Bush years, Nelson very willingly supported almost all of Bush's most controversial judicial and executive branch appointments, while fighting harder against the President of his own party. I agree with Christy Hardin Smith that Nelson is fishing:

And the latest from Nelson's press secretary? Johnsen worked for NARAL.

No. You are kidding me --a pro-choice president in a pro-choice country nominated a pro-choice attorney to an office where she won't even be dealing with abortion issues. And that's objectionable.

It's a mystery.

And then? I did a little digging. I think Ben Nelson is fishing:

Nelson is perhaps the Senate's fiercest protector of subsidies for student lending institutions, which, not coincidentally, are an engine of job growth in Nebraska. He has vowed to block any effort to reduce those subsidies. And given that Democrats have 58 members and generally need 60 to break a GOP filibuster, he can enforce his will on his colleagues....Multiple congressional sources say that congressional Democrats have decided to use reconciliation to go after student-lending subsidies, specifically to get around Nelson.

Nelson is holding up Obama Administration appointments so he can save his student loan middleman and increase the burden on students. Now that's cynical.

But as Christy notes, there's a way around this, especially for a popular President. Yes, Reid could just wait for the extra vote of Al Franken and make Nelson, at least in this case, irrelevant. But the President could also loudly suggest to the people of Nebraska that their Senator is vindictively withholding the ability of his White House to do their job because Ben Nelson wants to punish students some more. And that might generate some opposition inside Nebraska, particularly the Omaha area where Obama WON. Unless we are to conclude that Obama would rather not waste political capital on having a strong civil liberties voice at the Office of Legal Counsel.

Public Enemy

The health care debate thus far has really focused on creating a public option to compete with private insurance companies. The various players are choosing up sides. The Obama Administration, expressed by their Health and Human Services Secretary, supports it, as a means to encourage competition and innovation. The White House is joined by 70-odd members of the House who have said no public plan, no deal, and 21 members of the Senate (so far), including moderates like Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb. On the opposite side are, well, Republicans, and their paymasters in the health insurance industry, simply because they want to preserve their monopoly over the market and their advantages that don't impact the bottom line for consumers, but instead get shoveled into profit margins and executive pay. The health insurance lobby's view is that they will adopt modestly more fair practices (guaranteed issue, modified community rating) as long as the government forces individuals to buy health care and subsidizes them, an indirect payment from the Treasury to the insurers themselves. Not surprisingly, these views mirror those of "moderates" like Ben Nelson, who coincidentally has taken millions from the insurance industry in campaign contributions, and previously owned a major insurance company.

(By the way, memo to the media: what the insurance industry is offering does not add up to a concession. These are the same "concessions" made by the industry in 1993, and yet they bashed the final plan and stopped its passage. These measures would reform insurance but not reform health care, which can only come through increased competition and a resetting of the perverse incentives that insurers have to limit treatment. Only real reform would lower costs and provide better care, and forcing a monopoly doesn't exactly get all the way there.)

Chuck Schumer has tried to design such a plan, and does a good job of defending it and naming it ("Plan USA"), but under the guise of a "level playing field," it's hard for me to understand how his plan would be anything more than a non-profit insurance option doing little to truly lower costs unless it were scaled up massively. Sure, this kind of public plan would limit overhead and advertising costs, and wouldn't pay executives. But if it can't bargain for lower rates in the way Medicare can, in fact over time you'd probably see what happened in Medicare Advantage (the private insurance supplement to Medicare), where the playing field got tilted to the private market until the government stepped in this year to put a stop to it.

We all know that the only way to truly bargain down costs is through a single payer option. I'm willing to support a public option grafted onto the current system, for now, as long as it retains any ability to bargain for lower costs in the way that single payer would. However, we're getting a bit afield of the nut of the issue if we continue to discuss the mechanism of the public plan. Because a far bigger obstacle to meaningful health care reform is how the hell to pay for it. Literally every funding stream that has been discussed gets quickly shut within a matter of days. Today, Charlie Rangel ended the option of capping or taxing employer-provided health benefits. Earlier they cut out Obama's plan to cap charitable deductions. We're talking about well over a trillion dollars, with big outlays in the short term to get the system to bend costs downward, and if nobody wants to determine a way to pay for it, health care reform dies.

President Nelson Makes The Call

So the President from Nebraska has weighed the options, peeked at his campaign account, and decided with a heavy heart that he just couldn't let Americans have better health insurance choices:

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Friday that he will oppose legislation that would give people the option of a public health insurance plan. The move puts him on the opposite side of two-thirds of Americans.

A poll released this week by Consumer Reports National Research Center showed that 66 percent of Americans back the creation of a public health plan that would compete with private plans. Nelson, in comments made to CQ, joins the 16 percent of poll respondents who said they oppose the plan.

Nelson's problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. "At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game," Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a "deal breaker."

The problem, as President Nelson explained, is that the public plan might be too good a deal for Americans, leading them to want to purchase it. And that would just be terrible. Terrible for Ben Nelson, anyway, because his contributions would dry up.

The company Nelson finds himself in is laid out clearly: business, the insurance industry, and Republicans. Of course, this isn't surprising, considering his campaign donation history. Open Secrets says Nelson received $608,709 from the insurance industry in 2007-2008, making the insurance industry his biggest donor group, more than lawyers and even lobbyists.

And so, Nelson has decided to bow to the wishes of his campaign contributors, instead of standing up for what 73% of the American public want: A choice of a public health insurance option.

Actually, I think we do put too much emphasis on the money game as the reason for politician's every move. Nelson probably just has a personal, cultural, ideological relationship to conservative interests, and simply cannot envision progress of this ilk. Plus, publicly opposing his own party makes him a darling of the DC media circuit and increases his clout. Despite the fact that reconciliation instructions mean that Democrats could opt for passage with only 50 votes, Nelson will get lots of publicity as he, according to the article, tries "to assemble a coalition of like-minded centrists opposed to the creation of a public plan, as a counterweight to Democrats pushing for it." And the chattering class will praise his bold centrism and ability to say no to his hippie cadres.

He may not be successful - in this case, Democrats on the left really are threatening no deal without a public plan, although what form that plan takes is more the question - but it'll sure give him that unbeatable stature. That's what makes a President a President.

America's Worst People

I mentioned that Congress passed a budget yesterday. In the Senate, the vote played out almost exclusively among party lines, with only two Senators - Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson - crossing the aisle. They are the two most conservative Democrats in the 111th Congress, by voting record. And they didn't only vote against the budget - they voted definitively FOR a motion to recommit, which essentially would have substituted this budget for a Republican version.

Enter Mike Johanns, the freshman Republican senator from Nebraska whose amendment preventing the Senate from passing climate change legislation through the reconciliation process passed on Tuesday.

He also authored a different measure--not an amendment, but a "motion to recommitt"--which would have scrapped the budget that passed and replaced it with a much more conservative version. Most significantly, it would have indexed non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending to the expected rate of inflation. It failed 43-55--for all intents and purposes a mirror image of the vote on the final budget resolution. Which is to say that Bayh and Nelson voted for the "Johanns Budget".

So how did these two Republicans, who voted affirmatively for a Republican budget, justify their votes? They said it costs too much.

Nelson defended his vote in a prepared statement:

"The administration inherited a lot of red ink in this budget, along with our ailing economy. But this budget still has trillion dollar-plus deficits in the next two years, and adds unsustainably to the debt. These are tough times, and the federal government needs to take a lesson from American families and cut down on the things we can do without.

I respect the Administration offering an honest budget…but it just costs too much."

Similarly, Bayh issued a statement saying he opposed the budget in an attempt to be the voice of “fiscal responsibility“:

"[U]nder this budget, our national debt skyrockets from $11.1 trillion today to an estimated $17 trillion in 2014. As a percentage of our gross domestic product, it reaches a precarious 66.5 percent. The deficit remains larger than our projected economic growth, an unsustainable state of affairs. This budget will increase our borrowing from and dependence upon foreign nations. I cannot support such results. We can do better, and for the sake of our nation and our children’s future, we must."

These same two Senators, the ones whining and crying about fiscal responsibility, voted last night to shield millionaires from taxes on their estates, costing the government $250 billion dollars.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate has voted to cut taxes on multimillion-dollar estates as it gets ready to pass a budget backed by President Barack Obama.

By a 51-48 vote, the Senate embraced a nonbinding but symbolically important amendment by Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln and Arizona Republican Jon Kyl to exempt estates up to $10 million from the estate tax. Estates larger than that would be taxed at a 35 percent rate.

Tim Fernholz has more on this nonsense, including the good news that this will likely never make law. But let's just soak in this for a minute. The two ConservaDems who voted against the budget on the grounds of fiscal responsibility voted to give a handout to families with estates over $7 million dollars. Tremayne at Open Left has a chart showing just exactly who this tax policy would affect.

Hard to see it, but those with annual incomes in the millions are represented by the vertical red line on the left and those making less than a million (i.e., almost everyone) are the horizontal red line on the bottom. Lincoln and Kyl are concerned about the people on the vertical red line.

So are Bayh and Nelson, America's worst people.

The Scolds Never Stop

John McCain had another "old man yells at cloud" moment yesterday, complaining about earmarks in last year's spending bill, and trying to eliminate all of them. His effort lost on a bipartisan basis, probably because this is last year's spending needed to keep the government running, a shutdown at this point would be completely counter to economic fiscal stimulus, earmarks are 2% of the total bill and half of them were inserted by Republicans, including $76 million from Thad Cochran (R-MS), the overall leader.

However, this hasn't stopped the Democratic worry warts to fret about spending, at a time when there's practically no other economic activity other than that coming from the federal government.

Moderate and conservative Democrats in the Senate are starting to choke over the massive spending and tax increases in President Barack Obama’s budget plans and have begun plotting to increase their influence over the agenda of a president who is turning out to be much more liberal than they are.

A group of 14 Senate Democrats and one independent huddled behind closed doors on Tuesday, discussing how centrists in that chamber can assert more leverage on the major policy debates that will dominate this Congress [...]

Asked when he’d reach his breaking point, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, said: “Right now. I’m concerned about the amount that’s being offered in [Obama’s] budget.”

Another attendee, Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), said she expected the newly formed caucus to shape Obama’s budget proposal as it moves through Congress.

“We want to give the president a chance, but our concern is going to be on the budget, looking forward,” Landrieu said. She added that she agrees with Obama that there needs to be “fundamental change” in fiscal policy, but she said “we do have to keep our eye on the long term, on intermediate and long-term fiscal responsibility.”

Sen. Evan Bayh, the Indiana Democrat who assembled Tuesday’s skull session, added that he was “very concerned” about Washington’s level of spending, especially in a $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill to fund the government until the start of a new fiscal year in October.

As for the tax increases on high-income earners called for in Obama’s plan, Bayh said, “I do think that before we raise revenue, we first should look to see if there are ways we can cut back on spending.”

“The American people and businesses are tightening their belts,” Bayh added. “I think we need to show that the government can economize as well.”

Ladies an gentlemen, your almost-Vice President, Evan Bayh.

Once again, the path for a Democratic President must go through Democratic fiscal responsibility scolds. And this is coming in the middle of a Great Recession, where investment is non-existent, trade is stalled, and consumer spending isn't going anywhere, meaning that ONLY GOVERNMENT IS SPENDING. Cutting that spending translates directly into losing thousands of jobs. That's reality for the next year or so.

If anything, Obama is being modest in his plans. And he is paying for the big investments in his budget by making the tax code more progressive and fair. And that's the reality of the fiscal scolds - they want to protect the status quo for their buddies and contributors. They would rather the 30-year cycle of radical conservative economic policy continues unabated. Obama's budget is a a threat to the DC estabishment that is best represented by these "moderates."

It was his boldest acknowledgment yet of what is slowly becoming clear to the rest of us: That his proposals represent such a dramatic reversal from the course the nation has been following over the last eight years -- and even the last three decades -- that they will inevitably face intense resistance from Washington's traditional power centers [...]

It's worth revisiting Obama's explanation of "how we arrived at this moment" from that joint address:

"The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy, yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for.

"And though all of these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before. In other words, we have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity, where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.

"A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations... were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."

The inevitable conclusion here is that establishment Washington is complicit in what went wrong. That includes all the people in positions of power who accepted what was happening as simply politics as usual -- even as the country was slowly but inevitably headed to that day of reckoning.

After all, since the Reagan era, even mainstream Democratic leaders have internalized the trickle-down, free-market, small-government mentality which Obama now blames for our woes. Few in the Democratic party -- or the mainstream media -- did much more than watch as the economic playing field tilted further and further to the advantage of the rich.

And yes, it's true that many of Obama's initiatives could well be described as pent-up Democratic goals. But you might also call them nearly-forgotten goals, as far as the current batch of Democratic leaders is concerned. Even when they controlled Congress, they failed to block budgets that turned out to be blueprints for disaster. And they either didn't fight for their principles or flinched in a pinch. I described some of their capitulations to former president George W. Bush in this December 2007 column. These very same leaders may well be motivated to -- at least -- complicate or modify Obama's proposals to validate their own previous inaction.

Exactly, I don't remember Evan Bayh or Ben Nelson or any of these scolds raising an eyebrow to any of the radically destructive policies the Bush Administration trafficked in on a daily basis. It's only with a Democratic President attempting to lead on Democratic principles that their spines stiffen.

Fortunately, Obama remains extremely popular, and he has shown an growing aptitude for this kind of conflict. However, his favorability is favored more than his policies at this point. I'm not sure if Republicans will get their act together to exploit this, but they can certainly get a boost from these "moderates" to revive their political fortunes.

Nuke Bailout

Apparently Presidents Nelson and Collins got it in their heads to include a billion dollars to the National Nuclear Security Administration for "weapons activities" in the stimulus. Once again we see that fiscal responsibility is deathly important, and fixing up dilapidated schools is not in the public interest because big gubmint shouldn't be messing around with education, but building another generation of muclear weapons is legitimate because military spending is magic and it never affects the budget bottom line.

By the way, here's a list of the main sites for US nuclear weapons research, development, testing, and production. You'll notice that they're conveniently located all over the country so that lots and lots of Senators have a vested interest in their continued production.

This is one issue where the Obama Administration has actually been pretty clear. They are implementing a full review which will examine the needs for nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War environment, and they are seeking sharp reductions in stockpiles in a comprehensive treaty with the Russians. There is absolutely no need for additional funding of nuclear weapons given that the President has called to rid the world of them.

But we can't afford more money for Head Start, you see. Or critical public health priorities.

Feel The Centrist Pride

Presidents Ben Nelson and Susan Collins today were strutting their peacock feathers and engaging in a full round of back-patting for cutting back the stimulus package, using weasel words that would have launched 1,000 George Carlin bits:

Q: Do you agree, or how do you respond to Paul Krugman in the New York Times who said that centrists have done their best to “make the plan weaker and worse?”

NELSON: Well, first of all, they’re not cuts. Let’s just get that up front. These are adjustments downward from numbers that were offered by the House in their version and by the Senate in its version.

"Adjustments downward." Sounds like something an accountant would make. Just an eraser swipe and a stroke of a pencil in the ledger. Nothing harmful. Just an adjustment.

Except that those adjustments will cost hundreds of thousands of people their jobs, and more importantly, will cost them the ability to produce in the economy and provide income tax revenue and increase economic activity, which is the whole point of the bill.

The House puts greater emphasis on helping states and localities avoid wide-scale cuts in services and layoffs of public employees. The Senate cut $40 billion of that aid from its bill, which is expected to be approved Tuesday.

The Senate plan, reached in an agreement late Friday between Democrats and three moderate Republicans, focuses somewhat more heavily on tax cuts, provides far less generous health care subsidies for the unemployed and lowers a proposed increase in food stamps.

To help allay Republican concerns about the cost, the Senate proposal even scales back President Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut. The Senate plan also creates new tax incentives to encourage Americans to buy homes and cars within the next year.

As Krugman notes, the centrists "did their best to make the plan weaker and worse," and the sickest thing is that they seem to be proud of it, touting aid to education in their version of the bill when they actually slashed it:

I’m really shocked by the extent to which the architects of the Senate cuts to the recovery package aren’t being made to offer any kind of justification for their actions. And in the absence of pressure, they certainly aren’t doing it of their own accord. I wanted to see, for example, what Ben Nelson (D-NE) had to say for himself, and what he had to say was this, with his partner in crime Susan Collins (R-ME) chiming in:

“This bipartisan agreement delivers the help millions of Americans need in this time of economic turmoil,” said Senator Nelson. “It fuels two powerful engines: major tax cuts for the middle class, and targeted investments in American infrastructure and job growth. It also pares back $110 billion of spending that didn’t belong in the bill. We’ve trimmed the fat, fried the bacon, and milked the sacred cows. What remains will fund education, an energy Smart Grid, tax credits for homebuyers and other critical infrastructure.” [...]

Would you ever in a million years have guessed from this rhetoric that the primary change Collins and Nelson made was to implement big reductions in aid to states and, especially, in funding for education? I think not. In their rhetoric, Collins and Nelson preserved vital education funding and state assistance while eliminating various metaphorical animal products. Meanwhile, actual changes Collins and Nelson made include:

• Elimination of $25 billion in flexible funding for state governments.
• Cut $7.5 billion in funding for “state incentive grants” to help states make progress toward NCLB goals.
• Eliminated $19.5 billion in construction aid for schools and colleges.
• Reduced new aid for the Head Start early childhood program by $1 billion.

The absolute worst part is the cuts to state aid, which will force the states to cut their budgets and reduce jobs during a recession, ensuring that it will be longer and deeper. The proud as a peacock centrists made it so that the states will have to actively work against the recovery package itself.

All so they could make room for tax cuts to wealthy people who flip their houses, and the patch to the alternative minimum tax, which these supposedly fiscally responsible Senators are too cowardly to pay for. They stuck it in this stimulus so they wouldn't have to offset the $70 billion dollar cost with revenue increases. Nelson, Collins and all the rest can never call themselves fiscally responsible ever again. This is the most irresponsible thing I've ever seen.

The question is, as I've said repeatedly, what happens in conference. The centrists are talking tough, saying that any significant changes to the bill will be met by them with a no vote.

Reconciling the remaining differences won't be easy. Even before negotiations have started, one influential Republican supporter of the bill, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, is stressing her desire for the cost of the final package to be held to $800 billion. She is suggesting that her support for a final compromise package can't be taken for granted. "I made no commitments," she said.

And it can be, by taking out these silly, non-stimulative tax breaks and adding back in precisely the kind of targeted, temporary spending, to schools and state governments and relief for the poor, that the bill was designed to do. The President said today at the Elkhart, IN town hall: "The Senate version cut a lot of these education dollars. I would like to see some of it restored." There is upward momentum from 3,000 local town hall meetings this weekend, many of which came to their own conclusions
about the importance of the type of things taken out of the Senate version. Will Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe or Ben Nelson or Arlen Specter tank the economy because they don't get everything on their wish list? I'm not so sure. Specter has acknowledged the pressure from the left side of the aisle leading him to support a compromise, and in his WaPo op-ed today he said that inaction is not an option. The moderates sat by idly when their compromises were dropped in conference during the Bush years time and again. Would they stonewall a different conference report this time, and be on the hook for economic disaster?

I think it's unclear. And it's worth keeping up the pressure to let Congress know that we want a big, bold plan that restores cuts to the states and education at the expense of non-stimulative tax cuts.

Capital switchboard

House

Senate

...Joe Lieberman nominates moderates for the Congressional Medal of Honor. If the chance to make Holy Joe cry doesn't get you to the phones, what will?

Senate Proud To Sink The States

Both the Washington Post and the LA Times have stories today about the budget crises facing the states, where governors and legislatures have exhausted every gimmick and now must enact painful cuts that will work against the federal program to bring us out of the economic downturn. The personal stories are significant:

Nevada resident Margaret Frye-Jackman, 71, was diagnosed in August with ovarian cancer. She had two rounds of chemotherapy at University Medical Center, the only public hospital in the Las Vegas area.

Soon after, she and her daughter heard the news on TV: The hospital's outpatient oncology services were closing because of state Medicaid cuts. Treatment for Frye-Jackman and hundreds of other cancer patients was eliminated [...]

"If this is what it's like in Nevada, with cancer stuff closing, is it like that everywhere?" said Frye-Jackman's daughter, Margaret Bakes, accompanying her mother to the doctor's recently. "Are all the other states closing stuff too?"

The answer, in at least 39 states, is "yes" -- or "soon." With personal, sales and corporate income tax revenue plummeting, state governments -- which recently trimmed their budgets to cover a cumulative $40.3-billion shortfall for the current fiscal year -- are now watching in horror as a $47.4-billion gap opens for 2009.

And for fiscal year 2010, they will face a $84.3-billion hole, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The total shortfall through fiscal 2011 is estimated at $350 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

This article frames it as there being "no choice" but tough budget cuts or tax increases for states facing shortfalls, states that cannot print money or run budget deficits. But that's not entirely true. There was a good deal of help being offered by the federal government in the House stimulus bill, which included $79 billion in state fiscal stabilization aid. But among their other cuts, the Axis of Centrism cut that aid in half, by $40 billion dollars, and in so doing guaranteed additional layoffs to teachers and firefighters and cops and nurses and all sorts of other professions which rely on a state paycheck.

California law mandates that layoff notices to teachers be given out by March 15 for the next school year. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing $10 billion in education cuts. Republicans, which use our state's rule requiring a 2/3 vote of the legislature to pass a budget, are demanding these cuts as the price of a tax increase to close the remaining $40 billion and ensure that the cuts aren't bigger.

But all of us were hoping and expecting that the US Congress would come through with aid to stabilize state budgets, to help ameliorate the problem and save teacher jobs by providing stimulus money. It must be in the stimulus because, as I just noted, the layoff notices will go out within 5 weeks - there is no time to include it in another bill.

Now we are told that Ben Nelson and Susan Collins, two Republican Senators, have reached a deal to cut that education assistance and that the Senate is likely to accept it.

In short, what they have done is guarantee to my sister and to thousands like her that they will receive a pink slip within five weeks.

To call this fearmongering, as John Ensign did on Meet the Press today, just denies reality, par for the course for both Republicans and bipartisan fetishists like Claire McCaskill, who was at first giddy about cutting 600,000-700,000 jobs in the stimulus, and then passive-aggressively "defended" it by saying the alternative was no bill.

Claire McCaskill is now defending herself against Krugman on Twitter:

Just saw Krugman's comments on reduction in recov act. Question for him. Would no stimulus act be better than one thats 800 B instead of 900.

She follows that up with

Compromise had to happen or we would NOT have 60 votes. Period.

And for further evidence of how much the bill is the same, she claims:

Original Senate bill was 60% appropriationss, 40%tax cuts. Compromise was 58, 42.Senate bill is 90% the same as House bill.

I'm glad that's she expressing herself here, and that we're able to somewhat have a dialogue. But I'm not sure how much in good faith it is. McCaskill began by stating how glad she was that they got a $100 billion cut out of the bill, that the "silly stuff" that Republicans didn't like is now out. She then switches to a passive aggressive mode in defending the cuts - it's basically the same bill and it wouldn't have made it through the Senate - but glosses her own role in making the cuts. From the way she talks about the bill, wouldn't she have been among those voting against the bill if the cuts hadn't been made and new non-stimulative tax cuts hadn't been added in?

McCaskill doesn't want to admit her role in putting 600,000 Americans out of work on Friday, which will harm public safety and increase class sizes and shut down bus and rail lines and send the sick and uninsured looking in vain for treatment and a host of other inadvisable outcomes. And there's no rational economic reason for it, just that the Axis of Centrism choked on the price tag and had to compensate for the non-stimulative tax cuts the Senate tossed into the bill. Massive job loss or increased property tax rates (as states compensate for the loss to education funds) is on McCaskill and Nelson and Collins and Spector's hands.

The big question is what will come out of the House-Senate conference next week, whether the cuts, especially the state government relief, will be restored at the expense of things like the $70 billion dollar patch to the alternative minimum tax. Larry Summers left that an open question on ABC this morning.

One of President Barack Obama's top economic advisers forecast Sunday a difficult struggle with Congress over Senate cuts of $40 billion for state and local governments from the administration's massive spending and tax cut package to stimulate the failing economy.

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan -- designed to bring the economy out of the worst downward spiral since the Great Depression -- was expected to pass the Senate on Tuesday. The House had already passed its $819 billion version of the measure.

And in the opening moments of This Week, an exchange between George Stephanopoulos and Larry Summers went like this:

STEPHANOPOULOS: ...does that mean the President prefers the Senate version to the House version?

SUMMERS: No, the President feels that above all, we need a major program enacted very quickly that would create 3 to 4 million jobs. He believes we need to perfect it in every way we can.

If the cuts are restored, suddenly the sense of urgency works back in the direction of passing a bill more like the House version. The Republican business lobby is urging passage. I don't think the moderates signed on to the bill could break ranks on the final vote if the changes in conference are limited to, say, swapping the state cuts for the AMT patch, combined with an assurance from the President that they will make that fix down the road.