Public Option Finance Committee Live Debate

(Bumped)

I'm listening to the public option debate in the Senate Finance Committee at this link. I guess I can embed it right here:

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Chuck Grassley is going on and on with his series of lies about the public option. All you need to know is that it saves hundreds of billions of dollars, and everyone who presumes to be worried about the total cost of the bill and at the same time rejects the public option is full of it.

Jon Walker has a good liveblog going. Earlier, Jay Rockefeller went to town on the Baucus bill:

10:24 - Rockefeller quoted in his defense of the public option former Cigna excutive Wendell Potter who called Baucus's bill the, "the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act."

10:33 - Rockefeller pointed out that while the private insurance companies will receive a half trillion dollars in federal money, there is no requirement in the Mark for the private insurance companies to spend that money on care. The House bills has an minimum 85% medical loss ratio. Baucus's bill has no minimum medical loss ratio

10:37 - Rockefeller is putting the private health insurance industry on trial. He is going through all the different ways private insurance companies screw over their costumers and deny claims.

Chuck Schumer just now asked Grassley what he thinks of Medicare. He called it "part of the social fabric of America." It wasn't in 1964! Maybe in 40 years, the public option will be part of the social fabric of America. Grassley is dancing.

Bill Nelson interjects saying "how in the world do you make that leap" that a public option will lead to single payer? Grassley uses the Lewin Group statistics, not based on the public option plan on offer - also Lewin Group is owned by United Health Group and not an unbiased source.

...just to be clear, it's likely for us to lose this one. But this debate, according to Schumer, will revitalize the debate for the Senate floor. Hopefully Schumer will ensure that the floor amendment on the public option will only require a majority vote. Robert Reich has a good story on this as well.

...Orrin Hatch is trading off of the decades-old demonization of government from the Reagan era onward, saying that DC bureaucrats cannot manage health care. Well, I eagerly await Hatch, essentially a DC bureaucrat, recusing himself from all health care votes this session, including participating in any filibusters, because he clearly considers himself such a bad manager. Incidentally, the reason we're doing health care reform right now is because private management of health care has failed.

...Bob Menendez comes out for the public option. I think he may have been on the fence until now. That's another member of the leadership, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, for the public option. He's the guy who delivers resources to Senate candidates, including incumbents, so that's notable.

...Note the states Menendez singled out for having no competition in the insurance market - Maine, Wyoming, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota. Every one in the Gang of Six!

...Conrad is up. Calls his co-op crap "the public interest option"! His main complaint is the Medicare reimbursement rate, which is more of an issue than I made of it last week. We'll see if he votes yes on the Schumer amendment, which does not tie a public option to Medicare rates. I think there's a way to meet halfway on this. Tying the public option to Medicare rates saves lots of money, but it could save half that by equalizing the reimbursement rates in some states.

...Nelson asks Conrad to change the name of his co-ops to something even more indecipherable.

...Bingaman is up. He's getting some clarifications. Rockefeller is getting a little fed up with the distortions of his amendment.

...Bingaman supports a public option, but it looks like he'll only vote for the Schumer "level playing field" public option instead of Rockefeller's. That's a cost, according to the CBO, of $85 billion dollars, if you look at the House bills. So I'm sure Bingaman will come up with $85 billion in new funding to make up for that, right?

...Schumer is making a very strong case for the public option. Of course, his plan would score lower and save less money, which he admits.

...TPM has that exchange between Schumer and Grassley, where Grassley calls Medicare part of the social fabric of America.



John Ensign is dredging up that Belinda Stronach (Canadian MP) came to the US for health care canard. He won't mention that she raised money for adding the cosmetic surgery she needed - COSMETIC, not the care itself - in the Canadian health care system.

Then Ensign claimed that US health care is great because if you take away every car accident and gun death, it turns out our preventable death rate is excellent. Which is just about the stupidest thing I've heard yet in this debate. Is John Ensign calling for a total gun ban in the United States?

...Debbie Stabenow's going to wrap up the debate before a lunch break. Stabenow frames the public option as "the grand compromise," which it is.

Gangs Of Washington

Charles Grassley, having been kicked out of the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, has posted a flyer on the Senate's grey utility pole seeking out members for a new Hole-in-the-Wall Gang:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Wednesday he's begun reaching out to other colleagues in both parties about reshaping the health bill through amendments on the Senate floor.

Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a conference call with Iowa reporters that he has had conversations with senators not on either committee handling health reform legislation about assembling a new bipartisan agreement.

"I've had discussions with senators that aren't on the committee that could possibly work with us to try to get back into a bipartisan mold," Grassley said. "I think, though, that it'd be very helpful for people who aren't on the Finance committee or even the HELP committee...would kind of take the bull by the horns themselves and try to coalesce around something that could eventually become more bipartisan."

Grassley, who said that the health care bill may "pull the plug on Grandma," tried to raise money in his own state to "defeat Obamacare" and claimed that it would have left Ted Kennedy without treatment, seems like the perfect candidate to lead a group seeking to improve the health care bill.

I'm thinking he may find some takers, though. The Senate Wanker Caucus can seat up to 60, depending on the policy. Witness, for example, Bill Nelson, trying transparently to preserve corporate welfare for insurance companies.

Mr. Nelson, a Democrat, has a big problem. The bill taken up this week by the committee would cut Medicare payments to insurance companies that care for more than 10 million older Americans, including nearly one million in Florida. The program, known as Medicare Advantage, is popular because it offers extra benefits, including vision and dental care and even, in some cases, membership in health clubs or fitness centers.

“It would be intolerable to ask senior citizens to give up substantial health benefits they are enjoying under Medicare,” said Mr. Nelson, who has been deluged with calls and complaints from constituents. “I am offering an amendment to shield seniors from those benefit cuts.” [...]

Mr. Nelson said he had received 56,000 telephone calls, letters and e-mail messages on the legislation since June.

Some of those callers have been mobilized by insurance companies.

Humana, one of the nation’s largest insurers, has urged subscribers to contact their members of Congress and register their opposition to the cuts. “Millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,” Humana said in a recent letter to beneficiaries.

Medicare Advantage is quite simply corporate welfare and nothing else. The government pays private companies on the average 14% more than it would to produce the exact same coverage on their own, for no increase in quality, despite Nelson's claims. It's a pure subsidy.

Pair Grassley with the Nelson twins, a Lieberman, maybe a Mark Warner, and who knows? They could put the old gang back together.

Democrats Fight At The Iraq Hearings

As the Petraeus/Crocker hearings shift to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden is doing a great job, hammering the President's non-strategy on Iraq and the costs to prestige, operational capacity, the fight against terrorism, lives and treasure. Actually, several Democrats have had fine performances today, and I wanted to highlight some of them from the Armed Services Committee session.

• Bill Nelson (D-FL) gets at the heart of the "political reconciliation" question, hitting the familiar tactic that we've seen by the Administration of highlighting initial votes passing pieces of legislation without mentioning that they never get signed into law or implemented. Worse, laws like the de-Baathification statute are being used to target Sunnis and increase sectarian tensions.

"It is with a great deal of respect and deference to you," Nelson said, that he pressed the issue: the point of the surge was to create political reconciliation. "Has political reconciliation happened?"

Petraeus: "As the Ambassador laid out, there has been agreement among different political parties on a number of pieces of important reconciliation laws, if you will, that represent reconciliation... [laws on] de-Ba'athification, a provincial powers law, a pensions reform bill..."

But have the laws been implemented?

Petraeus: I believe the pensions law is in the process of being implemented. De-Ba'athification --"

Nelson wondered: To the extent of bringing about political reconciliation "that is the goal in the first place?"

Petraeus kicked it over to Crocker.

This is a common "kick-the-can" tactic to prove some sort of ephemeral success of the surge, and I'm glad Nelson called it out.

• Claire McCaskill (D-MO) bluntly stated that Sadr won the battle for Basra, which is obviously true despite Ryan Crocker's spinning. This was buttressed by today's events, as the religious leadership in the country lined up behind Sadr, which is a complete thumb in the eye of Maliki and his call for the Mahdi Army to be disbanded.

• Evan Byah (D-IN) - yes, Evan frickin' Bayh - did a nice job of discussing the intelligence community's assessment that our presence in Iraq is actually creating more terrorists than we are defeating there. And there was this great moment:

He also wins huge plaudits from me for mentioning, in response to something Ambassador Crocker said, that "I would only caution us not to take our marching orders from Osama bin Laden."

Exactly so. It's really lunatic of hawks to keep citing OBL's desire to fight us in Iraq as a reason for us to fight him in Iraq. He likes the fight in Iraq because it's favorable terrain for his cause and his propaganda and lets him pose as the defender of the Arab world against American domination. They're suggesting we act like bulls running at the toreador's cape.

• I mentioned Jack Reed's (D-RI) questioning before, but he pressed Ambassador Crocker on a central point - that Iran is supporting all kinds of groups in Iraq, not just those "special groups" but also our "friends" in Maliki's Army like the Badr Brigade and the Dawa Party.

• Jim Webb noted as a side comment that the Anbar Awakening began well before the surge. That's something that always gets lost.

• Even Huckleberry Graham missed a layup, asking Gen. Petraeus if we could get a brigade a month out of Iraq, expecting the answer no, and Petraeus replied "It clearly would depend on the conditions at that time... that might be doable." Whoops.

I don't expect that these key facets of the crumbling of the Bush Iraq strategy will get much notice - that Petraeus and Crocker have to answer these questions instead of the policymaker-in-chief ensures that he is shielded from the consequences of his actions. But it's important to note that many Democrats are fighting to get out the truth about Iraq, and to change the debate from whether or not "we're winning" and whether our continued presence in Iraq makes sense for our economic and national security.

Why I Mourn For America

The deceitful actions of this Administration have permanently harmed the fabric of America. I was hopeful after the 2006 elections that we would be bringing in a new majority committed to overturning the worst abuses and returning a basic respect for Constitutional law. News that Senate Democrats were moving to restore some of the most basic judicial practices to the awful military tribunals compact that they barely lifted a finger to fight last year gave me some hope, although the most important part, the restoration of habeas corpus, is absent from the bill. But this action on a different piece of legislation returned me to my depression, and my belief that our torture policies, which are now ingrained into law by default, will always be a feature of 21st-century American life, at great cost to our collective souls.

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday questioned the continuing value of the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program for terrorism suspects, suggesting that international condemnation and the obstacles it has created to criminal prosecution may outweigh its worth in gathering information.

The committee rejected by one vote a Democratic proposal that would essentially have cut money for the program by banning harsh interrogation techniques except in dire emergencies, a committee report revealed [...]

In a closed session on May 23, two Democrats, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Dianne Feinstein of California, proposed barring spending on interrogation techniques that go beyond the Army Field Manual, which bans physical pressure or pain.

Under their proposal, the only exception would have been when the president determined “that an individual has information about a specific and imminent threat.”

The amendment failed when Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, joined all the Republicans in voting no.

So tough talk about the uselessness of torture, how it damages our moral standing, weakens our relationship with our allies, puts our soldiers at risk and doesn't pay off with decent information... but when the rubber hits the road, Bill Nelson must retain the culture of permanent fear and ensure that such tactics will continue without limits. And this isn't about Bill Nelson, per se. In our political system and especially in our political age, it's nearly impossible to undo a vote once it's been codified. There's no enthusiasm for right and wrong, just for winners and losers. And once that's been sorted, everybody moves on to the next thing. There's no examination of the underlying reasons, no testing the assumptions, no call to sanity and morality. Even a horrific policy like torture GAINS in stature the more it's allowed to operate. The Republican Party wants to nominate Jack Bauer at this point. And even Democrats like Bill Nelson won't do anything to get in the way. When the McCain Amendment came up for a vote, 90 Senators opposed torture as it's defined in the Army Field Manual. With this vote, every Republican and one Democrat refused to deny funding to a CIA program if it's not in compliance with that same Field Manual. The consensus is going TOWARD, not away from, sanctioning torture as an acceptable policy in this country.

Let's be clear what we're talking about here. The United States reverse engineered programs designed in the Cold War era based on Soviet techniques like “prolonged use of stress positions, exposure to heat and cold, sleep deprivation and even waterboarding.” These techniques were migrated to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and given a euphemistic title of "enhanced interrogation techniques" which is a term that is directly out of Nazi interrogation manuals, although even they objected to things like hypothermia and waterboarding. While military interrogators at Gitmo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib used these new tools, despite the fact that leading intelligence experts have concluded that the techniques are "outmoded, amateurish and unreliable," the CIA enlisted private companies to help them with rendition flights of terror suspects plucked off of the streets in foreign countries, in essence making the private companies, like Boeing, an accessory to "the forced disappearance, torture and inhumane treatment" (the ACLU is now suing Boeing over this). All the while conservatives cheer on this barbarism in the name of "getting tough with terrorists," claiming that any critic of this policy "doesn't understand the nature of the threat we face" (something Paul Waldman does an excellent job of rebutting, pointing out that, considering the leading GOP candidates are routinely conflating Iraq and Al Qaeda and grouping everything Muslim into one enemy, "understanding terrorism" must mean knowing as little as humanly possible about it). And yet these are the same people who will find some random news item about terrorists torturing and kidnapping people, and try to make the argument that critics of US torture policies are being hypocritical because they don't point out terrorist torture policies. Conservative with a brain John Cole makes quick work of this argument:

It isn’t news because they are terrorists, you fucking simpletons. Yesterday, my cat scratched himself then shit in a box. The media didn’t report that, either.

But it really shows an insight into the modern-day conservative mind that the best argument they can think of for the wholesale torture of detainees - at great peril to our moral standing, international cooperation, and troop safety - is that Al Qaeda does it too. There's never any thought to the notion that Al Qaeda should not be the human rights measuring stick for a country supposedly committed to freedom and liberty such as this one. Here's Glenn Greenwald.

The reason that it is news that the U.S. tortures, but not news that Al Qaeda does, is because Al Qaeda is a barbaric and savage terrorist group which operates with no limits, whereas the U.S. is supposed to be something different than that. Isn't it amazing that one even needs to point that out? [...]

And with that twisted equivalency bolted into place, they have dragged our country on a path where that premise is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our own interrogation methods are reverse-engineered from the most brutal and barbaric countries and groups on the planet. And the policies and practices we have adopted over the last six years embody everything which this country, for decades, vocally deplored. But all of that happened because of this "belief" -- which is really just a self-justifying rationalization -- that we not only have the right to be, but that we must be, exactly like Al Qaeda, do what they do, in order to defeat them.

That is what leads to such indescribably inane though revealing protests: "Hey, you reported that the U.S. tortures, so why aren't you reporting that Al Qaeda does? Whose side are you on?" That is the rancid depth to which our public discourse and our national standards have descended, and those who brought it to that point have designs on dragging it far lower still.

And that's a slippery slope which is unlikely to be able to scale. A country that uses "enhanced interrogation techniques," that denies basic rights of habeas corpus and evidentiary grounds for detention, is what we are right now. We have a Democratic Congress and this continues. We will have a Democratic President, maybe by January 2009, and yet this will still continue. There is little outrage and less principled opposition to the road these authoritarian zealots have taken us down. The conservative base, while abandoning the original messenger, is still whipped into a frenzy of fear and vengeance that is unlikely to dissipate. And there remains a foreign policy consensus that trusts American power to manage the world's conflicts and wage war on Islamic radicalism. It's a genie that's been out of the bottle for many decades, and I would suggest that naivete guides the thinking of anyone who thinks we can immediately put it back inside. Or that our leaders in Washington even want to. Sometimes I think the only thing that raises the ire of anyone in Congress about torture is that news of it leaked out publicly.

It's with a great deal of sadness that I write this. Sad for the country that was built on idealism but quickly descended into the business of scoundrels. Sad for what the political system has mutated into, with its fondness for victory and defeat instead of liberty and justice. Sad for the realization that this is a staple of American life in 2007, as much a part of things as Dancing With the Stars and congested freeways. We have now become what we have long despised, and there's little we can do about it except hang our heads in shame.