Cantwell Amendment Passes

It's not much, but for people making between 133-200% of the federal poverty level it's a good start.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), taking a page from a program originating in her home state of Washington, has successfully maneuvered an amendment through the Finance Committee that comes close to a public option while not quite getting there.

The program, which made its way into the finance committee bill by one vote, would affect those above the 133% of the federal poverty line (those below this threshold are currently covered by Medicaid) up to 200% of the FPL. This would include a family of four earning up to $44,000.

Rather than handing over the $6500 health insurance subsidy that these people would have qualified for under the initial Baucus plan, that money would be handed over to the states to create a negotiating fund to be controlled by the state.

Participants would not get their insurance from the state through some sort of state operated public insurance option. Rather, the state would combine all this federal subsidy money and use the clout of controlling this large sum of cash to negotiate with private insurers on behalf of participants in order to get them the best deal.

It’s something of a collective bargaining approach for those in a low income bracket, with the state functioning as the local labor negotiator.

I wouldn't call it "close to a public option." It's a good policy to bundle federal monies together and allow states to bargain with it, and it will allow for competition at that low end. Of course, insurers might have to raise prices on everyone else to compensate for either lower rates on that pool, or missing out on having them in their systems. But there are caps for that, theoretically, and I would have expected those insurers to push to the max of those caps anyway. So overall, this is a good policy, and I'm glad Cantwell got it through.

Among Democrats, only Blanche Lincoln voted against it.

Owning By Proxy

Last night, Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad, who like to fancy themselves fiscal conservatives and whose entire rhetoric about health care has concerned "bending the cost curve" and reducing the price tag in the bill, joined with Republicans to hand up to $250 million dollars to states to teach children that sex is icky.

The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday night approved an amendment providing tens of millions of dollars to fund abstinence education programs for teens.

The proposal, offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), would provide $50 million per year through 2014 exclusively for abstinence education programs. The measure would effectively reinstate the controversial Title V program, which offered $50 million per year to states for abstinence education, but prohibited them from tapping the funds for other sex-ed subjects like contraception. The same prohibition would accompany the Hatch amendment. “Abstinence education works,” the Utah Republican said.

The vote was 12 to 11, with Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.) voting with every Republican to secure passage of the measure.

Abstinence education doesn't work, this California Democrat says, backed up by every study ever done on the subject, including a 6-year study authorized by Congress that published in 2007. Even Max frickin' Baucus agrees, and his competing amendment on comprehensive sex ed, which also passed, wouldn't fund programs that were in his words "ineffective." Suzy Khimm has more on this.

I'm sure that giving in to Republican fears about liberated women, whether through this measure or trying to gut reproductive coverage in private insurance plans (thankfully, that amendment did fail in the Finance Committee today), will cause members of the party who don't think women should have the right to vote to flip on the bill and offer their support, right? We're just so close to consensus, and if we can just add to that 80% agreement with selling out women and futilely indoctrinating children to abstinence, we can all sing kumbaya and have a bill everyone can support, right?

Wrong. Republicans like Orrin Hatch will ask for concession after concession and offer nothing themselves. That's because they know that stooges like Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad will end up agreeing with them anyway, so there's no need to take ownership of the bill when you can own it by proxy.

Slightly off-topic, but this is a great story about 1,100 religious left leaders calling abortion "a moral decision" and demanding that women's rights not be sacrificed in the health care debate.

Blanche Lincoln's Backward Thinking

Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln didn't even have the courtesy to show up to vote down the public option today, instead voting no by proxy in the Senate Finance Committee. She released this statement about her no vote.

Arkansans have told me they support health care reform that forces insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and prevents them from dropping coverage when you become seriously ill. We can achieve these goals, stabilize the cost of coverage for Arkansans who have health insurance, and expand coverage to the uninsured and underinsured without creating a purely public, new government program, which most Arkansans do not support. I have promised my constituents that I will fight for health insurance reform that is deficit neutral, now and in the future, and that creates more choices for small businesses and their workers and the self-employed. These are important priorities that I believe we can achieve.

In addition, I am working to ensure that requiring Americans to purchase health insurance does not result in a personal windfall for health insurance company executives. My amendment would cut the tax shelter, from $1 million to $500,000, of what businesses are able to deduct for executive compensation. This is a fair policy change aimed at lowering insurance costs to consumers and reassuring them that insurance companies are not receiving excessive tax breaks while at the same time profiting from a government mandate.

First of all, the part I boldfaced is not true. In fact, Daily Kos did a Research 2000 poll just two weeks ago showing that Arkansans favored a public option by 55-38, with independents supporting it by roughly the same number (56-34) and Democrats overwhelmingly in favor, 81-14.

Second, Lincoln is in trouble for re-election. The Rasmussen numbers out today show her losing to all challengers, topping out at around 41% of the vote. While the Kos/R2K poll was more favorable, she still never beat 47% in any of those polls, and her fav-unfav numbers were 43/49. She's going to need some help from Democrats to win re-election.

I know that national Democrats would probably actively work for her defeat given today's votes. The Senate campaign committee is pretty much an incumbency protection racket, but they may be stretched fairly thin in 2010. Most important, Blanche Lincoln needs to win over her fellow Democrats in Arkansas. This will anger them, and the attempt at faux-populism by including an amendment to cut the tax shelter for health insurance company executives cuts pretty hard against her vote to roll back the estate tax for the richest families in America. There will probably be competition to Lincoln's left, and because it is likely to come from the fairly robust Arkansas Green Party, it will show up in the general election, not just a primary. Therefore, it is deeply in the interests of Lincoln to keep the Democratic base in Arkansas satisfied with her performance, and given the poll numbers, that points to supporting a public option. But she did not do that today.

The real test here is whether Lincoln would vote to filibuster the health care bill if a public option is included on the floor via amendments. If she does, it is more likely to hurt her in 2010 than help her, which I don't think she fully understands.

Dodd Stays At Banking

I knew that Tim Johnson would not be permitted to chair the Senate Banking Committee:

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) has decided against succeeding his close friend and mentor, the late Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) as chairman of the Senate's health committee, a senior Senate aide said Tuesday night.

The decision sets in motion a final game of musical chairs involving committee chairmanships after Kennedy's death.

Dodd's decision leaves the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who follows Dodd in seniority. Multiple sources in the Harkin orbit, requesting anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that he is certain to take over the HELP committee.

Harkin is currently chairman of the Agriculture Committee and would have to give up that position. He would likely be replaced at Agriculture by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who faces a difficult reelection bid in 2010. Other Democrats are more senior than her on the Agriculture Committee, but they hold more prestigious chairmanships already.

Dodd isn't great chairing Banking, but he's ten times better than Johnson, and I'd rather have financial regulation in his hands. Meanwhile, Tom Harkin, who's a great liberal except when it comes to agriculture, now goes to a committee to show off his talents. And I think the Senate just gained some leverage over Blanche Lincoln, who will need to be reasonably loyal to keep that slot on the Agriculture Committee. When Max Baucus was foundering there was talk of switching committee chairs, and that should still be on the table for squishes like Lincoln and Joe Lieberman if they participate in a filibuster of policies Democrats have sought for 60 years.

Tea-Leaf Reading On Health Care

I'm going to play against type for a second.

I'm going to be an optimist.

There are actually lots of signs out there that health care reform will get done, and even a few that it won't be totally awful.

On the "getting done" part, this is uncontroversial. Without a bill that Democrats can sell to the public as a victory, they will get wiped out in 2010. They cannot live with failure. Dems in the House all have to face the voters, while some Senate moderates can hide this cycle. But regardless, the pressure from the White House and those vulnerable members of Congress to get something done will be intense. Furthermore, Blue Dogs are resigned to a bill.

Even after the tough town-hall-style meetings, unrelenting Republican assaults and a steady stream of questions from anxious voters, interviews with more than a dozen Blue Dogs and their top aides indicate that many of the lawmakers still believe approval of some form of health care plan is achievable and far preferable to not acting at all.

“I can’t tell you how comprehensive it will be, but I do believe something will get passed,” said Representative Michael Arcuri, a second-term Blue Dog Democrat from New York.

The political temperature of the Blue Dogs — and their ideological counterparts in the Senate — after the five-week recess is crucial. As representatives of some of the nation’s most conservative territory represented by Democrats, they potentially have the most to lose if a Democratic bill spurs a backlash. Even with healthy majorities in Congress, every Democratic vote is critical given the reluctance by some Democrats to consider a major overhaul and near blanket Republican opposition.

One lawmaker in the group, Representative David Scott of Georgia, said his determination to enact a health care overhaul had been increased over the recess because of what he called the spread of misinformation and other unfair tactics engaged in by the opposition.

“I think now more than ever we must get strong in our resolve to pass health care insurance reform legislation,” Mr. Scott said.

Scott is the Rep. who had a swastika painted on a sign in front of his office.

The Blue Dogs know that they will be first in line to go down if health care fails. They can try to claim in their districts that they saved the world from the eee-vul intentions of Hussein X, but that won't work. After a failed effort, anyone with a D in front of their name will be toast. And the Blue Dogs will be first up to the sacrifice pit.

Meanwhile, there are actual, definable signs that the public option will have to be a part of whatever comes out of a must-pass bill. For one, labor supports it strongly. Few interest groups in the Democratic Party hold more influence. House Dems would be dead without labor. Second, members of Congress are putting their own pressure on the President. Like Ohio's Sherrod Brown.

"I think the president needs to step forward," Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said this week, "be more specific, more aggressively fight for a strong health reform bill with a strong public option. I think he's going to do that."

Then you have Blanche Lincoln setting up for what I actually think is a way to support a public option and claim that she stopped the liberals from doing their worst:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) has been tepidly supportive of a public option in the past, so her comments to reporters today come as a bit of a head-scratcher. "I would not support a solely government-funded public option. We can't afford that," Lincoln said.

Nobody has called for a government-funded public option. The House bills have it paid for through consumer premiums, with a modicum of start-up money. She appears to be girding herself for a premium-supported public option.

Now, this could all be completely off base, as you have to practically read hieroglyphics to understand what's coming out of politicians in Washington these days. But we know with a fair degree of certainty that:

1) there has to be a health care bill
2) conservative Dems know it and won't stand in the way
3) liberal Dems sound confident that the President will push for a strong public option
4) conservative Senate Dems seem to be playing a kabuki game about it

Sure, you have ConservaDems not up for re-election next year like Ben Nelson arguing for more bipartisanship (although even the examples he gives are already addressed by the House bills). But in general, the momentum is actually pushing in favor of a bill, and maybe even a good one. You can base your beliefs on that, or unnamed sources in the White House. We'll see.

Making Her Blanche

I wrote over the weekend about how the road to tying down Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus ran through their individual states. Another "Democrat" who has been out front in slow-walking anything that deviates from the status quo, who is also up for re-election next year, is Blanche Lincoln. They have a racket in Arkansas where the two parties almost never challenge each other in general elections - and considering that both party stalwarts do the bidding of their corporate contributors, why should they? In addition to her changing statements on the public option, which drew a round of ads from Blue America, Lincoln thinks the climate change bill should be dumped.

The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy, four Democratic lawmakers say.

“The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.”

I remarked to Digby last week that maybe we should rerun the Harry and Louise-type ads against Lincoln, only with two polar bears at the kitchen table instead of the couple.

Maybe that's something that Arkansas State Senate President Bob Johnson can use when he challenges Lincoln in a primary.

Arkansas Senate President Bob Johnson said Friday that he's considering challenging incumbent Democrat U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in next year's primary.

Johnson told The Associated Press that's he's been encouraged to challenge Lincoln, who is seeking a third Senate term next year. Johnson said he doesn't have a timeline for deciding whether to challenge Lincoln.

"I'd be less than honest if I told you it hasn't surfaced in a number of circles," Johnson said. "I am weighing it very carefully."

Let's not harbor any illusions. Johnson is "running as a conservative Democrat" against Lincoln. He actually sounds like a scoundrel. But in a primary, someone will have to play to the base, where primary voters live. And that could help Lincoln get over her reticence on health care and climate change legislation.

In even better news, Howie Klein says that Jim Cooper's going to get a primary challenge, on the heels of his pathetic approval ratings on the health care issue.

There's enough anti-Washington sentiment in the country that a lot of lawmakers ought to be looking over their shoulders.

Pressure Works

Several weeks ago Digby and Blue America noticed that Blanche Lincoln, one of the few centrist Democrats facing re-election in 2010, was taking the side of the insurance companies over her constituents in the health care debate. She claimed that "if all Congress comes up with is a government-backed plan, then there will be very little incentive for the private industry to be able to be competitive perhaps in the plans they will be offering and the individuals they will be offering,” showing exactly where her sympathies lie - with those poor, henpecked insurance industry CEOs who scrape by on $14.9 billion dollars over five years.

So we decided to do something about it. Blue America kicked off the Campaign for Health Care Choice and produced three advertisements to press Lincoln on supporting a quality public insurance option to compete with private companies. Digby write the spots, John Amato helped with locations and logistics, I directed and edited them, Howie Klein managed the fundraising. Blue America held a contest to pick the best spot, and after raising $23,740, voters chose their favorite:



Today, we can announce that, before the spots even fully hit the airwaves in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln is already hedging on her rejection of a public insurance option.

Lincoln, who’s getting hammered by ads demanding she commit to the public option, has now shifted towards supporting one, at least in rhetorical terms. In a piece for today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, she says health care reform should include a public plan or a non-profit substitute.

Here’s the key graf from Lincoln (the piece is subscription only):

Health care reform must build upon what works and improve inefficiencies. Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans. Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan.

The assertion that reform “should” have a public plan or non-profit substitute is a shift from her previous position, which was only that she was “evaluating” a public plan or a substitute.

In this op-ed, Lincoln makes absolutely no mention of an employer mandate to provide coverage to their workers, which Wal-Mart, America's largest employer and a virtual kingmaker in Arkansas, signed onto this week. Instead, Lincoln goes out of her way to support a public insurance option in competition with private insurance. There are weasel words there, of course - note the "non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals." And I don't doubt that Wal-Mart's general support of something called health care reform played a role. But in the final analysis, two events happened to Blanche Lincoln in health care recently - Wal-Mart's sign-on to the employer mandate and the prospect of Blue America running ads in her state ($25,000 can go a fairly long way on cable in Arkansas, by the way). She chose to specifically align herself with the element of health care policy that Blue America endorses.

But she's not all the way there, so we plan to keep pushing. But this should be a valuable lesson - every small thing you do to advance solutions to the health care crisis can make a difference. The political animals in the Senate know that on this high-profile vote, defying the public on a popular plank will cause them some difficulty. It's up to us to make sure of that.

Please support the Campaign for Health Care Choice so we can continue to raise the pressure on the ConservaDems who want to hijack this crucial policy goal.

Going after Blanche Lincoln on the public option

The HELP Committee's release of a more affordable health care reform that covers more people and includes a public option highlights the essential truth of this issue, that more reform actually lowers the cost and increases the effectiveness. Kay Hagan, once thought to be the lone holdout in the Committee on the public option, reportedly supports the final bill. Perhaps she wanted to avoid the spectacle of breast cancer survivors coming to her office and demanding that she not stand in the way of real health care reform. Other moderate Dems, like Mary Landrieu, are feeling the pressure from their constituents.

Now it's time to take on Blanche Lincoln (D-AR).

Like other so-called moderates, Lincoln has so far rejected the public plan option for health care, preferring the pale alternative of state-run co-ops. She fears that consumers would have better choices, lower premiums and better care, for all intents and purposes.

“One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run option would do,” she said.

Blanche Lincoln is one of the few Democrats wavering on this element of health care reform who faces re-election in 2010. Unlike some of the others, she is more directly accountable to the voters. But she probably feels more accountable to insurance companies - she's taken hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from them over the years, and in those years Arkansas has practically become a one-horse town when it comes to insurance:

The Justice Department considers an industry to be “highly concentrated” if one company has 42 percent of the market. In Arkansas — Senator Lincoln should take note — Blue Cross Blue Shield has 75 percent of the market. If you take government self-insurance plans out of the equation, it's higher. The state ranks as the ninth most concentrated in the country. Is it any wonder that insurance premiums have risen five times as fast as wages?

If we can highlight this inequity and bring Lincoln around, we can win this debate. Blue America PAC, which includes progressive bloggers like John Amato (Crooks and Liars), Jane Hamsher (Firedoglake), Howie Klein (Down With Tyranny) and Digby, decided to launch the Campaign for Health Care Choice, raising money for ads targeting Lincoln in her own state over health care reform and the public option.

I was pleased to help in this effort. Digby wrote the spots. Amato provided the location. I directed them and edited them. Brave New Films supplied logistics and equipment. And as a result, we created 3 HD spots that force Sen. Lincoln to make a choice between insurers or the people.

Now, Blue America wants you to choose the best spot that we will run in Arkansas starting next week.

We aren't standing still while the fat cats get fatter. So here's the thing. We've produced three different commercials with the help of BNF's to run in Lincoln's state of Arkansas and we need your help.

We've already raised over $18,000 so far and that's awesome, but what we want you to do next is it to vote for the ad that you think we should run first and you'll be letting us know by adding one, two, or three cents at the end of your donation on our Blue America's Campaign For Health Care page. Here's how it will go.

#1 Blue America Health Care Campaign - Blanche Lincoln: "I Thought We Had Insurance" Add one cent to your contribution if you want to vote for this spot.



#2 Blue America Health Care Campaign - Blanche Lincoln: "Bonuses" Add two cents to your contribution if you want to vote for this spot.



#3 Blue America Health Care Campaign - Blanche Lincoln: "Bailout" Add three cents to your contribution if you want to vote for this spot.

The deadline is Friday at noon. The spot that earns the most money by then will get run in Arkansas. Go to this Act Blue page to cast your vote.

More broadly, progressive action on this debate is crucial to letting lawmakers know about the consequences of a bad reform. Even the HELP Committee option on the public plan and health insurance exchanges is not necessarily sufficient to alter the perverse incentives in the system. Designing a large insurance exchange that is national in scope can break the local monopolies that insurers have in their states, and adding a public plan to that exchange will force them to compete on price and quality instead of on how many people they can deny coverage. The House bill improves upon the HELP bill, which improves upon the Senate Finance Committee bill. We need to get the dynamic for lawmakers moving in the right direction. And so grassroots action and pressure can go a long way to having Senators like Blanche Lincoln afraid to vote against a popular policy that is also more fiscally responsible. If the reform gets whittled down to nothing, Democrats will own a bad reform, face a massive backlash, and will lose their advantage on domestic issues generally. We must implement legislation that works.

So contribute to this campaign if you can, and vote for your favorite spot to run in Arkansas.

Thanks.

Washington To Constituents: STFU

Ceci Connolly decided to jump on the opportunity to forward a "Democrats in disarray" narrative, arguing that grassroots groups inviting Americans to participate in their government is just too messy and risks hurting the feelings of those "friends" in the Democratic Party who resist real health care reform.

When asking me about the Progressive Change Campaign Committee's TV ads (which begin airing Monday in DC) holding Senate Dems accountable for taking millions from insurance interests and being on the verge of opposing a public option supported by 76% of Americans, Connolly would ask me ridiculous questions like, "Why are you attacking your friends? Wouldn't you agree that these Democrats are better for you on most health care issues than Republicans?"

I had to patiently explain to her that the public option is the defining issue of the health care debate -- if Senators like Baucus and Nelson aren't with us on that, they are not our friends.

Connolly listened, and then chose to dismiss silly activists who are fighting for what 76% of Americans want:

Activists say they are simply pressing for quick delivery of "true health reform," but the intraparty rift runs the risk of alienating centrist Democrats who will be needed to pass a bill.

Even though this story obviously sympathizes with those who want the hippies to STFU and enjoy whatever scraps they can get, I'm OK with having it out there. Because if the Village has to recognize the efforts in the grassroots, they've become too big to ignore. Also illuminating is the fact that not one named source would go on the record saying that such grassroots pressure on wavering Dems is harmful.

Essentially, being told that this pressure isn't working by folks inside the Beltway is a sure sign that it IS. So watch out, Kay Hagan, who apparently is holding up the inclusion of a public option in the Senate HELP Committee's draft. And the same goes for Blanche Lincoln, who has been squishy on the issue in her public statements. Blue America will have a lot to announce on that front in the coming weeks. So support the Campaign for Health Care Choice as we "run the risk of alienating centrist Democrats" once again.

...what's funny about this is the lack of understanding of who controls the process in the health care bill. It's completely obvious that Republicans will not support any kind of reform. Therefore, anyone who wants to impact the legislation must work on the Democratic side. That's simply a rational calculation of where to place pressure.

Let's Not Give The People What They Want

Blanche Lincoln just can't get behind a public option in health care.

U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., says she prefers private insurance cooperatives to a government-run provider that would compete with the private sector in reforming the nation’s health care system.

“We want to keep what works in the private industry and make it better,” Lincoln told Arkansas reporters in a conference call today. “There’s a lot of discussion about what else we might need that we can’t get from the private sector.”

The senator left the door open to supporting a government-option, though she acknowledged she has reservations.

“One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run option would do,” she said.

This really doesn't make any sense, other than in the sense that Blanche Lincoln values corporate contributors over her constituents, and doesn't feel that the public can hold her accountable as long as she raises enough money. Because the public plan is wildly popular. In most cases, a wildly popular issue would be precisely the one that could yield bipartisan support. But if that issue is in any way progressive, suddenly, public opinion doesn't matter anymore.

And not only is the idea of a public option popular in the abstract, the inclusion of a robust public option would save a lot of money and thus allow the congress to minimize its reliance on unpopular measures like tax increases. But suddenly here public opinion becomes irrelevant. You never hear a Blue Dog say “my seat is so vulnerable that I can’t afford not to back a super-popular public plan.” Ben Nelson’s not talking about how if Democrats want to stay viable in red states they need to robustly back a 70-20 issue like the public plan. The WSJ doesn’t run a headline saying “Opposition to Public Option Spells Political Trouble for Republicans.” Public opinion, in other words, can be a reason to eschew sound progressive policy but never a reason to enact it.

Exactly. There are these etched in stone "political realities," designed by elites, that say you just cannot cross corporate power. And so we hear nonsense about "fiscal responsibility" as a means to deny the most fiscally responsible option. And we hear that we "have to protect the free market" while denying the choice that would strengthen that market. The public option is nothing so much as trust-busting. And the elites want to keep together the trust.

Meanwhile, the three committees working on this in the House have really stepped up. They released a discussion draft based on the work of all of the relevant Chairmen, which includes a robust public option to keep insurers honest and allow for experimentation in the marketplace. Initially, the plan utilizes Medicare bargaining rates to ramp up, and then will use cost control plans to provide better coverage and more effective care.

I would prefer a single-payer system. But this actually is a significant step, and worth fighting for: a health care plan that offers lower costs, higher quality and better choice. During the press conference (on C-SPAN 3, not cable, because who gives a crap about health care, right?), John Dingell brought up the hearing in the House on rescission, the practice of insurers dropping people the moment they get sick, sometimes for technical violations on their applications like misspelling their name.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period [...]

Late in the hearing, Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show "intentional fraud."

The answer from all three executives:

"No."

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said that a public insurance plan should be a part of any overhaul because it would force private companies to treat consumers fairly or risk losing them.

"This is precisely why we need a public option," Dingell said.

Here's the YouTube of that hearing. It should have 10 million hits by the end of next week.



Here's a Splicd version of the moment where they all refuse to commit to stop rescinding people when they get sick.

TEN MILLION VIEWS.

Labor's Still Got Some Muscle

A couple days ago, the LA Times, no doubt dripping with glee, printed a story about labor being outmaneuvered on the Employee Free Choice Act and in particular the card-check provision. First of all, the idea that anyone in the labor movement would be surprised by corporate opposition to this bill is kind of crazy. They knew that big business would throw everything they had at this, and that Republicans and key corporate Dems would resist passage.

But rumors of labor's demise are greatly exaggerated. First of all, Tom Harkin is making a smart threat, vowing to either reach a compromise on Employee Free Choice or force his fellow lawmakers to vote on it.

That may not sound like a grave threat, but it may well be. Two of the bills main skeptics--Sens. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)--face re-election next year, and both, for different reasons, may ultimately need union support to prevail. Specter, who tacked to the right and came out against EFCA before becoming a Democrat, is facing pressure from the Democratic base and Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) to move left or face a primary challenge.

And at least one high level union official has suggested that if Lincoln doesn't come around and support an EFCA compromise, she may face a green party challenger, in addition to a Republican challenger, in the general election.

And let's not forget that labor still can throw their weight around on non-EFCA issues, and they came up with a major victory to stymie the Obama Administration's apparent efforts to pass a corporate-written trade deal:

U.S. officials said they will delay seeking congressional approval for a pending free-trade deal with Panama until President Barack Obama offers a new “framework” for trade.

The administration, which in March said it would move quickly to pass the trade agreement with Panama, wants to outline how trade fits with other priorities such as assistance for unemployed workers and health care, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Everett Eissenstat said today.

“It’s clear that trade agreements in the last few years have been much too divisive,” Eissenstat told the Senate Finance Committee. “We want to make sure that Panama doesn’t contribute to that divisiveness.” [...]

Eissenstat’s comments follow remarks by John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO labor federation, that unions would oppose a rush to ratify the deal. The Panama accord was signed in 2007 and was viewed as the least controversial of three trade agreements reached by President George W. Bush and pending congressional approval.

Really, the wolf whistles and hoots hoping that labor is demoralized and devoid of clout really are embarrassing.

Blanche Lincoln: What's Good For Wal-Mart Is Good For America

Essentially, that's what I take away from her announcement of opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. Lincoln represents Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart, the most anti-union employer in the country. She was never going to allow this to pass with her support - she voted for it last year precisely because it was clear it would NOT pass. Ryan Powers notes:

The Arkansas-based Wal-Mart corporation had hired a former Blanche Lincoln staffer to lobby against the Employee Free Choice Act. Notably, Lincoln waited until after Vice President Biden helped her raise $800,000 before announcing her opposition to a piece of legislation that both Biden and Obama strongly support.

I'm extremely sick of so-called Democrats consistently voting against the rights of workers.

Chart Of The Day

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (D-AZ) teamed up today to offer a budget amendment that would offer $250 billion dollars in tax cuts to families that inherit estates worth over $7 million dollars. Tremayne at Open Left links to this 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 Kyle are concerned about the people on the vertical red line. Actually, as the OpEd piece linked above points out, the concern is not for everyone on the vertical red line but only the wealthiest of those wealthy.

Why would Lincoln, a Democrat, be so concerned about that tiny and very wealthy segment of the population I wondered.

This is not so hard to find, and Tremayne was able to locate the source of Lincoln's concern, which begins with Wal and ends with Mart.

But, are there any rich people at all in Arkansas? Turns out there are. Here are the richest 5 families there:

1. Sam Walton Family (Wal-Mart, inheritance)

2. Witt and Jack Stephens Family (finance)

3. Charles Murphy Family (oil, etc.)

4. Winthrop Paul Rockefeller Family (inheritance money, ha ha)

5. Don Tyson Family (chicken)

I wonder, does Blanche Lincoln have any connections to these rich families? Is that why she is so concerned about them she is cosponsoring an amendment that won't help hardly anyone else? Hmmm.

A little more Googling around and I found this, the list of the top 5 contributors to Blanche Lincoln's reelection campaign:

Stephens Group: $34,200
DaVita Inc: $32,000
Wal-Mart Stores: $25,800
Tyson Foods: $24,750
Goldman Sachs: $24,000

Very interesting. Let's see if there is any overlap with the above list of rich families. Hey, lookie there: 3 of the top four contributors are also on the top five wealthiest families in Arkansas. How about that?

I don't think it even has to be that complicated. The Walton family wields tremendous power in Arkansas that can be measured well beyond campaign contributions, and Lincoln has an interest in ensuring their ability to hoard money and make them richer.

The New York Times hit this with an editorial today. But Blanche Lincoln is simply an example of a Democrat beholden to a certain sector on key issues, in this case ultra-rich department store owners. There are niche sectors for plenty of other Democrats: the credit card industry in South Dakota and Delaware, the financial sector in New York, the auto sector in Michigan, farm states like Minnesota and North Dakota and Iowa. These regional anomalies have frustrated progressive change for some time, making this a sclerotic country that seems stuck in molasses and unable to move forward on important issues. There's a path to neutralize these forces, but let's get real - we're going to be dealing with this in some form forever.

Employee Free Choice Showdown Begins

The debate over "card check," which is the name Republicans and Politico would like to use for the Employee Free Choice Act because it has some coded language that doesn't poll well, I guess, begins tomorrow with the bill's introduction in the House and Senate.

Tomorrow, Democrats in both houses of Congress plan to introduce a union-organizing bill that is labor’s top priority for the year, Democratic officials said.

The result could be a high-decibel, high-stakes brawl between business and labor, which strongly supported President Barack Obama. Unions have been getting impatient for attention to the issue, and the push to introduce legislation is a way to ratchet up pressure on Congress.

President Obama, who has said he recognizes that “the business community … considers this to be the devil incarnate,” said in January that he would like to bring the sides together.

The measure — widely known as card check and formally as the Employee Free Choice Act — would allow a union to form after enough workers in a shop sign cards, or petitions, rather than voting by secret ballot.

“The fact that the bill is being introduced so early in the session is an indication of it being a priority and of confidence in the vote count,” said a Democratic official involved in the negotiations.

Warren Buffett, an independent businessman who the Obama campaign for some reason exalted during the fall because of his endorsement, came out sharply against Employee Free Choice using the typical coded language of the right.

"I think the secret ballot's pretty important in the country," said the Oracle from Omaha. "I'm against card check to make a perfectly flat statement."

The Employee Free Choice Act has nothing to do with the secret ballot. It has to do with real punishment for illegal worker intimidation and firings on the part of management, and the decision for who gets to set a union election process. Under current law, management gets to make that decision and then game the system through union-busting. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers make the decision either to use majority sign-up or a general election. And a minority of workers, as low as 30%, get to overrule the majority if they want a ballot. Buffett doesn't want you to know that because it's easier to demonize unions by saying "they want to take your secret ballot away."

Of course, the real problem with passage of the bill is not Warren Buffett but a small sliver of Senators whose support is wavering.

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). This conservative-leaning Dem is up for re-election in 2010, and she has signaled since December that she might not back EFCA this year, although she voted to break a GOP filibuster when it came up in 2007. The Arkansas News reported last week that Lincoln's campaign staff was telling business donors "not to worry" about her vote on the bill.

Arlen Specter (R-PA). Perhaps the most closely watched vote on Employee Free Choice, he is reportedly facing a strong challenge from conservative former Rep. Pat Toomey, who has been rapping Specter's past support for EFCA for months now. Will Toomey's entry into the race be the EFCA "epiphany" that GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently wished on Specter? Labor advocates have to hope not.

Mary Landrieu (D-LA). After co-sponsoring Employee Free Choice and voting with her party to break a filibuster in 2007, Landrieu is now up in the air on this year's vote, according to the Shreveport Times in her state.

Mark Pryor (D-AR). In its report on Lincoln, the Arkansas News also quotes Pryor as declining to become a co-sponsor of the bill this year and pinning his hopes on a compromise between business and labor. For now, Pryor remains decidedly in the fence-sitters' camp.

Any final vote is dependent on Al Franken reaching the Senate chamber, because Specter is probably the only gettable vote on the Republican side. But the above doesn't really look good. Particularly when anti-worker groups are already putting up ads in vulnerable states.

Anyway, these are the crucial votes. Economic recovery is going to require a lot of factors, but certainly one of them is wage increases for a broader middle class. Inequality has led to a perverse and unsustainable economic structure. Historically rises in union membership are closely tied to rises in overall wages. The Employee Free Choice Act is not just a matter of basic fairness, but an economic imperative.

The Republican War Against Unions

It's pretty clear that the GOP war on the auto companies had little to do with bailing out GM and Chrysler and everything to do with busting unions. There is no majority that is against bailouts or federal aid in and of itself; indeed, 18 Republican Senators voted for the financial bailout and against the auto rescue, which is pretty much indefensible. If Dick Cheney is able to understand that letting the automakers die would trigger a possible depression, then there's no ideological blockade against this kind of thing.

On the other thing, it comes at an especially bad time because as I say it's on the heels of the financial crisis and we're on the downside of a recession that may be the worst since World War II. And if the automobile industry goes belly up now, there's a deep concern that that would be a major shock to the system. It might be different under different economic circumstances.

But GOP lawmakers made it fairly explicit in their internal deliberations that this was a union fight, and they also characterized it as the first round of the battle against the Employee Free Choice Act:

Handing a defeat to labor and its Democratic allies in Congress was also seen as a preemptive strike in what is expected to be a major battle for the new Congress in January: the unions' bid for a so-called card check law that would make it easier for them to organize workers, potentially reversing decades of declining power. The measure is strongly opposed by business groups.

"This is the Democrats' first opportunity to pay off organized labor after the election," read an e-mail circulated Wednesday among Senate Republicans. "This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it."

One of the leading opponents of the auto bailout, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), said: "Year after year, union bosses have put their interests ahead of the workers they claim to represent. Congress never should have given these unions this much power, and now is the time to fix it."

Congress didn't "give" unions anything, of course. Workers took their rights to organize through concerted effort and mass action. Congress helped set labor law designed to stop them.

(By the way, make this guy the Labor Secretary, President-elect Obama. Make it happen today.)

Morgan Johnson, president of the United Auto Workers local representing General Motors workers in Shreveport, said Friday that Sen. David Vitter's role in blocking an auto bailout indicates "he's chosen to play Russian roulette" with Louisiana jobs and the national economy.

"I don't know what Sen. Vitter has against GM or the United Auto Workers or the entire domestic auto industry; whatever it is, whatever he thinks we've done, it's time for him to forgive us, just like Sen. Vitter has asked the citizens of Louisiana to forgive him, " said Johnson, president of Local 2166. Otherwise, Johnson said of Vitter, it would appear, "He'd rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers."

But the fearmongering, the demonization of unions that found a home on talk radio, worked at least in part in this case. Most Americans oppose an auto bailout because they fault the industry for its own problems, and that has a lot to do with the rhetoric about "generous union contracts." And I don't think this is necessarily about Republicans wanting a Depression as much as them wanting to protect their corporate interests and stop the gains of the labor movement over the last decade. They see it as poisonous to corporate profits and deadly to their political futures, as union households historically vote Democratic.

Now we're seeing this spill into other issues as well. There's no reason to associate the Blagojevich scandal with "union bosses" other than to cement that image in the public mind that unions are the problem and must be fought.

Kicking off what promises to be a huge fight over labor's top legislative priority, a pro-business group is sinking over a million dollars into a TV ad campaign tying Rod Blagojevich to "union bosses" and calling on Democratic Senators in four states to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.

The ad -- which was sent over by a source and hasn't been released to the press -- seeks to tar the Employee Free Choice Act as vaguely corrupt-sounding by tying it rather tangentially to the Blago mess. It's being aired by Americans for Job Security, a business-funded group that is expected to spend big money to sink the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize and is labor's top goal for 2009.

The head lobbyist for pro-business interests is Rick Berman, a Washington fixture who reads like somebody out of a Christopher Buckley novel:

Berman, hired by businesses, fights efforts such as further restricting drinking and driving, mandating healthier foods and raising the minimum wage. The former labor relations lawyer argues that many of the restrictions reduce our ability to make our own choices.

He seldom mentions his clients, other than to say many are in the food and restaurant industries, and he represents them through a variety of non-profit groups he has set up. His targets range from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the Ralph Nader-founded Center for Science in the Public Interest, which works on food issues, to labor unions...

Berman spent the last couple of years fighting obesity-focused trial lawyers and consumer groups who have succeeded in getting trans fats out of many foods and soft-drink machines out of schools -- the latter a move he finds ludicrous because high-calorie juice is allowed and diet drinks aren't.

Currently, he's predicting that when they're done with fat, the food-safety groups will focus more on demonizing caffeine. And MADD, he says, won't be happy until there is a breathalyzer in every car and social drinkers are scared into public sobriety.

Berman expects to raise $30 million dollars to fight the EFCA, and his efforts have already gotten one Democrat to waver, not surprisingly a Senator from the home of Wal-Mart.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln says she doesn’t think federal legislation that would allow labor organizations to unionize workplaces without secret-ballot elections is necessary. But in an interview with The Associated Press today, Lincoln gave herself room to support the measure if it’s brought up later.

Business and labor groups are pressuring the Democratic senator from Arkansas for support either way. Tim Griffin, a potential challenger to the senator’s 2010 re-election bid, has said her stand could be an issue in the race.

That's right, Karl Rove's protégé Tim Griffin, the man responsible for voter caging in Florida in 2004, and a key part of the US Attorney scandal, is mulling a run for Senate. And he's putting union jobs at the heart of his campaign. Because the biggest issue facing America is that some people in the working class make too much money.

There are extremely powerful forces seeking to block the Employee Free Choice Act. We have nothing on our side but people power. SEIU is planning events where ordinary people speak directly with McDonald's employees tomorrow, asking them "what it's like to work for a CEO who is paid 770 times what his workers earn, leaving working families with barely enough to afford the 'Dollar Menu.'" You can find an event in your areahere.