Taxing High-End Insurance Plans

Democrats are getting a lot of pressure from unions to eliminate the one provision that would corrode, or at least stop privileging, the inefficient employer-based health care system we have for the majority of this country:

As Democratic leaders prepare to bring healthcare legislation before the full House and Senate for votes this month, they soon must decide who will be taxed to pay for expanding coverage -- the wealthy or the insurance companies.

Legislation emerging from the House would slap a surtax on upper-income people. But many Democrats, especially in the Senate, fear the political fallout over voting to raise anyone's income taxes.

The most prominent Senate bill would impose a tax on insurance companies that provide expensive policies, sometimes dubbed "Cadillac" plans. But labor unions -- a powerful force within the Democratic Party -- bitterly oppose the idea, saying the tax would be passed on to workers in the form of higher premiums or shrunken benefits.

This would have been mitigated greatly by passing the Employee Free Choice Act first, because now it looks like Democrats are just dumping on labor unions. They need to pass EFCA very soon.

But let's be clear what the tax on insurers would do. It would only affect 10% of all insurance plans, and a lower percentage of those are union plans. And it's the only way to take in revenue for health care that extends beyond the cost of health inflation. I don't think the excise tax is entirely well-designed - it isn't adjusted by region based on cost-of-living, and without indexing it will quickly affect the average plan - but the House bill financing is not at all well-designed. It's just a budget-buster, with the effects past the budget window to hide them. That's a recipe for getting the bill dismantled in the future.

In other words, surpluses in the early years make up for deficits in the later years. But since time doesn’t actually stop when the CBO ten-year scoring window expires, what you’re left with is legislation that worsens the long-run fiscal outlook. That’s not really so awful since it basically just means that you’ll need to change the law sometime in the next ten years, and the law will definitely be changed in the next ten years anyway. But I’d say it’s definitely worse than the more robust form of deficit neutrality given by a bill that includes a revenue source which grows over time in line with costs.

To be clear, I think they should impose the surtax TOO, and use that money to expand the subsidies in the exchange. But the real goal here should be getting employers out of the business of providing health care, or at least into the regulated exchange. Taxing high-end plans does this, and does it in a mostly progressive way.

On Arlen's Side

The President held a fundraiser for Arlen Specter yesterday. Which makes sense for him - Specter is favored, helping him overtly keeps him on the Administration's side, and considering all the attacks from Republicans, having a former one switch to your side probably feels pretty good.

And Specter has been a good soldier thus far, voting with his party over 90% of the time and supporting a public option in health care reform and even hammering out an agreement on the Employee Free Choice Act.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) on Tuesday told the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh that he has been working hard “for hours” on a deal with other key senators, such as Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), as well as labor leaders, on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

“We have pounded out an Employees Choice bill which will meet labor’s objectives,” Specter said. “I believe before the year is out, and I will join my colleague Sen. [Bob] Casey [Jr. (D-Pa.)] in predicting, that there will be passage of an Employees Free Choice Act which will be totally satisfactory to labor.”

The bill is one of the labor movement’s most important legislative priorities this Congress, one they believe is necessary to protect workers’ rights. Specter’s prediction was greeted by a prolonged standing ovation from the convention’s attendees, members of the nation’s largest union federation.

It looks to be a bill with real penalties for labor law violators, binding arbitration for a contract if a workplace gets unionized and no deal between labor and management could be reached, and no delays in union certification. Card check is probably not in the bill, I would guess, but that alone would represent a real achievement in labor law and an expansion of the potential for unionization.

So that's great. And Specter is being a good soldier. But he does not get anointed as a result. And indeed, much of his good work is being caused by the fact of a primary fight with Joe Sestak. Which could lead to a dramatic change in labor law.

Primaries work.

...Another example. Specter called for single-payer to be put on the table. The backstory here is that a single-payer bill is winding through the Pennsylvania legislature with a lot of support, and Specter wants a part of that.

We need to immediately move to primaries in every blue or purple state to put the heat on these Senators.

Card Check Vanishes

Conservative Democrats pulled out the card check provisions from the Employee Free Choice Act, leaving in place a weakened bill that is still being negotiated.

The so-called card-check provision — which senators decided to scrap to help secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes — would have required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union. Currently, employers can insist on a secret-ballot election, a higher hurdle for unions.

In its place, several Senate and labor officials said, the revised bill would require shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections.

While disappointed with the failure of card check, union leaders argued this would still be an important victory because it would give companies less time to press workers to vote against unionizing [...]

Though some details remain to be worked out, under the expected revisions, union elections would have to be held within five or 10 days after 30 percent of workers signed cards favoring having a union. Currently, the campaigns often run two months.

To further address labor’s concerns that the election process is tilted in favor of employers, key senators are considering several measures. One would require employers to give union organizers access to company property. Another would bar employers from requiring workers to attend anti-union sessions that labor supporters deride as “captive audience meetings.”

These provisions will only work if there are stiff, measurable penalties for breaking the law. Right now those penalties are weak and unenforced, and even if they're hit with fines employers consider it the cost of doing business. If those fines are high enough to discourage intimidation and harrassment, on both sides by the way, then we might be able to have a level playing field with snap elections and binding arbitration if the election is successful, so that the employer can just refuse to sign a contract forever. I'm upset about the loss of card check, but without the anti-intimidation provisions it really won't matter. Right now the union election system is broken - the "secret ballot" language might have beaten card check, so "right to vote" language needs to ensure a level playing field. If that happens, this bill would expand union membership in America and protect worker's right to unionize.

...Andy Stern responds by vowing that there will be a vote on majority signup, whether in the bill or by amendment. And there should be. Labor needs to know who their friends are in Congress before they spend a kajillion dollars on them getting them elected.

Joe Sestak Will Beat Arlen Specter In The 2010 PA Primary

There, I've said it. I'm not above making some predictions. And this one is based in some reality, for once! The fact is that Arlen Specter's standing with voters in Pennsylvania has slipped significantly a year out from any primary. His job approval rating is down to 34%, and among Democrats, only 43% believe he deserves re-election. In a head-to-head matchup, Specter only garners 33% against Sestak, who has 13%, with a whopping 48% undecided.

These are much better numbers than, for example, Ned Lamont had at a similar time, nearly a year out from his primary against Joe Lieberman. And the trends in terms of key stakeholders are moving Sestak's way as well. This Open Left piece is hilarious:

At first glance, Joe Sestak reiterating that he is a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act while speaking at a United Steelworkers conference doesn't seem like much of a news story. As the title of this post implies, however, there is something that made it very interesting...

The catch is that Senator Arlen Specter did not speak at this event. In fact, he was disinvited.

Here is the full story, courtesy of an email exchange with Jim Savage, who is President of a Steelworkers local here in Philadelphia:

"The Senator [Arlen Specter] was invited & confirmed as the keynote speaker."

"There was quite an uproar when we found out. He was uninvited because of the rank-and-file reaction."

"Also, it's worth noting that the Senator was none too happy about it."

At that point, Sestak was then invited. Before he spoke, he was "introduced to the delegates as "our next Senator" to a rousing ovation."

The general sentiment toward Specter was "fuck'm."

I have to say, talking to local union leaders is a lot more fun than talking with communications staff.

Sestak keeps dipping his toe in the water and intimating that he'll get in the race. At some point he'll have to go ahead with a full-fledged announcement. But if, as appears likely, he does run, I think he'll win. I've certainly been wrong before, but then again, so has Larry Sabato....

...and by the way, this is exactly why Specter came out today in favor of the public option for health care reform. He will not be a problem in this fight, unlike what would have been the case if Sestak shied away from running.

Broken News: DiFi Doesn't Support The Same Thing Today She Didn't Support Yesterday

If Dianne Feinstein really was backing away from supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, I'd be the first to blast her. But she never supported it in the 111th Congress to begin with. She remains the only Democratic member of the California delegation, in the House or Senate, not to co-sponsor the bill. And she signaled her support for a compromise bill, which has a kind of "early voting" card check where workers mail in their cards to the NLRB, and if 50% return they get a union, three weeks ago. So some reporter got fooled today by a Chamber of Commerce press release suggesting that DiFi "pulled her support" of the Employee Free Choice Act in a meeting with CoC folks from the Santa Clarita Valley.

Yeah, we get it. You want to break news. But at bare minimum, one Jon Dell should have:

Looked up the meaning of the word "cloture," which apparently he does not know, since Feinstein's vote for the bill isn't needed for its passage

Asked Feinstein for comment instead of taking the word of an organization spending millions of dollars to defeat the bill, and

Done a simple Google search to determine Feinstein's history with the bill, and discovered that she offered up her own compromise three weeks ago:

[Diane Feinstein's] proposal would replace the card-check provision, which would allow workers to unionize if a majority signed authorization cards and strip a company's ability to demand a secret ballot election. "It's a secret ballot that would be mailed in ... just like an absentee ballot. The individual could take it home and mail it in," Feinstein said. If a majority mailed the ballots to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB would recognize the union.

What about that? Did she say anything about her own "compromise" bill? Well, we don't know, because a bunch of "breathless" delegates from the Santa Clarita Chamber of Commerce who know nothing about the history of the bill or Feinstein's position apparently didn't ask her about it, they just told their story to an equally incurious reporter who quickly decided that they "broke national news" in a "major turn of events."

This doesn't take Feinstein off the hook or anything - she ought to support the perfectly reasonable provisions of the bill as they stand right now. The California Labor Federation is engaging in a two-day hunger strike in front of her San Francisco office (1 Post Street) to bring attention to DiFi's position on Employee Free Choice. But this "breaking news" is, um, broken.

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.

Sausage Making On Employee Free Choice

Yesterday Arlen Specter announced that a compromise was in the works for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Sen. Arlen Specter said Thursday the "prospects are pretty good" for a compromise on legislation making it easier for workers to form unions.

Specter had come out against the bill in March, disappointing labor leaders. They had hoped he would be the crucial 60th vote needed to overcome an expected GOP filibuster of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Pennsylvania senator has since switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, and he said he's been meeting with labor leaders and fellow senators in hopes of coming up with a compromise he could support.

President Barack Obama also said Thursday that he hoped a compromise could be worked out that would "get enough votes to pass the bill."

The good news here is that Specter realizes he needs to protect his left flank, lest he receive a primary challenge. American Rights at Work released an ad hammering him this week, and the unions have made it pretty clear that they will condition their support for Specter based on his record.

The bad news is that we have no idea what form this compromise will take. Specter has signaled that he opposes both the majority sign-up and the 120-day arbitration portions of the bill. The second part doesn't get mentioned much, but it's just as important, as Harold Meyerson noted in the Washington Post:

If our nation was governed by business's version of democratic choice, we would hold elections to determine the winner, but nearly half the time the incumbent would remain in power even if he lost.

In its campaign to derail the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), business has fearlessly depicted itself as the defender of elections and the secret ballot as well as the foe of the dread "card check" -- the process, championed by unions and included within EFCA, that would allow workers to sign union affiliation cards rather than compelling them to go through a ratification election in which harassment and firings of workers are all too common.

But the kind of democratic choice that business favors is choice without consequence -- a position made clear by its opposition to the other key component of EFCA: binding arbitration between company and union if they've been unable to agree on a contract within 120 days of a union winning the election. A study of first-contract negotiations by John-Paul Ferguson and Thomas A. Kochan of MIT's Sloan School of Management makes clear why such arbitration is needed. After surveying 22,000 unionization campaigns between 1999 and 2004, the authors found that even after a majority of workers voted for a union, they actually reached a contractual agreement with management (which is currently under no legal obligation to come to an agreement) only 56 percent of the time.

Heads, management wins. Tails, the employees lose.

Specter and others have proposed modifications to both majority sign-up and 120-day arbitration. There's Dianne Feinstein's "vote-by-mail" sign-up, where workers send in cards to the National Labor Relations Board and get their union when half of the workplace sends them in. And Specter has promoted a "last best offer" arbitration, with mediation after each side sends in their proposal.

We'll see if these are amenable to the unions. My hope is that everyone understands that the current system is irreparably broken, and we need something to change the ability of employers to fight tooth and nail against unionization, even after the workplace makes their will known through a hard-fought election. In the end, this is about worker rights.

Cheney '12

Maybe he's just happy to be out of the undisclosed location, but Dick Cheney has appeared on the teevee more often than Ryan Seacrest lately. There was Face the Nation. And then another Fox News go-round. And an upcoming AEI speech for the C-SPAN set. While most of the dialogue has been about torture - his favorite subject - Cheney isn't afraid to dive into a diverse issue set, like denying workers the right to organize.

I have to concur with Steve Benen: it certainly looks like Cheney's trying real hard to raise his profile and keep his name in the news.

I'm not trying to start any rumors, but Cheney is certainly acting like a guy who plans to run for something. He's doing lots of media interviews, cultivating his connection with Limbaugh, attacking the president, lying about Democratic ideas, and giving at least one speech at a major conservative think tank about his vision for the future.

Put it this way -- if one of the Republicans with his/her eyes on 2012 maintained this kind of high-profile schedule in Washington, wouldn't the assumption be that he or she was laying the groundwork for a campaign?

Well, either a campaign or a lawsuit, although this could be considered jury tampering in the latter case.

If Cheney did up and announce for President, he would have a cheering section from Erick the Red and his merry band of calcium deficient all-stars:

Put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh camp. Heck, put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh 2012 camp.

If not a Presidential ticket, at least they should be the listened voices on the right — the ones whose advice guides the direction our candidates go.

Yes, the left may laugh at that and encourage it, but they would be wise to think about it.

OK, I'll think about i- no, I'm just going to laugh and encourage it.



It's also fun to watch Erick the Red pining for a terrorist attack that kills thousands of his fellow citizens:

This is an important point to keep repeating because it has the virtue of being true and of lingering in the public conscience. If we are attacked again, and with Obama in charge it is more than likely that we will, the public needs to remember what it was like to have grown ups running the show.

I know that's what I was thinking on 9/11 - "at least we have grown-ups."

Let's close this out with a walk down memory lane of Fourthbranch's Greatest Hits:

Division Of Labor

The rumors of a deal on the Employee Free Choice Act are really heating up. Card check is likely to drop, but other notable elements may remain. And in place of the new bargaining rules, none other than Dianne Feinstein has proposed a kind of vote-by-mail version of card check that would eliminate the hype from the right about the end of the "secret ballot" in union elections.

To win more support and prevent any intimidation, Senate Democrats are considering a proposal pushed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat. In a procedure similar to the early voting that precedes elections in many states, workers could sign cards and mail them to the National Labor Relations Board. If a majority mailed cards, the board would order the employer to recognize the union, as it now does when a majority of workers vote for a union through secret ballots.

It's kind of a novel idea, though I'm sure the right will find fault with it (maybe now we'll get "union voter fraud" cases). But it's important to understand that the union election process as it stands now looks nothing like a political election. Unless in a political election, your boss can bring you into a room and tell you how important it is to vote for John McCain, threaten to give you crappy shifts if you don't, fire the Obama organizers and run nothing but McCain ads 24 hours a day:



That union election dyusfunction must change. The same with the ability for employers to endlessly delay the election and then object to a contract even if the workers vote for a union. The National Labor Relations Board has a mission to ENCOURAGE unions, by the way, but their laws do the opposite. So this vote-by-mail card check at least would end this nightmare of a process. Another possibility is a quick election process, perhaps even in a matter of days, which wouldn't give the employer time to hire the union busters and intimidate their employees.

The other sticking point would be mandatory arbitration 120 days after union recognition, if both sides cannot reach a contract. Arlen Specter, fighting for his political life, has come up with a plan:

Mr. Harkin said, “If the Chamber of Commerce says they’re opposed to everything, then they’re not going to be a player.” He cited a proposal by Mr. Specter that might help preserve the arbitration provisions. Under it, the arbitrator would choose between offers by an employer and by a union. “The last, best offer idea might have legs,” Mr. Harkin said.

Several labor leaders said they would accept legislation with fast elections only if it included arbitration and tougher penalties for companies that break labor laws. One view is to wait until 2011 to push for sweeping labor law changes, on the assumption that Democrats will enlarge their Senate majority in the 2010 elections.

A separate idea would have mediators involved in negotiations instead of giving it all to an arbitrator. Jane Hamsher has more.

My view is that we need to start reforming the broken system, so more mild reforms are a good launching-off point. Eventually, perhaps after the midterms, I would return to this and resubmit the Employee Free Choice Act language as written today.

Employee Free Choice - Card Check = FTW?

A leading Senator signaled yesterday that the Employee Free Choice Act may go through a revision that would remove the controversial "card check" provision and retain the rest of the bill.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, who sponsored legislation to make it easier for workers to join unions, said the main provision of the proposal may have to be dropped to get the votes to pass it.

There isn’t enough support for a provision called card-check that would allow workers to bypass an election and form a union when a majority of them sign cards requesting one, Harkin said Monday in an interview.

“Compromises are going to be made,” said Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. “It probably won’t be card-check because too many people are opposed to it now.”

There are three elements to the Employee Free Choice Act. One, majority sign-up, has been turned into the entire bill. But there are new rules in the legislation about the timing and process of union elections, as well as stricter penalties for those who break the rules, particularly employers who intimidate their workers into voting against joining a union, or fire union organizers. T.A. Frank wrote about the importance of these measures a few months ago.

If a company illegally undermines a union campaign by threatening to fire workers, or by spying on them, or by promising to shut down the facility, the most serious penalty it can expect to face is being ordered to post notices in the workplace promising not to engage in such activities in the future. If a company illegally fires a worker, and the worker can somehow prove his or her case, the penalty is a requirement to reinstate the employee with back pay—minus whatever the employee has earned elsewhere in the meantime. And if a company negotiates in bad faith, it can perhaps expect an order from the NLRB to start negotiating in good faith. Such punishments are the equivalent of punishing shoplifters by asking them to put the merchandise back.

This is what lawmakers have sought to remedy in devising the Employee Free Choice Act. For all the controversy, EFCA is a surprisingly modest bill, with provisions aimed at strengthening existing labor laws rather than altering them substantively. Under EFCA, if Rite Aid had been found guilty of making illegal threats or of spying or of intimidation, it could have faced a monetary penalty—up to $20,000 per incident in cases of repeated violations. If Rite Aid had been found to have illegally fired a union supporter, it would have been required to pay not just the back wages, but three times the back wages. And if contract negotiations were being conducted without results, either party could seek federal mediation after ninety days. If, after thirty additional days, negotiations were still stalled, then an arbiter would be able to impose a contract settlement that would last two years. This would prevent employers (or employees) from running out the clock with bad-faith talks [...]

The question, then, is how much of a fight the card check provision merits. And the answer is probably a little, but not a lot. What most undermines the secret-ballot process is that employers can violate the law in numerous ways without consequences. Under EFCA, however, every illegal action has the potential to be costly, so firings, spying, threats, or other forms of intimidation would be less likely. Also, there is an alternative way to preserve the secret ballot while guarding against company malfeasance: expedited elections. Under current law, months can go by between when NLRB announces the results of a card check vote and when a secret-ballot election is held. If, however, this campaign window were reduced to just a few days, employers would have less opportunity to intimidate union supporters into changing their minds.

My personal view is that the majority sign-up portion of the bill is inoffensive and makes sense - a recent study out of Illinois found no instances of union coercion in their state's majority sign-up law, compared to many thousands of instances of employer violations nationally under current law. Majority sign-up is a sensible application of the will of workers to organize. But Frank makes a compelling case that the other elements of the bill would aid union organizing efforts as well, and at this point, that's far better than no bill at all.

...Arlen Specter is now promising a compromise on Employee Free Choice that looks suspiciously like Harkin's proposal.

The Senate’s newest Democrat expressed optimism today that he could possibly work out a compromise this year with the primary sponsor of legislation easing union organizing rules.

“We’re going to work on it,” Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter told reporters a week after leaving the Republican Party for the Democratic side of the aisle.

Specter announced earlier this year that he would vote against cloture on the so-called union card check bill (S 560) in its current form. He said today his views on the legislation remain unchanged but that he’s willing to work to find common ground with its sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

“I’m opposed to giving up the secret ballot or to mandatory arbitration as they are set forth in the bill,” he said. “But I do believe that labor law reform is past overdue.”

In other words, he wants card check without card check. And that might be okay, for the reasons I set out. But my kabuki antennae are at full blast. Specter comes up with an already-set "compromise," the unions grudgingly agree, they back Specter, and everyone praises everyone for finding the wise middle ground.

The Good Kind Of Kabuki

This Arlen Specter/Joe Sestak story has evolved rapidly in the past 48 hours. Labor in particular has basically given Specter a choice - support our issues or we'll support somebody else. The famously ornery Snarlin' Arlen will have to decide whether he only responds to right-wing pressure.

On today's "Top Line," Richard Trumka, the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, warned that union leaders may drop their longstanding support for Specter, D-Pa., if -- as he has promised to do -- he votes against them on their legislative priority, the Employee Free Choice Act.

"Those decisions will be made by people in the state, and our members in the state know who will stand with them. And if Arlen Specter -- he stood with them in the past -- if he continues to stand with them, they'll support him. If he doesn't, they won't support him," Trumka told us.

Sestak echoed this after a meeting with the SEIU's Andy Stern, saying bluntly, "I cannot see the unions across the board supporting Specter if he cannot support EFCA ... [Stern] let it be known that it’s very much on the top of their agenda.” And leading Democrats are hinting to Specter that his ability to stave off a primary challenge will be dictated by his record as a Democrat.

I'm wondering whether at least a little of this is kabuki. Sestak loses nothing from calling out Specter - even if he decides against running, he gains credibility as a Democrat enunciating Democratic principles. And if Specter does end up voting the right way on health care or EFCA, Sestak gets at least some of the credit. And given that Sestak has only grown louder in his criticisms, he certainly hasn't heard from on high - say, from the White House - that he might want to tone it down. It serves their interests to have a credible voice pushing Specter, or a chorus of voices.

Regardless of the theater at play here, Specter cannot exactly take the chance of not listening.

Why Give Up So Much To Arlen Specter?

Democratic vote against the Obama budget Arlen Specter continues to feel the heat from various elements of his new constituency. Lifelong Democrat (as opposed to Democrat for 2 days) Joe Sestak keeps firing warning shots.

"I'll wait and see. Is he gonna be for what we believe in. if it's not good for Pennsylvania, well then we'll make that decision."

And Andy Stern has a much tougher messsage on Specter today than he did on the day of the announcement, essentially saying that they will judge the new Democrat on his policies and not his party.

"We applaud the Senator on showing the political courage we know it took to change parties--and to move to a place we believe is more closely aligned with his personal convictions. But SEIU has always been an organization that supports candidates and elected officials based on their commitment to working families, not their party labels.

The issues that face working people in Pennsylvania have not changed, and the support we need from our representatives in Congress hasn't changed, either.

We know there have been contradictory and confusing reports about what Senator Specter's decision means for the priorities of working families in our state. In a word: our fight for Employee Free Choice and quality, affordable healthcare continues, as strong as ever."

This is of course as it should be. Arlen Specter was never winning re-election as a Republican, and thus had no leverage to negotiate terms with the Democrats. And yet he was given seniority and an implicit protection from primaries, sticking Pennsylvania Democrats with Specter instead of someone who may be a preferred choice. It puzzles to see how much Democrats yielded, unless this is all about passing a health care bill.

When it comes to health care reform, Sen. Arlen Specter may be one of the few (former) Republicans open to negotiation. A co-sponsor of the Wyden-Bennett health bill, Specter has been a strong proponent of reforming the health care system. He supports allowing the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate Medicare’s prescription drug prices, drug importation and SCHIP expansion.

Specter demanded that the stimulus bill include an additional $10.4 billion for the National Institutes of Health, and has recently proposed establishing a new agency to “award grants to help develop new treatments through biotechnology.”

So what does all of this mean for health care reform and the recent debate over reconciliation? Democrats now have 60 votes (assuming that Al Franken is seated) to pass health care reform and some pundits may argue that reconciliation is no longer necessary. But this view overestimates the unity of the Democratic party. Blue-dog moderates like Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) are unlikely to support the price tag of comprehensive health care reform ($1.3 trillion over 10 years) or legislation that undermines the monopoly of private insurers. For this reason, reconciliation forces Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats to compromise with the liberal majority, not the other way around.

Specter supported most of those health care priorities as a Republican, and while he has no pressure to uphold a filibuster to win a primary this time around, I agree with Igor Volsky that moderates will still hold health care hostage, and Specter will likely fall in line with them. Reconciliation remains a tool to short-circuit that possibility. And with pressure coming from the left to shape health care reform as much as the center, I don't think Specter's party switch is actually all that impactful. He remains a conservative, and if Pennsylvania voters would rather have a mainstream Democrat, they ought to have that choice.

...I should add that Barack Obama seems to think that Arlen Specter is important to passing health care reform, and he probably knows more about that than I do.

A Hard Snowe's Gonna Fall

There are two sides to the Arlen Specter party switch. One looks at the Democrats, who are allowing Specter some cover without securing his vote on key issues like the Employee Free Choice Act, previously seen as a deal-breaker. The fact that the Democratic establishment is not only welcoming Specter without extracting certain votes, but trying to shut down any primary challenges to him by allowing Pennsylvania Democrats to decide whether they want him as their Senator, is deeply troubling. I don't like a party shielding anyone from the democratic process, much less a hack like Specter. We can only hope that his complete lack of principles now serve our side rather than Republicans. And hopefully, good Democrats like Joe Torsella will keep up their primary challenge, to force Specter in the right direction.

But there's a second side to this, one showing the complete collapse of the Republican Party, a folding into itself, into an irrelevant regional phenomenon. Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, who sounds way too reasonable to stay in that party for long, gives a decent enough explanation of the state of play:

It was as though beginning with Senator Jeffords’s decision, Republicans turned a blind eye to the iceberg under the surface, failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness as a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered.

It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party.

Senator Specter indicated that his decision was based on the political situation in Pennsylvania, where he faced a tough primary battle. In my view, the political environment that has made it inhospitable for a moderate Republican in Pennsylvania is a microcosm of a deeper, more pervasive problem that places our party in jeopardy nationwide [...]

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

Sen. Snowe expanded on this today on MSNBC, saying that Republicans need to come to terms with political reality.



Today everyone's looking at the President in his first 100 days, but maybe we should take a look at the Republican Party at this milepost. They've learned no lessons about their essential unpopularity, they keep sowing the seeds of their own destruction, and they keep thinking they'll get somewhere by entirely obstructing a popular President and wearing tea bags on their hats. The Republican base simply opposes progress, and the monster created will not relent. Thus the Party is caught in what amounts to a death spiral, unable to compete nationally and killing itself slowly by inches. The hope is that they go the way of the Whigs and we can have public policy debates under the Big Tent of the Democratic Party, with everything playing out on the center left. I think even the President knows that there's no use extending a hand at this point to the right.

At the core of the misjudgment were poll-driven assumptions made by the president's senior advisers, many of them schooled in politics on Capitol Hill. Several believed that a fair number of Republican lawmakers would rally behind the nation's first African American president at a time of crisis, an assessment that proved wrong when only three GOP senators supported the stimulus measure and not a single House Republican followed suit.

But Obama and his advisers corrected course quickly. Drawing conclusions from a post-mortem analysis that Emanuel conducted of the stimulus battle, senior White House advisers returned to the successful tactics of the presidential campaign, taking the president and his message beyond the Beltway and scaling back his appeals to congressional Republicans. The approach has defined the way he has governed since.

A month after he nearly lost his stimulus bill, Obama faced another critical test in Congress, this time a vote on his $3.5 trillion budget proposal. In preparation, he traveled outside Washington, appearing at town hall meetings, in prime-time news conferences and on late-night talk shows. One senior adviser said the president did not make a single call to a lawmaker seeking support for the budget blueprint, which is expected to gain final approval from Congress today.

"It's kind of like he decided 'I'm the boss,' " said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Don't forget it, Johnny.

...I think they really believe their own bullshit on this. They actually believe losing members of the Congress is a road to victory. They've become so convinced that the people in the heartland agree with them that they've lost all touch with reality.

...Obama is right to mock this silliness.

"When you see, you know, those of you that are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security."

...only 20% of adults self-identify as Republicans. Wow.

Memory Lane

I'm old enough to remember George Bush and Rick Santorum being Arlen Specter's biggest fan. In other words, I'm more than 5 years old.



Specter will probably have to make some grand compromise on Employee Free Choice in order to show his bona fides to labor and a Democratic primary electorate. But hopefully his record won't go completely down the memory hole. Anita Hill, anyone?

...I just threw up.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (Democrat-turned-Independent Democrat, Connecticut) put out this statement welcoming Sen. Arlen Specter (Republican-turned-Democrat, Pennsylvania) to the Dem caucus:

"I enthusiastically welcome my good friend Arlen Specter into the Democratic caucus. It will be very good to have the company of yet another independent minded Democrat in the caucus!

"I have always admired Arlen as a man of deep principle who has been a bridge builder to get things done in the Senate. Arlen understands that we get things accomplished when we listen to the vital center of American politics. I know that Arlen will continue to make a major contribution to the Senate and the nation as an effective independent leader and problem solver."

...Booman has the rundown on Specter's committee assignments, and the fact that he would instantly be the senior Democrat on three committees - Environment, Aging and Veteran's Affairs. I'm pushing for Aging.

Democratic Haggis

Wow, didn't see this one coming:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken's victory in the state Supreme Court.)

"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."

He added: "Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

I'd like to think it was torture that did him in, considering that Ronald Reagan's Department of Justice prosecuted cases of waterboarding, and the conservative movement today now defends it. But this is about raw politics, of course. A recent poll showed Specter down 21 points in a Republican primary against Pat Toomey. There was no way whatsoever for him to win that race, and Pennsylvania law would have made it impossible for him to run as an independent after the primary. Last week, unions tried to bargain with Specter, offering help in his re-election in exchange for a vote for the Employee Free Choice Act. However, this change was not made in Specter's statement on becoming a Democrat.

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that sometimes Party asks too much. When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.

That said, party shifts in Congress are frequently accompanied by a re-calibration of policy positions. I would expect to see Specter move more in line with Democratic positions at this point, lest he face a challenge to his left in a Democratic primary (though he'd have Ed Rendell's support, and I would think it would be very tough to beat him in a primary).

This does give a tentative 60 votes for Democrats, provided that Al Franken comes aboard sometime in June. Pretty dramatic. But Specter will still need pressure on him to follow Democratic policy in the Senate. As for Republicans, their move to the rump regional party continues unabated. Leader Limbaugh apparently said today, essentially, good riddance.

What will be interesting to see is how the media approaches this. They would seemingly be quick to honor Specter's noble bipartisan Broderism, but at the same time would be conflicted by him throwing in his lot with the dirty hippies on the left.

...Democrats won't run a primary challenger against Specter. He actually has a fairly high approval rating among Democrats, so even a challenger with support and funding would have trouble beating him, to say nothing of a grassroots challenger. We're stuck with Specter and will have little political leverage against him. History shows that converts shift to the middle of their new party ideology, but I don't know that will be the case with Specter. He'll probably just be like President Ben Nelson.

Organizers Getting Organized

The split between the AFL-CIO and the Change To Win federation represented a difference in philosophy, between growing membership of unions and maintaining the best contracts and deals for those dwindling numbers already inside the union structure. It made sense at the time, and has led to membership drives and faster union growth. But eventually, it hit a wall because the institutional barriers to union organizing require a federal response. In that spirit, organized labor is reforming a coalition called the National Labor Coordinating Committee.

Today, the American labor movement proclaimed its intention to come back together -- helped, of course, by the fact that Democrats now control both Congress and the White House and are bent on enacting universal health insurance and, perhaps, some legislation that would make it easier for workers to join unions. After meetings in Maryland this week, the presidents of the two federations and of the nation's 12 largest unions -- including the National Education Association, which heretofore has not belonged to any labor federation -- announced the formation of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, an interim body that could pave the way for labor's reunification by forming a new federation with roughly 16 million members.

The committee will be headed by David Bonior, the former Michigan congressman and House Democratic whip who was the foremost congressional opponent of both the Reagan administration's support for Nicaraguan contras and the Clinton administration's support for free-trade legislation with China and other repressive regimes. Bonior, who headed former senator John Edwards's 2008 presidential campaign, might possibly emerge as the head of the new federation. He is currently president of American Rights at Work, a pro-union advocacy group that has been coordinating the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, and he would be an articulate spokesman for a movement that could surely use one.

The union presidents have largely agreed to focus the federation (its name is still up in the air) on the political and lobbying operations at which the AFL-CIO has excelled. They will continue meeting over the next several months to hammer out details -- a timetable that could produce a plan to be ratified at the AFL-CIO's convention in September.

Smart move by the Change to Win leadership, who saw their visions meet with the realities of the workplace and a political structure tilted in the favor of management. The Employee Free Choice Act may be on life support in this Congressional session, thanks to Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln, but the labor movement can still make tangible gains through policy, particularly with respect to health care, and having a unified organization will be a big help.

Chris Good has more.

Look For The Union Label To Kick Your...

Earlier this morning, the big news was that Somali pirates attacked and hijacked a US-operated container vessel in the Indian Ocean, with 20 crewmen on board. As it turned out, the crew regained control of the ship and put one of the pirates into custody. Go American shipping container crewmen! And, as it turns out, go unions.

...it's important to note that like all the people involved with the safe landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January, the crew members of the Maersk Alabama are union members. The unions in question are the Seafarers International Union, which represents 12 of the 20-person crew, the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA), and the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots (MM&P). As former safety chairman of the Airline Pilots Association, Chesley Sullenberger, the hero pilot of Flight 1549, fought to make sure his colleagues got the training they needed to do what he did in January. And as I just heard on Fox News (and confirmed with the SIU), crew members of the Maersk Alabama received anti-piracy training from (where else?) their union.

Surely that message won't get lost on the corporate media, which welcomes advertisers who organize against union membership and anti-busting efforts like the Employee Free Choice Act? Surely the go-America jingoists will point out this key piece of information?

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.

We Need A Complete Overhaul Of Labor Laws

You know that labor laws have grown completely insufficient and unenforced when the EEOC is routinely violating the rights of its own employees:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, responsible for ensuring that the nation's workers are treated fairly, has itself willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act on a nationwide basis with its own employees, an arbitrator has ruled.

The agency's practice of offering compensatory time off to its employees rather than overtime pay amounted to "forced volunteering" and was a knowing violation of the law, according to the ruling.

"The case before me, in my view, demonstrates action that went beyond mere negligence," arbitrator Steven M. Wolf wrote in a decision released last week.

This is not an isolated incident. While typically, regulatory boards charged with protecting workers aren't simultaneously violating their rights, clearly oversight has fallen short. OSHA barely enforced its own rules on worker safety, leading to multiple unnecessary deaths. The Wage And Hour Division failed to follow up on wage violations flagged by undercover agents posing as workers. Our regulatory structure is corroded, and needs a full overhaul.

Under the leadership of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, things are starting to change. Prevailing wages under the Davis-Bacon Act have been applied to the federal stimulus package, meaning that hundreds of thousands of construction workers will be paid what they're worth. And the regulatory agencies will get staff concerned more with enforcing laws than shielding corporations from them. Obviously the dim prospects for the Employee Free Choice Act is disheartening - although labor continues to press forward with national ads, and allies in the civil rights community are advocating for it as well - but there are additional parts of the labor laws in America where we can make progress.

Plumbered

When you watch this, keep in mind that Republicans at the highest levels thought it was a great idea to elevate Joe The Plumber to a position of authority. In fact, he addressed a House Republican conference.



I like this part too:

Meanwhile, the Patriot News reports that union members who were bussed to the rally jeered and heckled Mr. Plumber.

“Rat! Rat! Rat!” some shouted. Another yelled: “Real plumbers are for card check!”

According to the Patriot News, Mr. Plumber admitted at one point that he hadn’t read the bill.

The tough time Mr. Plumber endured was apparently too much for him. He was scheduled to appear at a subsequent rally against EFCA in Philadelphia, but according to the SEIU, which had several organizers on the scene, he was a no-show.

It's strange that no reporter has yet written about the end of the two-party system in America.