Category: Barack Obama

Gutierrez Rips Admin on Immigrants’ Health Care

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) was the first Latino Congressman to endorse President Obama in his  campaign. Now that the administration is looking amenable to assuaging the concerns of Joe “You Lie!” Wilson regarding access to health insurance for immigrants, Obama is at risk of losing support from Hispanic members of Congress. Gutierrez is pushing back hard against Obama and the fundamental misplacement of priorities when it comes to how available insurance will be for immigrants in any reform plan.

“What is the administration’s answer?” asked Gutierrez. “To give him exactly what he said from this hatred. Because now, the administration has told us that if we’re going to have reform of our health care system … all those that go to the private sector in order to get their health care, that they will verify them. They will verify Social Security; they will verify their status in the United States of America.”

“So, and remember, we’re not talking about government health care, we’re talking about everybody is going to be required to get health care insurance,” said Gutierrez. “And so as we go to this big store, right, where everybody is required. And this exchange, the health care exchange, where if you don’t have health care you are required to go purchase it. When you go and attempt to purchase it, what does the administration say? The administration says, ‘You will have to prove that you are legally in the United States and have a Social Security number and a right to that.'”

Yesterday Matt Yglesias had an important post that highlighted how wrong it is from a policy standpoint to have an immigration status check as part of the delivery of health care and health insurance. In short, because most immigrants tend to be younger members of the work force, they are healthier and thus require less care. As a result, their participation in the pool of the insured lowers the risk and thus lowers the cost of health insurance for everyone. In short, excluding immigrants from the health insurance exchange or barring the ability of undocumented immigrants to buy insurance at all is bad policy driven by spite and xenophobia, not any actual grounding in health care economics. It makes reform more expensive and puts a much greater risk on the system by driving people to use expensive emergency room care as their primary doctor. It’s reckless, stupid, and inhumane…and both the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress need to change their course.

Update:

I now see that the New York Times Prescription blog is reporting that Baucus, Conrad, and the White House all agree that undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to buy health insurance through the insurance exchange.  All presume that there will be some other way for them to buy insurance, but it’s not clear what would exist outside of the exchange.

Lessons from FDR, Unlearned

Jean Edward Smith makes clear in a New York Times op-ed that President Obama is not governing anywhere near the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he could learn a great deal from FDR’s methods.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S apparent readiness to backtrack on the public insurance option in his health care package is not just a concession to his political opponents — this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.

This was not true of Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congresses that enacted the New Deal. With the exception of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (which gave the president authority to close the nation’s banks and which passed the House of Representatives unanimously), the principal legislative innovations of the 1930s were enacted over the vigorous opposition of a deeply entrenched minority. Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission.

When Roosevelt asked Congress to establish the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide cheap electric power for the impoverished South, he did not consult with utility giants like Commonwealth and Southern. When he asked for the creation of a Securities and Exchange Commission to curb the excesses of Wall Street, he did not request the cooperation of those about to be regulated. When Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act divesting investment houses of their commercial banking functions, the Democrats did not need the approval of J. P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers.

Smith goes on to point out that FDR went so far as to relish the hatred his actions and beliefs precipitated from his opponents. What a marked contrast from the current administration’s ethos. The quest for not even a patina but genuine bipartisanship on matters of the gravest importance is bizarre unto politically catastrophic.

Roosevelt understood that governing involved choice and that choice engendered dissent. He accepted opposition as part of the process. It is time for the Obama administration to step up to the plate and make some hard choices.

Health care reform enacted by a Democratic majority is still meaningful reform. Even if it is passed without Republican support, it would still be the law of the land.

Obama has not yet accepted opposition as part of the process of governance. As a result, every half-decent idea, regardless of pre-negotiation concessions made by him or other Democrats, will be watered down at best and outright opposed at worst by Republican legislators.

There comes a point where the only responsible thing for the President to do is to lead. Not from the imaginary center or a point of compromise, but from what he campaigned on in 2007 and 2008 and what we might reasonably presume he actually believes. He must surely have faith that the policies that carried him into office would, if enacted, actually work and their success would convince the public in their validity. The perpetual desire to compromise belies any conviction Obama may have that his policy prescriptions will be successful. Worst of all, it is the antithesis of leadership.

Since the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, I have said that America would enter 2009 in dire need of a President who could lead with the strength and vision of FDR. There was too much damage done under Bush to not stop the rollback to social services and the erosion of the public safety net. We needed a President who could move the policy ball down the field far enough to potentially withstand 80 years of erosion, as many of FDR’s New Deal era policies have. But this need is predicated on the assumption that person sitting in the Oval Office has conviction in his beliefs and will act on that conviction, regardless of what Republicans, conservative Democrats, and America’s business lobbies say about him and his ideas. At least in the first nine months of the Obama administration, we have not gotten a new FDR or anything close to it. There is time for Obama to reverse himself, though. The healthcare fight is the perfect place for him to start, but if he elects to abdicate the onus of leadership it will be an ill omen for things to come.

Missing Leadership

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog raises a point that nails home something I’ve been thinking a lot lately – that the White House is failing to provide the leadership necessary to ensure a good piece of healthcare reform legislation passes both chambers of Congress.

The president still doesn’t realize that he’s now the president. He apparently thinks, according to White House officials, that he has no role in influencing the public debate on health care reform. It’s all Congress. This is the same argument the White House is using to justify its inaction on Obama’s gay rights promises – it’s Congress’ domain, not his.

Privately, White House aides have communicated to the House leadership that the onus on changing minds about the public plan is on Congress, not on the president. [Quoting a Marc Ambinder post]

Why is that? Why is the onus on Congress to change the public’s mind on health care reform when we’re doing health care reform because it was Obama’s top priority for his entire presidency? The president has the bully pulpit, not Congress. Since when does the president abdicate responsibility on leading the nation towards specific policy goals? We are now seeing a trend whereby this White House refuses to take a position, refuses to take the lead, on issue after issue that during the campaign the president claimed he would fiercely advocate. The White House has decided that it’s not worth sticking the president’s neck out, using his political capital, on the number one priority of his entire presidency. (We saw some of this already yesterday.) That should give everyone pause.

It’s hard to overstate how dangerous this line of behavior is for the chances of healthcare reform, let alone the longer term success of the Obama administration. Healthcare was and is the paramount issue of Barack Obama’s presidency. He campaigned on it, Democrats in Congress campaigned on it, and since the election this first year in office has been described, rightly or wrongly, as “the moment” for healthcare reform.

It is an utter failure of leadership that Obama and his staff think he can avoid using political capital in this fight. There has been plenty said about Obama’s falling poll numbers. What does the White House think political capital is made of? What sort of shelf life do they expect their massive electoral mandate of November 2008 has, particularly after Wall Street bailouts and failures in energy and healthcare legislation?

Most of all, how can Obama remain neutral on “changing minds about the public plan”? This is the central piece of healthcare reform that he himself introduced to the national debate during the presidential campaign. It would not have prominence without his insistence on it. And now, as its fate hangs in the balance, he is washing his hands of responsibility for getting it through, while his advisers savage the left for thinking it’s a good idea?

We are where we are today in the healthcare fight because there has been an absolute lack of leadership coming from the White House. Ambinder’s line, quoted above, shows the reason. The White House thinks it is solely up to Congress to pass legislation that does what the President has said is important for years.  Obama, Rahm, et alia just don’t think the President’s job is to lead on his signature issue.

The cost of this leadership vacuum could likely be the public option, though it’s certainly possible that it will lead to there being no healthcare reform legislation this year at all. For while getting 60 votes in the Senate has been the most critical hurdle for politicians and commentators to obsess about in Washington DC, there also need to be 218 votes in the House. Right now something with a public option cannot pass the Senate and something without one cannot pass the House. One way or the other, the White House is going to have to put its foot down and force Democrats in one chamber to accept something they currently do not want. The question will be, does Obama want to fight 10 conservative Democratic votes in the Senate or 100 progressive votes in House for their votes. And which group is most likely to budge under the pressure of an as-of-now popular Democratic president?

If I were a betting man, I would wager that Obama and Rahm will put pressure on House progressives to drop their insistence on the public option and will, through threats and moral pleading, get the House to accept significantly worse legislation than all three House committees have already created. But I hope that I am wrong.

Pushing Back on Rightwing Lies

One of the problems we’ve face in the healthcare fight is the relative silence from the White House regarding what the positive output of Congress on reform legislation should be. While there can be a thorough discussion of the merits and flaws in this silence on positive legislation, there shouldn’t need to be any dispute that the administration would be best served by responding to smears of President Obama and the policies he is pushing (or not pushing).

The video above is an example of good work by the White House to rebut smears that the rightwing has used to create a sense of fear in their rabid base. Linda Douglass, who leads WH communications on healthcare, responds to the false accusations that President Obama is seeking to abolish private health insurance and is pushing for legislation that would prevent individuals from choosing their own doctors. Obviously both are false and Douglass does a good job of going point by point to defend Obama. What is even more effective is the video features cuts of President Obama himself stating clearly what he thinks reform should and should not do. Not surprisingly, the rightwing doesn’t have much legs to stand on when they are left dealing with facts and not fantasies.

Cry Me A River

New York Times headline: “Obama Complains About the News Cycle but Manipulates It, Worrying Some.” Key quote of wankiness:

“I’m really perplexed. It’s unbelievable,” said Karen Hughes, Mr. Bush’s White House counselor. “They’ve taken his greatest political asset — his gifts as a communicator — and totally diluted them. It’s been especially notable in the last couple weeks.”

Are you getting this? Because Obama is effectively communicating with the public regularly through  the press and press conferences, Bush minions and media watchers are in a tizzy. He’s communicating too much. Sorry Karen, but elections have consequences. One of them is that a new president will be on TV a bunch talking about what he is doing to solve major problems like fixing the economy and increasing health insurance coverage.

The whole thing is just too rich. The press complaining that the president is on TV too much is kind of like casino owner complaining about the long lines at his slot machines: they’re both the cause of their complaint, which happens to be their business model.

“This Still Haunts Us”

While this question and answer by President Obama during last night’s healthcare press conference on the arrest of Harvard professor Skip Gates stirred up a great deal of controversy with cable news talking heads and is by no means what last night was about, I do think it’s worthwhile pointing out that in his response condemning the actions of the Cambridge police department, President Obama displayed the most intense moral clarity in discussion of race in America that we have seen in his brief tenure as President. His response stands as firm rebuttal to all those in the media and on the right who wish to take the importance of his election and use it as a means of leveling-down our nation’s ongoing problems with race relations. Having elected an African-American president doesn’t mean there is no longer racial profiling in America. It doesn’t mean that we have absolved our history as a nation that cherished slavery for nearly our first hundred years and, in places, used violence to prolong segregation for the next hundred years. President Obama is uniquely poised to use his bully pulpit to force America to confront our problems with race. Last night he did that and I applaud him for it.

Presidential Certitude

Via Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo, I really like the stand President Obama made this weekend on including the public option in healthcare reform legislation.

[A]ny plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family.

This is key. It goes without saying that  the GOP efforts (under partnership with conservative Democrats in the House and Senate) to weaken reform includes not only stripping out the public option, but preventing key measures that would ensure affordability, and thus feasability of reform, from being included in the legislation must also be stopped. The public option is a huge piece of it and the one that has certainly received the most attention in public discourse, but it’s presence in the bill is not both necessary and sufficient for the bill to be successful.

Nonetheless, it’s good to see President Obama taking a firm stand at a time where anti-reformers seem to be gaining momentum to block progress as we near fruition.

Loyalty vs. Loyal Opposition

When an official in the White House says, “It’s “stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president, but of his constituents and the country,” you know someone has fundamentally confused the distinction between loyalty and loyal opposition.

Glenn Greenwald states the obvious while discussing this somewhat perverse and anti-democratic quote from an anonymous administration official regarding Lloyd Doggett’s views on the Waxman-Markey energy bill: “The duty of Congress is not to obey the wishes of the President.”

Congress has their own priorities as a co-equal branch of government. Individual members have a constitutionally-mandated responsibility to stand up for those priorities. How a Congressman chooses to do so may vary based on what they think their constituents want or what is best for the country, but there is zero obligation that a legislator do something  because of the wishes of the President. It just doesn’t work that way.

Of course, both Greenwald and Jane Hamsher point out that this sort of loyalty oath is only being applied to progressives in the House, not Blue Dogs. Likewise it is only being applied to progressives when the White House is trying to push through more moderate legislation. The tactic doesn’t seem to be applicable when the opposition to the President is regarding progressive legislation and coming from conservative Democrats.

The fundamental problem with the protestations of this anonymous White House official isn’t so much that this person seems to think that we are living in some sort of autocracy, with an egotistical but hypersensitive dictator running things – someone who is so fundamentally demanding of loyalty that even publicly debating taking a position other than his own causes him fits. What’s more troubling is that this attitude is being specifically targeted at the progressive wing of the Democratic party that first created the situation that enabled strong majorities of Democratic and now represents the place where the majority of Americans stand on most policy issues. It’s an attitude that is used to marginalize the real voices for change and replacing them with more of the same. The civics are wrong. The politics are wrong. And it has to stop.

Make Bankers Mad

Joe Nocera has a very interesting column in the New York Times critiquing President Obama’s financial sector overhaul, as compared to the changes FDR pushed through during the Great Depression to put in place a regulatory structure for the financial industry. I haven’t sorted through the full Obama plan yet, but I think Nocera’s closing line is a very good indication of how the public and the White House should be thinking about these needed reforms:

If Mr. Obama hopes to create a regulatory environment that stands for another six decades, he is going to have to do what Roosevelt did once upon a time. He is going to have make some bankers mad.

I think this is obvious to anyone who’s watched in anger as the banksters who got this country in the economic mess we’re currently in get bailout after bailout – and then direct substantial sums to reward their executives for failure. Taxpayer have been asked to carry all of the risk, while the banksters get to play in an economic-political structure where they say “Heads we win, tails you lose.” This is not a cohort that should wind up happy with what the administration puts in place. Quite simply, if it isn’t making bankers mad, it isn’t good enough.