One of the points made by President Obama in his speech to the joint session of Congress to advocate health care reform was that he would be receptive to good and constructive ideas from any source, including Republicans who oppose nearly everything he does. It was a fine speech, and it succeeded in raising the prospects of enacting some kind of significant health care reform. If he really meant what he said about considering good ideas from the political opposition, he should make that more clear.
Without a doubt, health care reform is a very difficult challenge. As the saying goes, if it was easy, it would have been done long ago. Obama’s allies in Congress (the Democrats) have major differences among themselves, regarding the merits of different aspects of reform. The Republicans are almost 100% united in opposition, both for sincere ideological reasons and for pure political motives. Obama would like to have a bipartisan bill, but (with very few possible exceptions) congressional Republicans will refuse to back any bill, even if it contains several provisions to their liking. By temperament and political background, Obama has always tried to build a consensus, but neither party in Congress is in the mood. What is a president to do?
In apparent opposition to all conventional wisdom, I still believe that the best solution – both for policy and politics – would be a moderate health care reform bill that uses some of the better ideas from both parties. For the reforms to work, they will have to expand access and reduce overall health care costs, regardless of how payment of those costs is distributed. Reforms that focus on one of these issues while ignoring the other will ultimately fail.
With my usual disclaimer about not being an expert on this or any other subject, the best health care reform at this time would have the following characteristics:
1) No legal resident of the U.S. can have his/her coverage denied or revoked due to personal health issues. [The issue regarding illegal residents is trickier. My inclination is to believe that illegal residents should be included, but I would not insist on it as a condition to support an otherwise good bill.]
2) All persons eligible for coverage must be covered. There can be no “opt out” for individuals or families. Tax credits or similar assistance should be available for those who are too poor to afford coverage, but they have to get the coverage. If insurance companies must accept all applicants and all preexisting conditions, then it makes no sense to allow healthy Americans to stay out of the system before the need for insurance becomes obvious.
3) The tax favored treatment for employer-sponsored insurance should be ended, or at least sharply reduced. People who cannot get health insurance through work should not be disadvantaged the way they are now.
4) Individuals and small groups should be able to join large risk pools, in order to remove cost distortions due to underwriting.
5) Sensible tort reform is necessary. This includes caps on non-economic damages and an effective distinction between ordinary and gross negligence. In return for setting limits, the medical profession must do a better job of policing its members. The current practical necessities of defensive medicine and huge malpractice premiums greatly add to overall health care costs, while doing very little for patient well being.
6) End the interstate prohibition on selling medical insurance. Most states need more effective competition among its potential health insurers. Allowing the sale of insurance across state lines would be a big help.
7) Emphasis on prevention, as opposed to treatment and cure, needs to be a component of health care reform. There needs to be financial incentives for people to participate in wellness programs and annual physical exams.
8) For all the talk about “death panels,” the fact is that a large chunk of health care costs take place in the last six months of the patient’s life. I am not about write off somebody for being terminally ill, but there needs to be more honest discussion about the costs associated with extraordinary measures to keep somebody breathing for a few extra months, or weeks, or days. I don’t know what the appropriate answer is, but this is a big element of the national health care bill, and the issue must be faced with more honesty than it has had so far.
9) The public option is not as great an idea as its advocates suggest. This is especially true if there is an “opt out” provision for each individual state. It would likely have the effect of denying coverage for many vulnerable Americans. It will do nothing to contain actual costs, and the notion that it will “save” money by paying doctors at Medicare (or Medicaid) rates makes no sense. Doctors and hospitals can presently treat Medicare as a loss leader item, pushing up the costs to everybody else. They cannot do that if there is no everybody else. The public option either works like Medicare, providing a short term illusion of cost saving, or it works like a private insurance company, with no saving. The “trigger” provision suggested by Olympia Snowe and some other senators, where the public option would be created something like five years in the future if demonstrated to necessary by conditions at that time, might make sense.
Anyway, the status quo cannot continue indefinitely. We need to have some sensible health care reform, but we need to get something that can pass both the House and Senate. Passing a feel good measure that passes only one house of Congress is useless. I believe that a health care reform bill with the characteristics outlined above would be good public policy, and can pass Congress if President Obama makes clear that this is something he supports. It may seem to be too much of half-hearted reform for the liking of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but even a half-hearted reform now leaves open further reforms in the near future, if those are believed to be needed. The reverse is not true. Failure to pass something now will almost guarantee a very long delay in passing any reform. It will also seriously weaken Obama’s presidency. I do not want that to happen.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear a case involving alleged misconduct by prosecutors in Iowa in a case dating back to 1977. An editorial today in the Washington Post titled The right not to be framed provides useful background on the case. Two black men convicted of murdering a retired white police officer are suing the prosecutors for fabricating evidence to frame the two men, who each spent 25 years in prison for the crime. The convictions were overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court, which concluded that the star witness was a “liar and a perjurer.” One of the two defendants was cleared. The other one initially sought a new trial, but eventually agreed to a conviction, with the sentence limited to time served.
It appears that the prosecutors are not seriously disputing the allegations of their own misconduct, because they are emphasizing not their innocence, but rather that “there is no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed.” According to the allegations, the prosecutors knowingly coaxed supposed witnesses to fabricate testimony against the suspects. The justification for claiming immunity to lawsuits based on malicious prosecutorial misconduct is based on the idea that if you let this suit go forward, then you would have to allow it for every acquitted defendant and every defendant whose case was subject to minor mistakes by the prosecution. That is ridiculous, and the U.S. Supreme Court should say so.
Prosecutors are an important part of protecting the public from the bad guys, and they should be immune from lawsuits based on innocent errors and “gray area” incidents of possible wrongdoing. Sometimes, the wrongdoing is apparently clear in hindsight, but seemed reasonable at the time it happened. Personally, I am not sympathetic to lawsuits based on alleged misdeeds of this kind. For a lawsuit based on prosecutorial misconduct to have legal standing, the alleged misconduct must far exceed the usual kinds of activity that might be of dubious legality. For the lawsuit to be successful, there should be a high burden of proof by the plaintiff. However, it is outrageous to suggest that such a lawsuit should never have legal standing, no matter how badly the public official abused his authority.
Readers of my past OFA postings might recall that I was opposed to bringing criminal charges against President Bush and/or Vice-President Cheney, as some of my fellow bloggers were inclined to do. As deplorable as some of their (Bush and Cheney) actions were, they can at least make the credible argument that they acted with the motive of protecting the American people from terrorists. I believe that some of their methods were illegal, and they deserve a very harsh judgment by future historians, but I have never thought that criminal charges against them would be appropriate. I mention this now, in order to make clear that I am not a big advocate for legal punishment of government officials for abusing their office. This appears to be one case where it is appropriate.
Here is a link to the Post editorial:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/01/AR2009110101950.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Some weeks ago, The Washington Post announced an op-ed writing contest, where non-professional writers were invited to submit an essay of 400 words or less. The essays would be judged by the clarity of writing, and content with an interesting message, but not on whether or not the editors agreed with the content. There were thousands of submissions, including one from yours truly. Out of these thousands, only ten of these amateur writers would advance to the second round, and the process would gradually whittle down to a single winner, who would get the honor of contributing a regular column for something like ten weeks. The winner would receive a fairly modest fee for his/her columns, but the main prize would be the prestige, not the money.
My essay was not one of the ten that made it to the second round, and of course, I was well aware that my odds were very remote. Anyway, now that I am officially out of the running, I would like to share my essay with my fellow OFA bloggers:
With multiple international crises and a serious economic recession to address, along with an ongoing effort to accomplish major reforms in healthcare, other issues have understandably been set aside for now. It can wait awhile, but I hope that some time before the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, there will be a serious examination of the various laws enacted, and enforcement methods used, in the name of “getting tough on crime.” We have the infamous war on drugs, which generally criminalizes the casual possession and use of various drugs, some of which are relatively harmless. We have the “three strikes” laws in many states, which in some circumstances impose long prison terms for minor offenses. Capital punishment is as popular as ever. Politicians frequently try to outdo each other in the contest to appear tougher on crime, because that perception is always a big advantage in elections. Conversely, an American politician who dares to suggest that these measures are ineffective in combating crime have as much chance of getting elected as would a candidate for the Iranian parliament who publicly doubts the existence of God.
I have no problem with being tough on crime, but I believe that many of the actions done with that supposed objective are ineffective at best, and in some cases counterproductive. Smarter and wiser people than yours truly may disagree, but let’s at least challenge some of the cherished assumptions.
Problems with the war on drugs include wasted resources (police, courts, jail), drug classifications which defy common sense (tobacco cigarettes are legal, marijuana is not), enrichment of organized crime (because lawful merchants cannot supply the people with what they apparently want), and the lost opportunity for excise tax revenue.
The three strikes laws remove the ability of a trial judge to use common sense in sentencing a convicted defendant. By imposing a mandatory twenty year sentence (for example) when a much shorter sentence is appropriate under the circumstances, the prisons become overcrowded with inmates who should not be there.
The usual justifications for capital punishment are false. They do not generally deter crime or save the taxpayers money, nor can we be sure that an innocent person is never executed. Execution undeniably does serve one purpose, which is to satisfy our collective thirst for revenge for an especially gruesome crime.
Let’s have some open an honest debate on these issues.
Now, back to the present day (11/2/09). I wrote the above words about a month ago. The Post editors had to sift through thousands of submitted essays – most of them undoubtedly well written – and it cannot have been easy to select the ten best. For the second round, they asked the would-be pundits to write a 750 word essay, on a different subject matter from the one they used in the first round. Two examples are provided in today’s on-line edition of the post:
http://views.washingtonpost.com/pundits/contestants/mara.gay/2009/11/mom_in_chief.html
http://views.washingtonpost.com/pundits/contestants/darryl.jackson/2009/11/sarah_palins_second_act.html
The OFA blog today contains a post from somebody, apparently with the moniker “Worship,” with an interesting message:
While I respect the sincerity of people whose admiration for President Obama seems to extend to the level of elevating the president into a deity, I cannot share the attitude. I want to be clear about my own attitude. I do admire Barack Obama as a person. He is the first presidential candidate to get any direct financial support from me. His campaign was also the first, since I was an idealistic high school student forty years ago, where I volunteered my time. I shared in the excitement of his 2008 election victory. This was not merely a victorious candidate who got my vote, but also (for the first time in my life) my enthusiastic support.
To be realistic, however, it is far too early to be sure that Obama will be a great president, let alone the greatest world leader the world has ever seen. For one thing, a great man (or woman) who happens to be the president is very different from being a great president. The qualities are not the same.
President Obama has, in my opinion, qualities that potentially can make him a great president. He is highly intelligent, a well read student of history, and trained to understand and appreciate competing viewpoints regarding a particular issue or problem. He is secure enough about himself that he does not take political attacks personally. He understands, maybe to a greater degree than nearly any of his predecessors (on a level with the senior President Bush), the role of diplomacy in international relations. While not historically a good predictor of presidential performance, Barack Obama is also (by all available evidence) an excellent family man who lives by an admirable personal moral code. Maybe that is not very important, but if nothing else, the absence of any scandal in his life at least precludes his being a target of personal blackmail. It also could give him some additional credibility when he is trying to push some moral cause.
Great presidents have to be excellent politicians. This means sometimes compromising with ideals in order to achieve something important. It sometimes involves choosing the least bad of several unappealing alternatives (the war in Afghanistan comes to mind). It involves making mistakes. Most historians have judged (correctly, in my view) Franklin Roosevelt as one of our greatest presidents. Despite that, however, there is absolutely no justification for FDR rounding up large numbers of Japanese-Americans and putting them in concentration camps. That is just one example. Jimmy Carter had, and still has, many of the same admirable personal qualities as we see in Barack Obama. Unfortunately, Mr. Carter was not a successful president.
Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker has an excellent op-ed in today’s (10/21/09) Washington Post. Ms. Parker is generally conservative, but not right wing, and this column concerns the Obama administration’s decision that the federal government will not interfere with states which permit the use of medical marijuana. I think it is an excellent column, because it articulates the case I have been trying to make in some previous blog postings, but in this case with the skill of a professional writer. She praises the administration for making the first step toward sensible drug policy, but she also advocates going further.
The usual arguments in favor of legalizing (or at minimum, decriminalizing) weed note that it is less harmful and addictive than some other currently legal products, that its illegal status means a huge waste of police/court/jail resources, and various other ways that the “war on drugs” is counterproductive, at least regarding marijuana.
In addition to these things, although the foolishness of the “war on drugs” has a long bipartisan history, self-described conservatives should oppose the long standing U.S. policy on ideological grounds. It is a case of government interference with an individual’s choice regarding a recreational activity. Besides that, it is (or at least was, when the supposedly conservative George W. Bush was president) a case of the federal government overruling the states on matters of social policy. True conservatives should be appalled by such arrogance of big government.
Anyway, here is a link to Kathleen Parker’s column:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/20/AR2009102003084.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&sid=ST2009102003110
I have zero respect for Fox News, and in my own opinion, that organization deserves nothing but contempt. Then again, I can say that, because I am nobody of significance. For President Obama’s top White House aides to say it is quite different. Contrary to the assertions of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, Fox is a news organization. It may be highly slanted and lacking in integrity, but it is still a news organization. It contains legitimate journalists, in addition to the ranting pundits. In my opinion, it is a big mistake for the Obama White House to openly carry on a campaign against Fox News. In doing so, he lowers himself to their level. Maybe I don’t personally think so, but that is the way it looks to a lot of people.
One of the qualities I most admire about Barack Obama is his ability to stay above most of the petty verbal trashing. There can be no serious doubt that at least some of the anti-Obama rhetoric is based on racist motives. By “some,” I do not suggest that most is based on racial fear or anger. A lot of opposition to Obama’s policies is based on pure political differences, and would be no different than if the same policies were being articulated by a white president. On the other hand, I doubt that the ridiculous “birthers” would have gotten much attention if Obama’s ethnic background was similar to mine. Anyway, despite the likelihood that some of the unfair attacks on Obama are based on racism, Obama has never made that accusation against any of his political rivals, nor has he said or implied that the opposition from ordinary voters is based on racism. This is very much to Obama’s credit. Of course, racism still exists, but President Obama is right to never use racism as an excuse for political difficulties or defeats.
So why does he declare war on Fox News? It just makes Obama – or his White House staff, which amounts to the same thing – look as petty as Nixon and Agnew did when they basically accused much of the press of being unpatriotic. Obama should not bring himself down to Nixon’s level. During the campaign, Obama did an outstanding job of remaining good-natured and calmly shaking off the taunts of his political opponents. As a result, he was the one who looked like a statesman, while the others looked like low-class political hacks. President Obama should remember how Senator and presidential candidate Obama handled political attacks.
Here is a link to an essay by somebody who apparently does not agree with me. The writer says the White House is acting appropriately in “fact checking” the various lies by Fox News. That statement may be true, when it comes to false statements of apparent fact, but that does not extend to general disparaging characterizations about Fox News. That goes far beyond fact checking.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200910090010
I have not seen anybody discuss the issue so far, so maybe the answer is so obvious that it is not worth the brief time to address this question: Is it really necessary for a healthcare reform bill to get the support of 60 senators? I understand the business about filibusters and cloture votes, but the press has implicitly assumed that, without exception, every senator who does not support the Senate legislation will automatically support a filibuster against the bill. Maybe this is true, but have our Senate leaders (along with former Senators Obama and Biden) even considered the possibility that one or a few senators might behave differently from what is assumed?
One famous TV newsman, who should know better, brought up the issue again yesterday about Barack Obama's "present" votes while in the Illinois State Senate. The implication was that Obama was too much of a weasel to vote for or against a proposed bill, so he voted "present" in a cynical attempt to avoid committing himself. The context of yesterday's reference was in relation to Obama's taking some time to consider his alternative courses of action if Afghanistan. In the Illinois state legislature, "present" has a specific meaning, of which most of Obama's critics are either ignorant or else willfully distorting the picture. In effect, "present" means the same thing as "nay" (or "no"), but is basically a signal that the legislator supports the intentions of the bill, but that the bill as written is too flawed to support. I bring this up now, only to illustrate that what may seem obvious is not necessarily so.
Back to the subject of getting healthcare reform through Congress, it appears that the House will pass some kind of a bill, the Senate will pass a very different kind of a bill, and hopefully a conference committee will work out some unified bill that the president can sign. This process is clearly difficult, and it is not yet certain that anything will eventually pass both houses of Congress. It would be a difficult task in any circumstances, but it is made much more difficult by the fact that a determined group of 41 senators can block any legislation. Even getting unity among the Democrats in the Senate seems impossible. Some of the progressives have indicated that they will absolutely refuse to support a bill that does not contain certain provisions, while some moderates in the same party apparently will refuse to support a bill that does contain those same provisions.
Is it at least possible that a small number of senators could be persuaded, even if the bill that emerges is personally disappointing to them, to invoke cloture? In other words, they might not vote in favor of the legislation itself, but they would agree to kill a filibuster that would prevent the Senate from voting the bill up or down. President Obama's popularity may not be as high as it was when he first took office (those poll ratings were never going to be sustainable), but he is still by far the most popular and admired politician in the country. There have got to be some senators who owe him, at minimum, the opportunity for a Senate bill to come to a floor vote. In addition, some "blue state" Republicans, most notably Olympia Snowe, might find it to their own political advantage to kill a filibuster, even if they do not support the bill. The Senate bill may not really need 60 votes.
I have previously written about my own preferences about what healthcare reform bill I would like to see enacted into law, but I will not rehash the arguments here, because that would confuse the more basic issue. Politically, Obama needs some kind of healthcare reform bill to pass, and I would rather see a disappointing healthcare reform bill pass than to have no healthcare reform pass. While the task is difficult, I believe it is at least possible that support by a slightly under 60 senators could be enough.
In a famous Sherlock Holmes story, one of the important clues was a dog that did not bark. In evaluating the early stage of the Barack Obama presidency, one of the significant achievements may be the depression that did not happen. Sure, unemployment is 9.8%, the highest rate since Ronald Reagan's first term, and the U.S. economy at this time is hardly the backdrop for bragging rights. What we will never know for certain is what would have happened in the absence of some of the controversial measures taken by Barack Obama during the first year of his presidency. The U.S. has experienced a nasty recession, but it could have been a great deal worse. It looks like the recession may be technically over, in the sense that the economy could show positive growth in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, 2009. The numbers are not in yet, but it looks likely that the recession is over, or about to be over. High unemployment will continue to be a fact for some time to come, and for those who are unemployed, it has to feel more like a depression than a mere recession that may be technically over.
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney tells anybody who will listen at Fox News that the previous administration kept America safe for 7+ years after the "9/11" terrorist attacks in 2001. Given the rest of the legacy of that administration, there is little to brag about. The most significant achievements of the Bush "43" record are the tax cuts and the Iraq War. Both were presented to the American public on a foundation of lies, although I really do not want to rehash the arguments here. My point is that the main positive legacy that Bush "43" officials emphasize is the disaster that did not happen: a major terrorist attack in the U.S. after 2001. I have always thought that this was an overblown claim, and that their careless disregard for constitutional rights was not a necessary component for keeping America safe. Still, for the sake of the moment, let's concede the argument that Bush-Cheney kept us all safe from the terrorists after you-know-what. It is obvious that Bush administration officials, who want to portray their record in as positive terms as possible, are counting on the absence of later terrorist attacks in the U.S. as an important positive element of their legacy. Their biggest credit, in other words, is not for something that actually happened, but for something that did not happen.
In a similar line of thinking, I believe that a major achievement of the first year of the Obama presidency is a disaster that did not happen: an economic depression reminiscent of the 1930's. There has definitely been a serious recession, and unemployment will remain uncomfortably high for many months after the resumption of positive economic growth. The recession was brought on by the collective actions of governments, companies, and individuals over a long period of time. President Obama inherited a bad recession, and irresponsible stewardship from the federal government during both Republican and Democratic administrations contributed to the problem. A long period of very low interest rates discouraged saving and encouraged increased debt. In effect, presidents and congresses continued to put off the needed changes, because it was easier to put off the day of reckoning and let their successors get the blame than to assume the responsibility themselves. It does no good for Obama to blame his predecessor(s) for the conditions confronting him. He knew what he was getting into, and he wanted to be president anyway. The U.S. economy is badly in need of certain adjustments, and there is no way to make those adjustments painless.
The U.S. economy may be starting to recover, but it will not feel very satisfying for quite some time. This would be the case, no matter who was president. Where I believe that Obama deserves some major credit is that the recession did not turn into a 1930's-style depression. It could have happened. The stimulus bill, which I thought was basically a good idea but not well executed, is criticized for being ineffective. It may have been ineffective in bringing down unemployment, but its main effect - and I don't know if Obama will ever get credit for this - is that it prevented a far worse economic downturn than what actually happened.
Economics columnist Robert Samuelson, who is hardly an apologist for Barack Obama, has an interesting column on the subject. Most of us, including yours truly, are not old enough to remember the 1930's, so we may sometimes be naive in characterizing a modern recession as being similar to the depression. This is not at all the case. Here is a link to Samuelson's column in today's (10/5/09) Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/?nid=top_opinions
Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst ("You lie!") during President Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress this week was extremely inappropriate by any standard, and in my opinion, such conduct should be reprimanded in some manner. Even if the president was George W. Bush, and the congressman was somebody who I normally liked, there is no excuse for that kind of extreme rudeness on the part of our high government officials. The president is both head of government and head of state (kind of like the combination of temporary monarch plus prime minister). To some extent, I believe in the idea of respecting the office, even if not the office holder. I am not trying to legislate my idea of good taste. People who know me personally know that legislating "good taste" is just about the last thing in the world I would want to do. Hate mongers such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have the legal right to carry on with their rants about Obama supposedly being a racist, or drawing idiotic comparisons to Hitler. Limbaugh and Beck have counterparts on the left who engage in similar over-the-top verbal attacks against so-called conservative leaders. In spite of the LEGAL rights of these people, which I have no intention of curtailing, I do think that it is reasonable to expect some degree of decorum by our elected officials. Joe Wilson clearly violated that principle. He can think whatever he wants, and if he privately trashes the president while talking with friends/family/congressional staff, I do not think that is a big deal. Within the halls of Congress, I expect better behavior by our esteemed representatives. Actually, I kind of wondered if Mr. Wilson was tempted to throw his shoes at the president. Maybe he was too far away to get a good shot, or maybe he did not want to lose a perfectly good pair of shoes. Mr. Wilson did apologize privately to Mr. Obama, and the president graciously accepted the apology. Then again, it also appears that Mr. Wilson's apology was very half-hearted, and he has indicated that he meant what he said. I think he also owes an apology to Congress, because his outburst is (or should be) an embarrassment to Congress as a whole.
The irony in all this is that Mr. Wilson's chosen moment to accuse the president of lying was in a context where the president was certainly not lying. This was over the question of whether or not the federal government would be forced to include illegal immigrants in its "universal" coverage. Some of the scare mongers make this claim, but it is not true, according to any of the pending bills in Congress, and President Obama made this clear. "You lie" was the shouted out response by Joe Wilson. Besides being in such poor taste, Mr. Wilson is also objectively wrong. I could even say that Wilson is the one who is lying.
One claim made by President Obama that I do find hard to believe is that passage of his proposals will not add to the government's deficit. While I would certainly not suggest that he is lying, I think it is fair to suggest that he is quite possibly being overly optimistic. The truth is that we cannot know with certainty what the effect on future government finances will be as a result of Obama's proposed health care reforms becoming law. I hope that he is right, that we can achieve all these desirable health care goals in a budget-neutral way. I believe that this is not very likely, and I know that nobody in the White House can say with perfect knowledge that this will not add to future deficits.
To take an example from recent history, recall that President George W. Bush assured us all back in 2001 that the budget surplus that he inherited was so structurally solid that his major tax cut legislation would, at most, merely reduce future suplusses by half. Mr. Bush and his top economic advisors were absolutely certain of this, and to emphasize the point further, he said that all this even provided for an economic downturn plus some other as-yet-unknown crisis (today is September 11; I am trying to think of what kind of unknown crisis they might have contemplated in the early summer of 2001). We all know how that turned out, don't we? The point is not that Mr. Bush was lying in his belief that the government would continue to be in fiscal surplus for years to come, but rather that he had no legitimate basis for his tone of apparent certainty. Maybe Obama has better economists than his predecessor did, and maybe their analysis is carried out with greater objectivity. Maybe, but not to the point where I am likely to believe any statements of apparent certainty about the long term future of government finances.
Despite the unfounded hysteria (regarding alleged death panels, illegal immigrants, required abortion services, etc.) about the health care reform proposals, there are legitimate concerns regarding how the program will be paid for. I want to see President Obama meet the issue more forthrightly than I believe he has up to now. For many reasons, I am rooting for health care reform to succeed, but I do not personally believe the program is likely to be neutral on the budget. Hey, I like President Obama. I strongly supported him in his campaign, and I generally give him favorable marks on his performance during his first several months as president. If a supporter such as yours truly does not believe his proposals will not add to the deficit, what must the opponents be thinking? On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, very few of those in Congress who now emphasize the fiscal concerns with health care reform in 2009 expressed any skepticism in 2001 when they were told by Mr. Bush that his tax cuts would not lead to budget deficits. Call them partisan hypocrites if you want to, but the issue is still a matter of legitimate concern.
I do not know what President Obama is going to say in his address to the joint session of Congress tomorrow, but I am convinced that the success of his entire presidency is likely to depend on his ability to achieve some kind of health care reform by the end of this year. It is not critical that he get something passed that is as far reaching as he has sometimes suggested that he wants, but he badly needs something that can credibly be called health care reform... at least a good start in that direction. I am beginning to wonder if President Obama, who ran such a brilliant campaign for the presidency just last year and who possesses such extraordinary public speaking skills, has already become so isolated in the White House that he is losing his political touch just a matter of months into his presidency. I really hope that I am wrong in my suspicions. I cannot think of another public figure in America that I admire as much as Barack Obama, but he has not handled the health care reform issue very well. He avoided the Clintons' 1993-94 mistake of trying to dictate a detailed plan to Congress, but he went too far in the other direction by having Congress work out all the details. Now, it appears that we have multiple plans with irreconcilable conflicts, and the very real possibility exists that there will be no health care reform at all. I do not mean to dwell on mistakes already made, beyond noting that Obama should learn from the experience, and hopefully do a better job with his next major initiative requiring congressional approval.
What I want the Obama White House to do is to face certain facts. First, Obama has effectively staked the prestige of his presidency on accomplishing health care reform during his first year as president. Second, any mistakes (or political miscalculations) already done cannot be undone. The political situation is less favorable than it was a couple of months ago, but there is no turning the calendar back. Third, major reforms are often done in stages. Think of the landmark civil rights bills of the 1960's. There were several bills, passed over a period of a few years, enacted to give all Americans certain rights that for many had previously existed in theory but not in practical effect. Fourth, passage of some health care reform bill now, even if more limited than many of its boosters would like, would make possible additional reforms later. Fifth, in contrast to the immediately preceding point, failure to pass any health care reform this year will almost certainly make any reform impossible for many years to come.
I do not believe that any of these points can be seriously disputed. In case any explanation of the last two statements is necessary, look back to the early years of Bill Clinton's presidency. A huge health care reform bill was crafted in the White House, and was presented to Congress with the message, in effect, "Take it or leave it." We know how that turned out. The proposal was rejected, and the 1994 mid-term elections swept the Republicans into control of both the House and Senate, and no health care reform of any kind was even possible for the next fifteen years. If no health care reform passes this year, I think it is very likely that we will see similar political developments. Whether Obama serves four or eight years as president, he would be badly weakened by the failure to pass health care reform during his first year. On the other hand, passage of a health care reform bill, even a bill that omits some of the provisions that many advocates would like to see, will strengthen Obama's political standing, and will keep open at least the possibility that further reforms could be passed later.
The people who argue, as Howard Dean keeps telling us, that "health care reform without a public option is no reform at all" have it all wrong. In my opinion, the members of Congress who hold that attitude are the real enemies of health care reform. This is presumably not their intention, but it is their effect. We have already seen what happens with insisting on "all or nothing." They get nothing. Actually, it is worse than nothing, because the cause of reform is set back for many years, due to adverse political developments that follow this kind of political defeat. President Obama has some very smart political advisors (Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, etc.) who should understand these things, and I hope they are counseling the president appropriately.
What kind of health care reform should still be achievable this year? Drop the public option. Whether it is a good idea or not, it will not pass this year, and its continued presence in the debate makes any kind of reform nearly impossible. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. We are trying to encourage competition, but the current prohibition is a major impediment to competition. Allow all Americans to join large risk pools. This should have the effect of removing most, if not all, individual underwriting issues. Prohibit all companies selling health insurance from discriminating against any members or prospective members due to their personal health issues. Health insurance in America can remain mostly under private enterprise, but only on the condition that nobody's coverage can be denied or revoked due to personal circumstances.
Health insurance reform that has these characteristics, even though it does not contain the public option, would be a substantial achievement, blowhards like Howard Dean notwithstanding. There are other aspects of health care reform I would like to see, but they are less critical for immediate purposes. I would add them if doing so would help pass the bill. If not, I hope they can be put into place in the near future. In the long run, health care reform will only succeed if it has the effect of reducing overall health care costs. Enact some meaningful tort reform. Among other things, this should help attract Republican support to the cause. That would be good politically, but I also favor the measure on its own merits. Excessive malpractice insurance and defensive medicine add significantly to health care costs, without any incremental benefit to patient care. Make it easier to get rid of bad doctors. There are three major hospitals within five miles of where I live. I know of one sadistic and/or incompetent doctor who was booted out of one of the three hospitals. He transferred to a second hospital, then was booted out of that one, too. Now, he is practicing on unsuspecting patients at the third hospital in our area. I really do not know if this kind of situation is subject to a legislative cure, but something has to be done to prevent bad doctors from simply moving to a neighboring hospital with a clean slate. End the tax difference between health insurance from an employer versus individually purchased insurance. A tax credit to individuals should replace the current system where most employer provided health insurance is tax deductible for the employer but not taxable as a benefit to the employee. For people whose incomes are too high for Medicaid, but too low to afford private health insurance, provide tax credits or subsidies. It is bound to be difficult trying to determine the details that make the best sense, but as a general principle, some Americans will need some kind of subsidy.
Anyway, all this has been my effort to make the case that health care reform can still succeed, but at least for the short term, the public option has to be dropped. I hope that President Obama will make a good case to Congress tomorrow, keeping in mind the political realities he faces. In the Sept. 8 Washington Post, Matt Miller has a good essay on the subject:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/07/AR2009090702070.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR
It is not easy to take the side of the Bad Guys, but on the subject of possible prosecutions for alleged Bush-era torture of captives by CIA operatives, I might be playing for what I would normally consider the wrong team. Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently seen some new information that leads him to believe that prosecutions in some cases might be warranted. Of course, I do not know what his new information is, but I would strongly advise against prosecuting the interrogators themselves, unless there is strong evidence that they went far beyond even the guidelines of the Bush Administration Justice Department. The Bush Administration, as we know, did everything they could to restrict the definition of "torture" as only applying to the most extreme forms of torture, and then basically said that anything short of that was acceptable as "enhanced interrogation techniques." If CIA or military personnel clearly engaged in what even the Bush Justice Department agreed was torture, then I can see a case for prosecution. More likely, the interrogators followed the guidelines they were given, but the guidelines themselves were later (and correctly) revised to prohibit certain actions that had been deemed acceptable under President Bush. Where that is the case, it would be wrong to prosecute the interrogators. Legally, they should only be judged based on the standards in place at the time of their actions.
This was a topic of hot debate a few months ago, and I thought the issue had faded away. Now, it is back, which cannot be welcome news for President Obama. I wrote a blog post back on April 29 on this subject, and so far, I stand by my earlier essay. In case anybody is interested, here is the link:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/georgemartin/gGxpby
One of Barack Obama's heroes in history, Abraham Lincoln, made clear during the Civil War that preserving the Union was his top priority. As for freeing the slaves, Lincoln said that whichever alternative best served preserving the Union (in effect, winning the war) would guide his decision, even though he personally would prefer to abolish slavery. If his main goal of winning the war would be best served by freeing all the slaves, he would do it. On the other hand, if his main goal was best served by freeing none of the slaves, or freeing some and not others, he would act accordingly. In modern terminology, Abraham Lincoln was a practical politician who recognized that achieving his top priorities might sometimes have to come at the expense (whether temporary or otherwise) of his secondary considerations. I raise this issue not to debate the merits of Abraham Lincoln and his priorities, but because his dilemma from the 1860's has been faced by most of his successors, albeit usually in less dramatic circumstances.
Fast forward to 2009, and President Obama needs to focus on his top priority, and what is needed to achieve it. It is apparent that, aside from averting the potential for the recession to become a depression reminiscent of the 1930's, healthcare reform is Obama's top domestic priority. If the general economy was in better health, Obama would probably have a much easier task in accomplishing significant healthcare reform. Unfortunately, we have this recession, and even if it is technically over now (with positive economic growth for the current quarter, and it is not yet clear if this is the case), unemployment will remain high for awhile, and it will be at least several more months before the American people in general will feel good about the general economy. In these circumstances, it is a major uphill battle for any major reforms.
While any reasonable person would have to admit that the success or failure of healthcare reform in 2009 does not have quite the same ramifications as the outcome of the Civil War, President Obama has staked his reputation on accomplishing some meaningful healthcare reform. In my own opinion, it would be better politically for Obama if he is able to achieve healthcare reform with legislation that has bipartisan support. Subsequent efforts to accomplish other goals, such as a good immigration reform bill, will be easier to attain if at least some Republicans participate in the process. On the other hand, if the Republicans are determined to oppose anything and everything supported by Obama, and the signals on this matter are mixed, courting Republican support becomes a waste of time. Democrats have comfortable majorities in both the House and Senate, and if the Democrats can unite behind one healthcare proposal or another, in theory it should not matter what the Republicans do.
The problem is that the Democrats are not even close to being united. The moderates and progressives seem to be insisting on mutually exclusive conditions (I intend no value judgments on the labels "moderate" and "progressive" and I assume equal moral standing to the motives of each group), and it seems highly questionable as to whether or not they can reach a consensus.
I suggest that the fate of Obama's presidency is very much at stake. He needs to achieve healthcare reform, and as a practical matter, he needs to achieve it before the end of this year. Obama is still the most popular political leader in the country, and is far more popular than any congressional Democrat. Obama has indicated a preference for a bipartisan bill, but it is not clear that this is possible. While attracting at least some Republican support is desirable, it is not absolutely necessary. It is essential that the moderate and progressive Democrats reach an agreement that both subgroups can agree on. Obama has got to meet with representatives of each faction and pressure them to reach an agreement. The essential points are as follows:
1. Obama is by far the most popular Democrat in the country.
2. Obama's political strength, or weakness, in 2010 will determine the outcome of many congressional elections next year.
3. The success or failure of healthcare reform in 2009 will be a big factor affecting Obama's (and congressional Democrats') political standing in 2010.
4. Democrats' control of both the House and Senate means that if healthcare reform fails to pass, it will be only due to the inability for Democrats to agree on a bill to pass. Blaming the Republicans for the failure will not come across as believable.
5. The main goals of healthcare reform are health insurance coverage for all Americans, which cannot be denied or revoked due to personal health issues or the change or loss of a job, plus containment of healthcare costs.
In case he reads these pages, my advice for President Obama is to become more directly engaged with congressional leaders than he appears to have done up to this time. He may have to sit down, for example, with Senator Conrad and Speaker Pelosi together and tell them: "I need some kind of healthcare reform bill to pass. My personal preference is closer to what the House is working on, but I need something that will pass both the House and Senate. This will necessarily require compromise from both the moderates and the progressives. If you fail to deliver this, you will wreck my presidency, and if that happens, you and all of your fellow Democrats in Congress stand a good chance of losing your power and influence after the 2010 elections. You could also have the effect of shifting control of Congress to people whose agendas are far different from all of ours. You have the power to prevent this from happening, but if you insist on sticking to provisions that will be impossible to get through, the best opportunity for healthcare reform in 15 years will be wasted. Our party will get clobbered in next year's elections, and it will be richly deserved. I am not trying to dictate the details, but you have got to get this done! I was elected president last year by a sizeable margin, and with long coattails. You and your fellow Democrats in Congress owe me this."
Again, this is a little bit like Lincoln and the slavery question. Lincoln's attitude about race was not very enlightened by modern standards, and his emancipation proclamation in 1863 came after he had already been president for over two years. Even then, it did not apply to the slaves in the border states that were not part of the confederacy. Still, his actions set in motion the ending of slavery by constitutional amendment just a few years later. Obama needs a political victory regarding his healthcare reform efforts, and he needs it badly. If what he gets in the short term is less than what he and his progressive supporters like, he should take his proverbial half a loaf now. Those who argue that "healthcare reform without a public option is not healthcare reform at all" are missing an important point. The public option is a means, not an end. If a more limited form of healthcare reform passes this year, it will be reasonably possible to get the more comprehensive aspects of reform next year. Conversely, if nothing passes this year, no meaningful reform will pass for many years to come, and as I suggested above, Obama will be politically weakened and the Republicans could well retake control of Congress after 2010.
As for the more limited healthcare reform that might become law, I think that Obama can credibly call it a major achievement if a bill passes that assures practically all Americans of access to decent health insurance, regardless of a person's employment, income, or personal health. If a bill that addresses these issues can be passed and signed into law, it will be a major step forward. Even if the bill that passes this year seems incomplete, if it achieves these objectives, or at least goes a long way toward achieving them, it becomes an important political victory for the president, and makes possible other valuable accomplishments in the future, on this and other issues.
Last week, I posted an essay, which in effect argued that the centrist healthcare reform plan by a coalition of moderate Democratic and Republican senators deserved support. My main points were that:
I did not note it at the time, but I also do believe that there is genuine value to passing healthcare reform on a bipartisan basis. It is possible that nearly all congressional Republicans will refuse to support any reform at all, making bipartisanship impossible, but I believe it is worth the effort. If a good effort at bipartisanship fails, it will be the Republicans, not the Democrats, who will be generally perceived to be at fault.
Some of my fellow bloggers reacted as if I was auditioning for a show on Fox News, and of course, they are correct. My job is to make Glenn Beck look like a reasonable and thoughtful intellectual by comparison to my own idiotic rants. Nonetheless, I want to note that Paul Begala, whose liberal credentials are impeccable, is making a similar case for the compromise Senate proposal. He notes that the original Social Security Act of 1935 was very limited in scope, compared to what it became later on, but it was a critical beginning. Here is a link to his article in the August 13 Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081202575.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
I have been reading Renegade, Richard Wolffe’s excellent book about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and got reminded about something that I had practically forgotten about. After all, it happened a whole year ago. There were widely circulated rumors that Obama was (and supposedly still is) a Muslim, that he took his Senate oath on a Koran rather than a Bible, that as a child he attended a radical Muslim school in Indonesia, and assorted other complete lies. All this was spread by right wing kooks, who may or may not have believed what they were saying. However, some of Obama’s more decent minded political opponents, including John McCain and Hillary Clinton, assisted in the process by their equivocal “defense” of Obama against the false claims [“There is no truth to those rumors… as far as I know.”]. It was not until very late in the campaign that Colin Powell said what should have been said earlier, that while Obama is not a Muslim, it should not have been a big deal even if he was. Then again, given the general circumstances, a presidential candidate who is Muslim is effectively unelectable. If the facts did not support the candidate’s identification as a Muslim, the next best thing was to spread lies to make that Muslim identity widely believed. Fortunately, in spite of great efforts to create such impressions, it was not enough to prevent Obama’s election.
While I know that all presidents, and most presidential candidates, are targets of false and irresponsible charges, the irrational fears about the Obama presidency make me wonder how much racism in the U.S. has really diminished, and whether it has just taken a more subtle form. The attacks on Obama are different in scale from the attacks on his recent predecessors. I have heard the claim, for example, that George W. Bush knew about the “9/11” terrorist attacks in advance and did nothing to stop them so that he would have an excuse for a big power grab, and an excuse for invading Iraq in order to settle a personal score with Saddam Hussein. While I do believe that Bush talked himself into believing justifications (unsupported by objective evidence) for a war that he wanted based on different motives, the notion that he knowingly stood by while thousands of innocent people got killed by terrorists is ridiculous. The difference between the false allegations about Bush and Obama is that only a small lunatic fringe believes the claims about Bush, and no elected officials or mainstream media personalities ever promoted such a notion. In Obama’s case, the false rumors are given currency by elected officials, and especially by cable news pundits and radio talk show hosts.
Now that the right wing has failed to prevent Obama from becoming president, they have worked to undermine his legitimacy as president, with the “birther” campaign suggesting that Obama was not born in the U.S. and is therefore supposedly not a natural born citizen, and not eligible to serve as president. Again, this has been aided by some members of Congress. If that is not enough, we now have town meetings disrupted by people who were brought in for the purpose of preventing any exchange of ideas and information regarding proposed healthcare reforms. There are legitimate concerns about some of the proposed legislation. The town hall meetings should be a forum for those questions and concerns to be raised, but shouting down speakers with false assertions about “death panels” and other nonsense just serves to prevent the opportunity for the town hall meeting attendees to learn anything about the policy issue.
I expect hate mongers such as Rush Limbaugh and some of the crowd at Fox News, as the spiritual heirs to communist witch-hunting Senator Joe McCarthy, to engage in this kind of dumbing down of American political discourse. It is very disappointing when Republican office holders encourage this behavior, or at best stand by passively, implying approval. My own congressman, Mark Kirk, is generally regarded as a moderate Republican, and he has recently declared his candidacy for Obama’s old Senate seat (currently being kept warm by interim Senator Roland Burris). I want to challenge Mr. Kirk to denounce all politicians and pundits who encourage the mob mentality at these town hall meetings. There are several competing healthcare reform bills pending in Congress. Whether Kirk favors or opposes a particular proposed bill, he could really distinguish himself by publicly condemning the conduct that has been actively encouraged by Sarah Palin and others. I would further encourage anybody out there who is represented by a Republican in either the House or Senate to do the same thing. Contact your Member of Congress, and let him/her know that you expect a civil discussion of important issues at town hall meetings. Whatever their own positions are regarding healthcare reform, congressmen and senators should stand for the principle that freedom of speech means allowing the discussion of ideas. Conservatives and liberals alike should be able to agree on this. You have a concern that a proposed piece of legislation would have serious negative effects? Fine, raise the issues, ask your questions, but shouting down speakers at these meetings is no more “free speech” than is screaming “FIRE” in a crowded theater. So far, to the best of my knowledge, the mob behavior has not yet descended into actual physical violence, but that seems likely to follow. There have been death threats. When there is actual violence at (or following) any of these town hall meetings, we can blame the politicians and other public figures who encouraged it with rants about “death panels,” but I would also blame the politicians who knew better but who also elected to stand by and let it happen.
On a lighter note, I was surprised to see a very pleasant puff piece in the August 9 Parade Magazine by, of all people, Bill O’Reilly. Whether O’Reilly actually wrote it or not does not matter. He either wrote it or authorized its ghost written content. The message is basically non-political, and suggests that the compelling personal life story of Barack Obama should be an inspiration to America’s children. At least on this occasion, O’Reilly showed that he can separate his opposition to Obama’s policies from his evaluation of Obama as a person. Here is a link to the article:
http://www.parade.com/news/2009/08/09-what-obama-can-teach-americas-kids.html
Yesterday I passed a guy on the road. He was wearing a tee shirt with this message: “13.1 = half of nothing.” I wondered, what does that mean? Oh, yeah, 13.1 miles is half a marathon, and the implication is that somebody who runs “only” half the distance of a marathon might as well have just stayed in bed. As one who has never run more than 3 miles at one time, I believe that anybody who can run 13 miles can claim a major personal achievement. Besides that, I also assume (with admittedly not much factual knowledge on the subject) that the health benefits to the individual are not significantly different, whether he/she runs 13 or 26 miles.
I bring this up because the implied attitude of the guy in the tee shirt reminds me of the healthcare reform negotiations. This is the first meaningful opportunity to accomplish valuable healthcare reform in the U.S. in a long time. In the most recent previous opportunity – during the early part of the Clinton presidency – the Clintons had a decent chance, and they blew it. I say this not to pile on Bill and Hillary Clinton, but as a reminder that the Obama administration and its congressional allies should be careful not to repeat the mistakes made at that time. There is widespread agreement on the general need for healthcare reform, but also a lot of disagreement on the specifics regarding what can and should be done. The most important stumbling block is not Republican opposition to any proposed reforms, or that vested interests in the status quo give large contributions to certain members of Congress. The real barrier to healthcare reform is the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the leftists and the moderates within the Democratic Party. Both groups are interested in healthcare reform, but each of the two groups seems persuaded that only their own side’s proposals are worthy of support.
I realize that most of the bloggers on this web site probably disagree with me, but I am with the moderates on this issue. In the first place, it is important to keep in mind what the goals of reform really are, and not confuse the means with the ends. In the second place, we cannot forget that politics is the art of the possible, rather than the forum for expressing supposedly ideal outcomes that have no realistic chance of becoming law. What are the real goals? They are:
I cannot think of any others. In a way, the first two points are variations on the same theme. We really just need a system where everybody, or nearly everybody, has access, and where the total costs can be reduced. Single payer, public insurance option, and similar ideas are not goals, but rather proposed means of achieving the goals listed above. I do not have much regard for the arguments that the drug or insurance companies are identified as malevolent factors that should be simply regarded as the enemy, which is the strongly implied message in some emails I receive. They may be part of the problem, but they are also part of the solution, if there is to be a solution. The qualifier about “coming as close as possible” to 100% coverage is also important. If 16% of the American people presently have no health insurance, and the only proposal with a realistic chance of passage by Congress would reduce the uninsured from 16% to 5%, is there not still a lot of value to such a plan? This could well be the situation we face. Opposition from the left in this case is the equivalent to saying that “13.1 = half of nothing.”
A focus on universal access alone will not get any reform done. The concerns about the program’s costs are entirely legitimate. The program needs to be paid for, and simply increasing income taxes on the wealthy will not come close to paying for it. One fact that all sides of the healthcare debate can agree on is that the U.S. spends far more on healthcare – whether measured as a percentage of GDP or in proportion to the population – than the other rich countries do. At the same time, we get inferior results in terms of many measurements, such as average lifespan, compared with many other countries. No health insurance reform will be effective without our finding ways to reduce the total costs of healthcare. The ways to make this happen involve changing people’s incentives in the direction of lower cost behavior. These incentives include relatively non-controversial items such as emphasis on prevention, which is far less expensive than treatment after the patient is already sick. More controversial, but very valuable, is tort reform, which could largely eliminate the “need” for defensive medicine: tests and procedures that have little or no value in patient care, but which are done in order to protect against malpractice lawsuits. The presence of a small number of bad doctors, along with the possibility (however slight) of multi-million dollar jury awards for alleged malpractice, raises the operating costs for every doctor and hospital. It should be easier to get rid of bad doctors than it is at this time, and it is also reasonable to establish limits on non-economic damages to a plaintiff in a malpractice suit. Punitive damages should be limited to extreme cases and, even then, should not benefit the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s attorney. The purpose of punitive damages in a lawsuit is to dish out extra penalties to a defendant whose conduct was outrageously reckless, if not criminal. It should not be for the purpose of additional feathering the nest of the plaintiff and his/her attorney. The best form of punitive damage should be loss of license to practice medicine. The continued existence of litigation lottery keeps the total healthcare cost much higher than it needs to be, and with no incremental benefit to the society.
A small group of moderate Democrats and Republicans in the Senate has been working on a bipartisan health reform bill. What they come up with will almost certainly not be anybody’s idea of perfect, but it is likely to be a major step forward in improving the presently unsatisfactory situation. It also stands the best chance of actually getting enacted into law – IF the leftist wing of the Democratic Party can be brought around to accepting it. President Obama has got to show some leadership on this issue now. He was careful to avoid the Clintons’ mistake of crafting a huge piece of legislation and trying to force Congress to accept it, and of course the results then were disastrous. Instead, Obama has let Congress work out the details, but now that competing plans have come to the surface, Obama has got to make clear what he wants, and what he will do to achieve his own policy goals. My feeling is that Obama is sentimentally with the leftists, but as a practical politician, he should also realize that the leftists’ bills will not pass. Opposition to House committee bills is growing every day. It does not matter whether you or I think that opposition is deserved. It continues to build, and I am persuaded that those bills will never make it through. The bipartisan Senate effort has a real chance of success. Obama, along with Speaker Pelosi and her like-minded allies, may regard the bipartisan Senate proposal as a half measure, but it would still amount to a major accomplishment for Obama’s first year in office. Holding out for something they think is closer to the ideal answer will almost certainly result in getting nothing at all done. Obama’s political standing will be badly diminished, which would be a shame for many reasons. If that turns out to be the result, they should not blame the Republicans, the insurance companies, or any other supposed villains. Instead, they should look in the mirror, because that is where they will find the culprit.
Here is a link to an article by the bipartisan Senate group:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/04/AR2009080402523.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
I want to thank “Obama Doug” for posting an excellent article from today’s (July 30) Washington Post by R. Jeffrey Smith. Here is a link to that article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/29/AR2009072902676.html
The article notes a lot of seemingly obvious waste in the $636 billion Defense Appropriations Bill. There are numerous examples of programs that, in the opinion of the president and the defense secretary, are either redundant or have outlived their usefulness. On the other hand, many of these programs benefit certain companies who operate in the districts of powerful congressmen. The earmarks are spread widely enough that overwhelming congressional support is assured, and the notion that many billions of dollars are wasted clearly does not bother most members of Congress.
As we all know, the president does not have the authority to selectively veto the components of the legislation he doesn’t like. He must accept or reject the bill in its entirety. The president can threaten to veto the bill if it contains provisions X, Y, and Z… but as a practical matter he will not do that.
In his own comments, Obama Doug recommended a presidential veto. There are several good reasons to support a veto decision. Some of the programs are widely agreed to be unnecessary, and the justifications for keeping them are lame at best. One justification is that it provides jobs for various people. By itself, that does not seem too bad. All federal spending involves creating or maintaining jobs. Still, if job creation is the goal, there are far more efficient ways to do that than by building a bunch of airplanes that are not needed. One of the dumbest justifications goes something like: “If we drop this program now, the $3 billion we previously spent on it will have been wasted!” Sorry, Mr. Congressman, that $3 billion already spent has been wasted, anyway, and we cannot get it back. Sunk costs are completely irrelevant to the decision regarding future expenditures.
Just in case anybody out there is not already tired of hearing and reading about the prospect of President Obama having a beer at the White House with a certain professor and a certain policeman, I submitted the following as a prospective "op-ed" piece for the Chicago Tribune. It is highly unlikely that the newspaper will really use it, since they receive many submissions for every one they actually accept for publication. Therefore, I thought I would share it with my fellow bloggers:
AN OPEN INVITATION TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
Dear Mr. President:
In your attempt to diffuse the situation between Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass. Police Sergeant James Crowley, and between their respective supporters, you have offered to have both Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley over to the White House for a beer. I believe this is an excellent idea, and I want to go on record with an offer to supply the beer. There are two reasons for this.
First, as a public spirited American citizen, I do not want to stick the taxpayers for the cost of the beer. As valuable as beer diplomacy may be, the country is already in a serious fiscal deficit, and I would hate to have anybody opposing the meeting on the grounds that taxpayer expenditure of beer will aggravate the deficit. The issues involved are far too important, and a good teaching moment should not be squandered due to fiscal concerns.
Second (in an example of enlightened self-interest), in case I am invited to join the president, the professor, and the policeman at the White House get-together, I want to be able to choose the beer that I am going to drink. Think about it. In the richest country in the world, many Americans go without any kind of beer, and many others are underserved by their current beer. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. President. If you are happy with the beer you are currently drinking, you can keep it. The same goes for Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley. For those who are underserved by their beer at this time, what I am offering might be an appealing alternative.
Under my proposal, no government bureaucrat will be dictating anybody’s choice of beer. As far as I am concerned, my choice of beer should be my own, perhaps after appropriate consultation with my bartender, or my liquor store operator. When government bureaucrats start telling people what kind of beer they have to drink, that is the first step on the slippery slope to socialism… or so I have heard, anyway.
So there you have it, Mr. President. I will supply the beer. I would be happy to make recommendations, but I would also honor any request that you might have, along with the requested beer preferences of Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley. If my offer is of interest, you can contact me. I look forward to hearing from you.
By the way, if necessary, I can prove that I am a natural born U.S. citizen. I have a birth certificate showing that I was born in Evanston, Illinois. There are some kooks on radio and television who, along with their friends in Congress, suggest otherwise. For those people in other parts of the country, Evanston might be best known as the home of Northwestern University, but it is also one of the largest nearby suburbs of… Nairobi. Oops! Okay, you caught me. I cannot live a lie any longer. The truth is that I was born in Kenya, and decades ago, my parents put a birth announcement in Chicago area newspapers, just to make it look like I was born in the U.S. Why did they do this? Obviously, they anticipated that one day, I might want to buy a beer for the President of the United States, and it would look better if I was a U.S. citizen.
President Obama says he will not retract his comment that “the Cambridge police acted stupidly,” regarding the incident where well-known Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested last week for disorderly conduct. Although he refuses to back down from his remark, I expect that he privately realizes that he would be better off if he had not said it. The incident is most unfortunate because none of the participants looks very good, although none of them are real villains, either. My best guess (which is all I can do, not being a direct witness to the event) is that the neighbor who phoned the police needlessly created trouble with her initial call, the policeman did not use his best judgment at the scene, and the professor assumed the worst possible motives by the policeman and overreacted. And of course, none of them will admit to even the slightest imperfection in his or her own conduct, so nobody is going to calm down.
Was Professor Gates really a victim of racial profiling in this case? I doubt that many people knowledgeable about the issue would deny that racial profiling is a fact in our society. We may underestimate or overestimate how common it is, but it certainly exists. However, the fact that it exists in general does not mean that it can automatically be fairly attributed to a specific incident where the facts are in dispute. Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley tell conflicting versions of the incident, and I believe that each of them is completely sincere about the accuracy of his own version. Each of them, in his own mind, is the aggrieved party. Professor Gates is a personal friend of President Obama, and it is understandable that the president would take his friend’s side. While it is understandable, Obama should have resisted that impulse, or at least chosen different words. From the point of view of the policeman responding to a call about a break in, he does not know whether or not the people in the house are armed and dangerous. It is a stressful situation. In retrospect, it looks like, at minimum, Sergeant Crowley was not at his best at that moment. Obama could have put it that way at the press conference, and nobody would get very upset about it. Instead, by saying that the police “acted stupidly,” Obama contributed to blowing the incident out of proportion. I am not saying that Sergeant Crowley is innocent of the racial profiling accusation. It is just not at all clear that he is guilty, either.
OK, some of the readers might be thinking: “Hey, Mr. White Guy, what the hell do you know about discrimination or racial profiling?” The answer is that I probably know much less about it than those who are directly affected by it. There are three things I do know about racial profiling. One is that it does exist. Two, our society will be improved if racial profiling would greatly diminish, or better yet, disappear completely. Three, not everybody who is suspected of racial profiling is guilty of it.
I do not want to leave a false impression here. I have been an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama since before he became a nationally known public figure. This is not diminished just because I think he makes a mistake once in awhile. Everybody makes mistakes, of course, and this poorly chosen remark was one of his. It has created a big distraction that makes passing healthcare reform and other important domestic initiatives a little more difficult than it was already.
The confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is expected to become our next Supreme Court Justice, gives the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee an opportunity to shine in the spotlight. Because it is a lifetime appointment, likely to last twenty years or more, the senators have a serious responsibility. The nominee should be treated with courtesy and fairness, but should not be given a free pass.
I want the senators to show some degree of consistency in their principles. For example, many Republican senators argued – when President Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court a few years ago – that the president won the election and should be able to have his judicial appointments confirmed, provided that the nominee’s basic qualifications are well established. That is a reasonable position to take. It implies that the suspicion that a conservative (or liberal) president’s nominee will likely reach “conservative” (or “liberal”) decisions most of the time should not be a reason to vote against a proposed judicial appointment. If that was a guiding principle when a Republican was president, it should be the same guiding principle when a Democrat is president. This does not mean that the Republicans should all passively accept the Sotomayor appointment without question, but they should agree not to oppose her confirmation simply on the basis that they expect her to take the so-called liberal position most of the time. For one thing, those expectations sometimes prove to be wrong. I also want to note that when Bush nominated Roberts for Chief Justice a few years ago, I wrote to my then-senators (Durbin and Obama), recommending that they vote to confirm Judge Roberts. Roberts would not have been my personal choice, but I thought he had excellent qualifications and an appropriate temperament, and that should have been enough for the president to have his choice confirmed.
There should not be any serious doubt regarding Sotomayor’s resume qualifications. She excelled academically at top level schools, served as a prosecutor, and has long experience as a federal judge, both at the trial and appellate levels. The reasons for opposing her confirmation basically boil down to the following:
It is fair enough to ask Judge Sotomayor about these matters, but I think it is ridiculous to suggest that any or all of these tidbits disqualify her for the job. She was less effective than I would have liked in dealing with the “wise Latina” remark. What she said was okay, but she should have added something like; “What I really meant at the time, and continue to believe now, is that a panel of judges – the nine members of the Supreme Court, for example – will likely reach better decisions if they come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, than if they all have nearly identical backgrounds. I did not mean to suggest that one Latina judge is better than one white male judge, or that it would be preferable for a whole group of judges to be Latina or any from other particular demographic group.”
I think that Sotomayor addressed the other concerns very well. The notion that “empathy” is somehow a negative quality is curious. As a former prosecutor, Sotomayor probably feels more empathy for crime victims than she does for defendants accused of crimes. At any rate, I think she effectively refuted the notion that she would ignore the law if there was a conflict between applying the law and siding with the more sympathetic party to a case.
Rush Limbaugh can blatantly call Sotomayor a racist. He has a radio audience consisting of people whose outlook is similar to his own, and as long as his like-minded radio audience listens to him, he can continue his hatefest without constraints. Senators do operate with some constraints. Senator Jeff Sessions is well aware of his political base in Alabama. There are relatively few voting Latinos in that state, so he can better afford to play the “bad cop” than some of his colleagues can. As long as he maintains a relatively polite manner, he can attack Sotomayor all he wants. While not overtly calling Sotomayor a bigot or racist, he implied it when he emphasized her old “wise Latina” quote and asserted that she has “repeatedly over a decade or more” made similar statements. Sessions is playing to his political base, and has little at risk by doing so. Senators Kyl and Cornyn have large Latino constituencies in their states, and they take a bigger risk if they are perceived as treating the nominee unfairly.
Is there any credible evidence in Judge Sotomayor’s hundreds of judicial rulings that she is a racist, or that she sets aside the law in order to steer the outcome of a case to the party that she personally likes more than the other? If so, I want to see the evidence. In the absence of such evidence, I believe that Sotomayor is entitled to a strong presumption in her favor. An offhand comment in a speech might be troubling, but as far as I can tell, her actual record as a judge suggests that she follows the law, does not “legislate from the bench,” and does not treat parties to a case differently based on personal preferences. How many members of the Senate Judiciary Committee can make a similar claim?
Howard Fineman and some other astute political observers have written in recent days that Sarah Palin's announced resignation as Alaska's governor is a clever first step toward a 2012 presidential run. I just do not believe that this is true. If she really expected to run for president in 2012, it is fully understandable that she would not run for reelection as governor when her current term expires at the end of 2010. If she does have presidential expectations, however, it does not make sense for her to resign just over half way through her first term as governor. Although she is a darling of the Republican Right (I am trying to recall who the conservative pundit was who basically admitted to being sexually excited over Ms. Palin during her vice-presidential run), she has almost zero respect or credibility from the rest of the country, and quitting her current job for no obvious reason at this time would hardly help in building up her reputation.
If Governor Palin is resigning early because of family considerations, I can respect that. That could be a contributing factor, although I doubt that it is the primary reason. I think it is more likely that the main reason is that her being routinely lampooned by commentators and comedians caused her to lose her taste for electoral politics. If this is the case, she would have to be quite a masochist to want to run for president, in 2012 or any other year.
The main direct effect of her resignation is likely to be that she will make many times more money (probably something like $50,000 per speech) as a private citizen than she could possibly make as a government officer. As a private citizen with a major fan base among the right wingers of America, she could become something similar to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly. She could articulate her message, make a fortune, and be accountable to nobody. She will be able to raise a lot of money for other Republican candidates, but contrary to the assertions of some political writers, I do not think it is likely that she will be doing that in order to collect a lot of political IOUs. She might be thinking about it, but I think it is more likely that her distaste for the political arena is genuine.
Was some of the criticism and jokes aimed at Sarah Palin unfair? Yes, some of it was. Should we feel sympathy for the governor? Hardly. This is not exactly a nice person we are talking about here. During her campaign for vice-president, Sarah Palin constantly told anybody who would listen that then-Senator Obama was "palling around with terrorists." She did everything she could to suggest that Barack Obama was siding with the terrorists against all decent American people. She belittled Obama's background as a community organizer, as if that was Obama's sole qualification for president. She also made very clear that she believed that the only "real Americans" were small town conservatives similar to himself, implying that those of us who do not fit that description ideally should not have the right to choose our political leaders.
Palin's defenders might argue that the job of a vice-presidential candidate is to attack the other party's presidential nominee, and that some distortion of the opposing candidates' records is part of the way the system works, and that the Republicans are no more guilty of these distortions than are the Democrats. That may all be true, but just as distorting a political opponent's record is as American as apple pie, so is political satire. One of the most famous pearls of wisdom attributed to Harry Truman was: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Governor Palin is simply taking that advice. As far as I am concerned, Sarah Palin combines several unattractive qualities. She is shallow, vindictive, and self-pitying. Perhaps that characterization is (slightly) too harsh, but I am expressing it as a matter of opinion, not fact. Nixon was vindictive and self-pitying in the extreme, but he was not shallow. I would hate to get another president with Nixon's personality traits, but I believe that Palin would be even worse. At any rate, I think it is extremely unlikely that we will ever find out, and that is a good thing.
