Just after I typed the post immediately below, I got an email about a new column by Paul Krugman. As usual, Krugman has it right, and it would behoove everyone to listen to his advice:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=1
Wow - can't believe I haven't posted here since May. But I HAVE been kinda busy.
Anyway, the spate of bad economic news and the continued media spin that the administration's economic policy isn't working are enough to get me back on here. Yes, the economic news IS bad - even the drop in the unemployment rate announced today occurred mainly because more people are giving up and dropping out of the labor market.
I have argued in the past for a new stimulus specifically aimed at reducing unemployment. I still feel that way. But at this point, the greatest problem is that the Republicans (and a handful of Democrats like Ben Nelson who should be honest and call themselves Republicans) continue to block ANY stimulus at all. They say they are doing this because they are worried about the deficit, but this is TOTAL HYPOCRACY. Where were these guys when Bush was running up record deficits in order to 1) give his rich buddies the biggest tax cut for the rich in recent history and to 2) pay for the war in Iraq that should have never been authorized and should have never been fought? And this massive runup of the deficit occurred during a period of economic boom, when the government SHOULD have been running a surplus.
Now, we are in the opposite of that situation - the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a time when most economists say that we should be running a deficit, in order to stimulate the economy. While we do need a long-term fix to the deficit - which should start with immediate repeal of the massive Bush tax cuts to the rich, and with a restoration of taxes for households with incomes over $200,000 back to what they were under Ronald Reagan - the immediate short-term urgency is to stimulate the economy and get people back to work, as well as to provide a basic level of support to those thrown out of work by the recession. But it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are blocking a new stimulus and even refusing to extend unemployment benefits to those thrown out of work long-term by the recession. Instead of talking about a broadband enhancement that will put 5,000 people to work (a good idea, but far too puny to be a real stimulus), Obama needs to go into campaign mode and point out that if there is a double-dip recession, as appears increasingly likely, IT IS THE REPUBLICANS' FAULT BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONES THAT ARE BLOCKING THE STIMULUS THAT WOULD PREVENT IT AND KEEP US ON THE TRACK TO RECOVERY.
And if you think it is bad now, wait until the stimulus money to the states runs out over the next 18 months, putting hundreds of thousands of police officers, firefighters, and teachers out of work. That would be a disaster, but it could and probably will happen if there is not a new stimulus. The Republicans who are blocking such a stimulus need to have their feet put to the fire, and it is not happening. Where is the Obama of the inspiring "Yes, we can!" rallies? We need that Obama back, and he needs to put the blame squarely where it belongs - on those who are blocking the stimulus that could sustain what a few months ago was looking like a promising recovery, but does no more because the stimulus is running out and was not big enough in the first place for the level of crisis that we face.
As usual, the mainstream press pretty much got it wrong in their reporting of last night's (May 18) elections. The big story, according to them, was Rand Paul's win in the Kentucky Republican primary. This shows, they trumpeted, the influence of the Tea Party. Problem is, neither the win nor the Tea Party's influence among the Republican hard core, the folks that vote in primaries, is real news. The polls have been showing both for quite some time. But remember - it is one thing for the Tea Party to have influence among the hard core of an ever-more-conservative Republican Party, while it is another to translate that influence into actually getting anyone elected. Now, I am not saying Paul will lose in the general election, but the chance of a Republican loss in Kentucky has been enhanced by the nomination of someone who will be unappealing to moderates and might drive large numbers of them to vote blue, making what should have been an easy Republican win into a competitive race.
On the other hand, the press largely missed the real news from last night, which is the relatively easy win by Mark Critz, the Democratic candidate for the seat formerly held by Congressman Murtha in Pennsylvania. This was the only district in the nation that switched from Kerry in '04 to McCain in '08, and the Republicans thought they had a sure win here. This, along with other Democratic wins in special elections over the past year or so, calls into serious doubt Republican expectations of big gains in the House in the fall. Politico has a good analysis of this at:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37473.html
This special election in Pennsylvania has more implications for who will actually get elected to office in the fall than any of the other elections yesterday, since it was the only one yesterday that actually matched up a Democrat against a Republican. Yet, much of the mainstream media totally ignored it. Two St. Louis local stations that I watched last night at 10 both totally ignored it, while hyping the "big Tea Party win" in Kentucky. When the Weather Channel this morning cut to their news segment from MSNBC (that's right, the supposed Democratic mouthpiece), it was the same story. Big Tea Party win, no mention of Critz. This is nothing but crappy reporting, and one more sign of big media's continuing fascination (or should I call it obsesison?) with the Tea Party, and their inability to see the real story when it is right under their noses.
Been very busy lately, so not much time to blog. Hopefully more coming in the coming days as a lot is going on. So here's the first one for a while, on the real party of Big Government:
Republicans like to accuse Democrats of supporting “Big Government,” but if you look at what Republicans actually do when they get into power, you’ll see quickly who the real party of Big Government is. Take Arizona, for example, the home of John McCain and Barry Goldwater, where Republicans solidly control the legislature. There, the legislature passed, and the Republican governor signed, a law REQUIRING (not just authorizing) police to stop people and check their IDs if the officer suspects that the person could be an illegal alien. And any immigrant in Arizona is also required by the law to carry proof at all times that their presence in the United States is legal. To find laws like that – people REQUIRED to carry ID and the cops REQUIRED to check it - you’d have to go back in time to somewhere like, say, Germany in the 1940s or the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. Definitely cases of Big Government. But now, thanks to the Republicans, we have that kind of Big Government right here in the good ole U.S. of A. So if you go to Arizona, which I don’t advise right now, make sure you have your ID ready so Big Government can check you out. And remember, you will never see Democrats supporting this kind of Big Government. For example, take House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland. He described the Arizona law as "very inconsistent with past practices in America. ... We don't go around asking people for I.D. cards."
Not to be outdone, the Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature have now taken their own swaggering steps into Big Government. Used to be that what went on in the privacy of the doctor’s office was between the doctor and the patient. But not any more in Oklahoma. Now, doctors in Oklahoma are REQUIRED (Republicans seem to like doing that these days) to show women who are considering an abortion an ultrasound of their fetus, including showing the heartbeat. This is intended to frighten or traumatize these women into deciding not to get an abortion. And doctors are required to put their patients through this even if the patient is a victim of rape or incest. No escape from Big Government in the Republican world of Oklahoma, even if you are a victim of a heinous crime. But that’s not all. The Big Government Republicans in Oklahoma also passed a law forbidding pregnant women or their families from suing doctors who fail to tell them that their unborn child has or is likely to have a birth defect, even, in the words of the legislature, if physicians "knowingly and negligently" withhold key information or provide false information about the pregnancy. So Big Government now tells pregnant women that they have no right to accurate or honest medical information from their doctors. Once again, only Republicans believe in this kind of Big Government. Brad Henry, the Democratic Governor of Oklahoma, who vetoed the bill before the Republican legislature overrode the veto, described the bill as "an unconstitutional attempt by the Oklahoma legislature to insert government into the private lives and decisions of its citizens."
I’ve never been prouder to be an American! No longer will America be the only industrialized country in the world where health care is based on the ability to pay! No more will thousands of Americans die every year because they don’t have insurance! No more will 32 million Americans face bankruptcy when they get sick or have to choose whether to by food for their families or go to the doctor! Tonight, we have joined the ranks of civilized countries, where life-saving medical care is seen as a basic right, not just a way to make money where people die if they can’t afford the care they need.
As a couple very senior members of Congress said during the debate tonight, today’s historic decision ranks with the days when Social Security, Civil Rights, and Medicare became law. Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Bill Clinton, and even to some extent Richard Nixon tried to do this, but could not. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson were called socialists when they successfully pushed for Social Security and Medicare, just as President Obama has been over the past year. Yet Social Security and Medicare are today so beloved that they have become “third rails” of politics that nobody dare touch. Why? Because they provide a safety net and do what government is supposed to do - make our lives better! And despite all you have heard from the insurance companies, the Republicans and TeaBaggers, and the special interests, who finally after 100 years were unable to stop meaningful reform to health care, so will the reforms that were passed tonight.
I could not believe some of the utter garbage I heard from Republicans during the debate tonight. “Socialist takeover, return to the Soviet Union,” one said – but the TRUTH is that the bill does not even have a public OPTION, much less a real system of socialized medicine like Great Britain’s, under which doctors are state employees. “One size fits all,” several said, even though consumers will have even wider choices of insurance companies to choose from than they do now. Relatedly, one Republican attacked the bill for having similar approaches for all 50 states – but when the earlier bill had different deals for different states, they called it “favoritism.” I guess in their thinking, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And several others called it “an attack on our American freedoms” – as if it is freedom to be tied down to one job because if you leave that job under our present system, you lose your insurance. That can’t happen once reform goes into effect, and that sounds like more, not less, freedom to me. So ignore the lies and the scare tactics, and see the realities – more Americans will be able to get and keep insurance, nobody will be denied coverage any more because of pre-existing conditions or because they get too sick, and 32 million who had no insurance will now have it. Like I said, a great day to be an American – and tonight I am prouder than ever to be one!
Today, the Tea Partiers showed their true colors to America - The following is a story from MSNBC about today's (March 20) Tea Party demonstration against health care reform:
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'N-word' 15 timesThe motorcade that carried Obama to Capitol Hill to whip up support for the bill drove past crowds waving signs that read "Stop the spending" and "Get your hands out of my pocketbook and health care." Many booed and thrust their thumbs down as Obama rode by.
As police held demonstrators back to clear areas for lawmakers outside the Capitol Obama's speech, some protesters jeered and chanted at the officers, "You work for us."
NBC News
"It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, a large former police officer who said he wasn't frightened but worried about the 70-year-old Lewis, who is twice his age. "He said it reminded him of another time."
Kristie Greco, spokeswoman for Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said a protester spit on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who is black and said police escorted the lawmakers into the Capitol. Cleaver's office said he would decline to press charges, but Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the U.S. Capitol Police said in an e-mail later: "We did not make any arrests today."
Clyburn, who led fellow black students in integrating South Carolina's public facilities a half century ago, called the behavior "absolutely shocking."
"I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus," Clyburn told reporters.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is gay, said protesters shouted "abusive things" to him as he walked from the Longworth building to the Rayburn building. "It's a mob mentality that doesn't work politically," he said.
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It is time for Congress to understand that these racist homophobes do not represent America. The real America does not want 45,000 people to die every year because they don't have health insurance. The real America does not want 32 million Americans to continue to go uninsured. The real America wants the 1.3 trillion reduction in the deficit that the Health Reform bill offers. The real America wants an end to people being denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. The real America wants Congress to fix the health care mess in this country that costs us more and gives us lower life expectancies than any industrialized country. The real American wants Congress to GET IT DONE tomorrow and finally pass health care reform that wise leaders have been seeking for a century. Congress, GET IT DONE! Pass health reform tomorrow, Sunday, March 21.
As of March 2, 33 Senators have now expressed support for using the reconciliation procedure to pass a public option. That’s more than 2/3 of the 51 Senate votes needed to do this, just 2 weeks after the campaign for this began.
Additional Senators who have signed on since my last post include my other Senator, Dick Durbin (IL), along with Jeff Bingaman (NM), Benjamin Cardin (MD), Robert Casey (PA), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Patty Murray (WA), Mark Udall (CO), Ron Wyden (OR), and Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV). Let’s keep the momentum going! Just 18 more Senators gets it done! If your Democratic Senator has not yet signed on, please contact him or her today. Contact info and a continuously-updated list of who has signed on and who has not yet done so can be found at:
http://whipcongress.com/?source=bp
Along with many other advocates for healthcare reform, I have pointed out a number of times the Republican strategy of lying about health care so repeatedly that people eventually come to believe what they hear, even though it is patently false. They seem to be following Vladimir Lenin's principle that a lie told often enough will eventually come to be believed. We've heard about killing grandma, government takeovers, reform increasing the deficit, and taking away Medicare - all false, but repeated over and over again. And a surprising number of people have actually believed this garbage.
But the Republican strategy of lie, lie, lie was exposed during yesterday's bipartisan healthcare forum with President Obama. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) said he was against the health reform bill because it would increase insurance premiums. President Obama called him on it, pointing out that the Congressional Budget Office analysis showed that it would actually lower premiums. CNN fact-checked this disagreement, and guess who was telling the truth? The CNN fact-check showed that President Obama was right - the healthcare reform bills would LOWER premiums, not raise them. Once again, another Republican lie! How many of these lies need to be exposed before people finally stop believing them?
EDIT - Friday, February 19 - The number of Senators who have signed on to the letter is now up to 18! In addition to the ones listed below, Senators Barbara Boxer (CA), Diane Feinstein (CA), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Jack Reed (RI), Charles Schumer (NY), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Tom Udall (NM) have now signed on! If a Democratic Senator from your state has not yet signed on, please use the following link to contact him or her:
We are now well more than a third of the way to the number of Senators needed to pass strong health care reform with a public option through the reconciliation process!
Original post:
An option I pointed out as one of the best of a series of difficult options may now actually have a chance!
Ten senators, as of the afternoon of February 17, have signed a letter urging Majority Leader Reid to use reconciliation to pass a health care reform plan with a public option, as the House has done.
Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-VT) will join Democratic Sens. Michael Bennett (CO), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Jeff Merkley (OR), Sherrod Brown (OH), Al Franken (MN), Pat Leahy (VT), John Kerry (MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Roland Burris (IL) in signing the letter.
At best, this could result in Senate passage of the far-superior House bill, or at least major components of it. This would yeild a significantly better bill than either House passage of the Senate bill or an agreement with Republicans. At worst, a serious threat of doing this could finally bring on board one or two Republicans to a serious health care reform bill, their motivation being to prevent passage of something they consider worse. Either way, if a good bill that covers most of the 47 million uninsured Americans can pass as a result of this initiative, America will be FAR better off in terms of health care than ever before.
Please, encourage your Senators to sign on to this letter. We are already about 1/5 of the way to being able to pass strong health care reform using the reconciliation procedure to pass in the Senate what has already passed in the house, without needing 60 votes to break a filibuster. This may be just the key to getting things moving on health care reform again!
This recent article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch demonstrates the tragic consequences of denying Americans the right to marry because of their sexual orientation:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/6BDCE222BAB28FCA862576BB000FC2BF?OpenDocument
Who could argue that denying benefits to the survivors of this trooper who gave his live serving the people of Missouri is right or just? No system of morality that I could subscribe to would allow for this! This could not have happened in Iowa, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Massachusetts. Yet in Missouri and the other 34 states that provide for neither same-sex marriage nor legally-recognized domestic partnership, this is the tragic reality.
As usual, when it comes to picking a governor in Illinois, we are forced to choose from a variety of poor choices, and have to choose from the lesser of evils – in some cases, some very big evils. Of course, the top issue, with the state $12 billion in the hole thanks to a string of governors covering up the state’s true financial situation, is the budget. Jailbird George Ryan and likely future jailbird Rod Blagojevich, both done in by pay-to-play schemes, not only weren’t honest in how they handed out truck licenses (Ryan) and political appointments (Blago), they also weren’t honest with voters about the true condition of state finances. So now, with them gone, we find out that we have a $12 billion budget hole, one of the biggest, relative to population, of any state. (Yes, actually worse than California’s)
Unfortunately, all of the Republicans seem to think the way to solve the problem is to slash education, lay off state workers, deprive the sick and poor of services they desperately need, and screw state employees and retirees out of pensions and benefits that they have earned and to which they are constitutionally entitled. Most are unwilling to entertain the idea of any kind of income tax increase, no matter how desperate the condition of the state, and regardless of the fact that Illinois actually has one of the lowest income tax rates in the country. (This is especially true of you have a high income. Unlike many of its neighboring states, Illinois has a flat-rate tax rather than a graduated or progressive income tax, making it one of the biggest tax havens in the country if you are a fat cat with an income of $250,000 or more.)
As I have said for years, the obvious solution to the chronic budget problems in Illinois is to do what so many other states and the federal government do, and institute a progressive income tax that taxes people at least somewhat in relation to their ability to pay. This would bring in substantially money for the state, without affecting the tax levels for the great majority of Illinoisans. Although the Illinois constitution makes this obvious solution difficult to do, one candidate – Dan Hynes – has committed himself to making this change. He also supports a sales tax on luxury services – something Illinois does not do now. Together, these two reforms would bring in millions of much-needed dollars, while leaving 97% of Illinoisans with no state income tax increase. And believe me, the wealthiest 3 percent can darn well afford it, living in a state where they are taxed less than nearly every other state.
Other candidates – all of the Republicans, but also to a lesser extent the current Governor, Pat Quinn, an Democrat who succeeded from Lt. Governor to Governor when Blagojevich was impeached, think that one of the ways to fiscal solvency is to cut pensions. This, despite a recent state Pension Modernization Task Force report that found that Illinois’ current pension system is actually more affordable than retirement benefits provided by comparable companies in the private sector. You can see this a summary of this report and a link to the full report at:
http://www.ift-aft.org/forms/index3.aspx?CID=1882&TID=top195&PID=44
The Illinois Constitution specifies that pensions cannot be cut for retirees or current employees, but some Republicans and conservative business interests even want to use a highly "creative" interpretation of the Illinois Constitution to cut pensions for current employees. This is fundamentally dishonest, probably unconstitutional, and in any case does not address the true causes of the pension deficit, notably that the state has repeatedly skipped payments into the pension fund in order to cover up the deficits being run by Blago, Ryan, and other governors even before them. It is high time for a little honesty – obviously a commodity that has been in scarce supply in Illinois for a long time!
I do give Governor Quinn credit for being straight with the voters and acknowledging the state’s dire fiscal situation, and for calling for a much-needed tax increase. But there are two problems. First, Quinn’s tax increase hits many who can’t afford it, and because it will hit all Illinoisans, regardless of income, it has hit a wall of fierce opposition in the General Assembly. A tax increase paid by those who can afford to pay it, only those with incomes over $200,000, scaled up to a little more than twice the current 3% rate for those with the very highest income, is fairer, more politically palatable (because it won’t affect the great majority of people at all), and won’t further burden the millions of low and moderate income Illinoisans who have already been hard hit by the recession. And second, Quinn has to a large jumped on the bandwagon to cut pensions and/or benefits - something that only deprives retirees and employees of something that was promised to them when they signed on, and punishes them for the trickery of Ryan and Blagojevich, something they had nothing to do with. It also will make it more difficult in the future for the state to recruit good, smart, productive, and honest workers. Is this something we really want when we are already in this much trouble?
Although I urge a vote for Dan Hynes in the Illinois Democratic primary on February 2, I must add that Hynes is far from a perfect candidate. He has been demagogue-ing disgracefully on the issue of early release of prisoners, something Governor Quinn did to help balance the grossly unbalanced budget he inherited from Blago and Ryan. Actually, most of the prisoners being released are non-violent drug offenders who should not have been locked up in the first place. And the mailers he has been sending out – I’ve personally gotten 3 of them – are reminiscent of the Willie Horton ads used against Michael Dukakis by supporters of Bush 1. (Although at least the Hynes pieces do show both white and black releasees.) This is disgusting and Hynes ought to stop it. He knows better, or should. But even so, I have decided that 1) his willingness to push for a progressive income tax – something I have waited 30+ years for some Illinois politician to do – and 2) his willingness to protect the state’s constitutional obligation to its employees and retirees make Dan Hynes the best choice among a very flawed field of candidates for governor of Illinois.
I'm writing this about a half hour after the end of the speech, having consciously avoided watching or reading any of the commentary and instant analysis of the speech so that I can really put together my own thoughts, without being swayed by anyone else's analysis.
I've been saying for a week or so now that this is the most important speech of Barack Obama's political career thus far, and that he needed to give the speech of his life tonight. I don't know if this was the speech of his life, but IMHO it was a very good one, and in the great majority of regards if not in every way, the speech was right on target. Some specific thoughts:
1. He strongly made the case that, regardless of their popularity, we would be far worse off now without the TARP (which, as he pointed out, was initiated by the previous administration but he supported - as, easy to forget, did his opponent) and the economic stimulus bill than we are now. But he also correctly pointed out that, now that the big banks are prospering again and again paying big bonuses, they can darn well afford the $30 billion in taxes and fees he proposes in order to finish the job of getting back the taxpayers' money - which he rightly plans to use to subsidize loans to small businesses, to help them rebuild from the recession and put people back to work.
2. He rightly made the case for a new jobs program, mainly aimed at incentivizing small businesses to hire people and get them back to work. However, I continue to believe that, while this approach is correct, it should also be supplemented with a program of direct emergency governmental employment, along the lines of the CCC or WPA. See my earlier blog on that topic.
3. I was pleased to see him stand his ground on health care reform, and he made a strong case on how the bill before Congress will reduce the deficit, insure the uninsured, and protect people from being dropped because they are sick or denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. He is absolutely right that we are too close to reform to let this opportunity slip through our fingers, and that the problems that led to the need for reform are not going to go away. Now he needs to follow through and keep the heat on Congress to get the job done.
4. On the deficit, he was right to explain in specifics, as he did, how we got to the deficit we have now. As he pointed out, 2/3 of the current deficit he inherited from the previous administration (Bush, though I don't think he mentioned him by name), despite the Bush administration inheriting a $200 billion SURPLUS from its predecessor. He was also correct to explain specifically the reasons for the deficit he inherited from Bush - i.e. two wars, big tax cuts for the wealthy, and a prescription drug plan, NONE of which were paid for through tax increases or budget cuts elsewhere. He acknowledged that the other 1/3 of the current deficit was created in his own administration, but defended the need to do so in order to keep the recession from turning into another Great Depression. He is right about that, as almost any economist will tell you. On fixing the deficit, I must admit I have doubts about the wisdom of his discretionary spending freeze - during a recession you need to spend more, not less. His defense of this, i.e. that it won't go into effect until next fiscal year (i.e. October of this year), when, he says, things will be better, is likely over-optimistic. At the same time, I was pleased to see that he is sticking to his guns on repealing the Bush tax cuts for people with incomes over $250K, while preserving the tax cuts for everyone else. This helps to address what got us into the mess in the first place, and even with these tax cuts ending, these fat cats will still pay a lot less taxes than they did as recently as 25-30 years ago under the Reagan administration.
5. He made an impassioned plea for more bipartisanship and less of the constant efforts on the part of politicans in both parties to score points aimed at winning the next election, no matter how far off it is. Specifically, he called on the Democrats not to shy away from doing what they know needs to be done, and on the Republicans to cooperate when cooperation is possible and not block initiatives just because they come from Democrats. He proposed regular meetings with the Congressional leadership of both parties, and asked for a meeting soon with the entire Republican Congressonal delegation. Now, none of this may be enough to make a dent in the polarization, game-playing, and partisanship that rules Washington (and percolates out into much of the country), but at least he is trying and that should be well-received by the American public.
6. He renewed his commitment to get out of Iraq, to stop the Taliban and Al Quaeda in Afghanistan, and strengthen homeland security. He acknowledged the flaws in the system that were revealed by the failed Christmas airliner attack, described his aggressive effort to fix those flaws, and pointed out that more terrorists have been captured the past year than in the previous year.
Overall grade: A-. Now, he needs to follow through, and keep the heat on Congress to pass a jobs program, finish the job of health care reform, and tackle other key problems like clean energy development and immigration reform.
With the stunning loss of Martha Coakley to Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Democrats have lost their 60-vote so-called “filibuster-proof” majority in the Senate. This means that, under ordinary Senate rules, Republicans now have the votes to block the current version of the health care reform bill, and any likely House-Senate conference committee bill through use of the filibuster, and all signs are that they intend to do so. This leaves Democrats with a choice of several bad options. In my opinion, there is only one of the four most commonly mentioned bad options that is unacceptable. As I discuss in more detail below, the one unacceptable option is to let health care reform die or to pass some very watered down bill that does not provide insurance to the large majority of uninsured. All of the other options are acceptable, although all of them also have significant problems and shortcomings. Below, I discuss the options in the order of their desirability, and also outline some of the pros and cons of each option and each option’s likelihood of being adopted.
Option 1 – Use reconciliation in the Senate to pass the House version of the bill. In my opinion, this is the best option, which is one of the reasons it is one of the least likely to be adopted. Reconciliation is a procedure whereby the need for 60 votes to block a filibuster can be avoided. It just requires 51 votes, but it is limited to budget-related matters, and a separate procedure is needed for each specific item for which reconciliation is to be used. Since the House passed the health care bill first and since it is at its heart a budget-related matter (remember how much debate has been focused on costs, finances, and impact on the deficit?), it would appear that reconciliation is a viable option. And if it were used to approve the House bill in the Senate, it would result in a more popular approach since the House bill 1) does not have special favors for certain states that were put in the Senate bill to get the votes of reluctant Senators, 2) contains a public options, and 3) finances the costs of covering the uninsured through a surtax on households with incomes over $250,000 rather than taxing insurance plans. For these reasons, the House bill is both a better bill than the Senate bill and uses an approach that is more popular with voters. Keep in mind that polls show that the majority of Americans support a public option, and prefer the House approach of taxing very wealthy households over the Senate approach of taxing high-end health care plans. And keep in mind, too, that a lot of the opposition to the current bill centers around the favors given to states with powerful but reluctant Senators, most notably Nebraska and Ben Nelson. Moreover, it is almost certain that 51 Senators would support a bill with the House provisions, at least in principle. The public option was dropped, and the items providing for favors for certain states and the plan to tax insurance plans were added in the Senate in order to get the support of reluctant Senators like Nelson and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, so that 60 votes could be obtained to block a filibuster. So what are the disadvantages, and why won’t this option probably happen? Basically, the answer is that Democratic Senators are too chicken – they are afraid of how they would be pilloried by Republicans for making an end-run around normal Senate procedures, and for overriding the alleged will of the people after a massive turnout of independents, voting partly on the basis of opposition to the health care bill, voted Senator-elect Brown in to office in Massachusetts.
I think such an attack could be overcome if the Democratic Senators were willing to use reconciliation, but they are probably too chicken to do it. Why could it be overcome? First, because this process would lead to a more popular bill – with a public option and without special deals for Nebraska and other states and without taxing existing insurance plans. And remember that one of the main points Senator-elect Brown made in his campaign – which undoubtedly resonated with voters – was that these special deals made the Senate bill a bad bill. Adopting the House version of the bill would get rid of the special deals, and eliminate one of the things that made people the maddest about the Senate bill. (Parenthetically regarding Senator-elect Brown, keep in mind that a recent CNN poll showed that the number one issue in that special election was the bad economy, NOT health care (which ranked second), and that the majority of those who did mention health care as the most important issue to them supported Coakley, not Brown. A lot of people did support Brown because of his opposition to the health care bill, but that alone almost certainly would not have been enough to get him elected. And much of that opposition was driven by appropriate outrage over the special favors to characters like Nelson, not opposition to the basic principles of health care reform and universal coverage.
Option 2 – The House of Representatives adopts the Senate bill. This would eliminate the need for another vote in the Senate, hence avoiding the need to round up 60 votes again. This is a less desirable option because, for the reasons stated above, the Senate bill is not as good a bill as the House bill. But it is still far better than letting reform die or passing some watered-down bill that does not provide insurance to those who lack it. The Senate bill would provide insurance to a substantial majority of the 40-50 million Americans who lack it now, would include substantial subsidies for insurance in the form of 1) tax credits that could be applied in advance to pay for insurance purchased through the exchanges and 2) substantial expansion of the number of people eligible for Medicaid. It would also prevent denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions and block various other problematic practices by insurance companies. Hence, despite the shortcomings of the Senate bill – and there are many – passing the Senate bill would be far better than doing nothing. And undoubtedly, some of the shortcomings, such as the favored treatment for certain states that was put in to get the votes of reluctant Senators, could be fixed subsequently through reconciliation – in some cases, probably even with Republican votes. This option has a better chance of happening than Option 1, but it is iffy whether enough votes could be mustered in the House to accept the Senate version. That’s because, first of all, there are a lot of agendas among different groups of representatives in the House, ranging from trying to make the health care bill into an abortion bill (note the added restrictions on abortion that were put into the House bill at the urging of the Catholic bishops) to trying to curry favor with unions by blocking the Senate’s admittedly problematic approach of taxing health care plans to a view among some House members that a plan without a public option cannot possibly be a good plan. Hence, there are a lot of disagreeing factions you’d have to get to come to agreement. A second factor making this approach difficult is that there are a lot of House members who simply don’t trust and don’t like the Senate. Still, a big advantage of this approach is that it totally avoids the need for another vote in the Senate – if the House passes a bill identical to what the Senate has already passed, it simply becomes law once President Obama signs it.
Option 3 – Bring one or more Republicans (most likely Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine) into the negotiations to secure one or more Republican votes in the Senate in addition to the 59 Democrats, to get the number of “yes” votes to a filibuster-proof 60. This is the politically “safest” approach for the Democrats, so it might be the most likely outcome. However, it is only an acceptable outcome it maintains provisions in the House and Senate bills that result in covering most of the 40-50 million Americans without insurance – and it is precisely those provisions that most of the Republicans object to. Still, it is a possibility that a decent bill might be worked out this way, most likely by securing the votes of Sen. Olympia Snowe and/or Susan Collins, both moderate Republicans from Maine. Snowe voted for the original bill reported out of the Senate Finance committee, but then turned against the bill when it the bills reported by the various Senate committees that worked on it were worked out into one bill. Although she has tried to explain her switch, I don’t really understand why she switched or what it would take to get her yes vote. But if she, Collins, or some other Republican could be gotten to support an acceptable bill, that includes insuring most of the uninsured, health care reform could be rescued through this option. However, I doubt that a bill produced through this option could be as strong and effective as one arising from either Option 1 or Option 2. But, again assuming it insures most of the uninsured, a bill arising from this option would be far better than nothing.
Option 4 – This is the one option that is NOT ACCEPTABLE. This option would consist of letting health care reform go for another year, or “compromising” with Republicans to produce a bill that banned such practices as denial of insurance for pre-existing conditions and dropping people when they get sick. This option is unacceptable because we have come too far, and it will be too long until we have another chance at real reform, to accept a bill this watered down – any bill that does not make major progress on insuring the uninsured. It is simply unacceptable for the United States to continue to be the only major country in the world where millions upon millions of its citizens are unable to get decent care because they don’t have insurance. No other civilized nation accepts such a situation, and we shouldn’t either. The result of these millions of uninsured citizens is thousands upon thousands of unnecessary deaths per year – 45,000 per year, according to a recent Harvard Study.1 That’s more Americans than died in the entire Korean War, and nearly as many as died in Vietnam. It’s also more than the number that die every year in automobile crashes.
A chance at real reform only comes along every few decades. Teddy Roosevelt, one of our greatest Presidents (and a Republican) tried but failed to solve this problem. A half century later, so did Harry Truman. Both failed, due to the same buzzsaw of opposition now being encountered by President Obama. Finally President Lyndon Johnson (with a supermajority like the one that Democrats had last year but lost this week) finally achieved limited success, getting Congress to enact Medicare (for senior citizens) and Medicaid (for the very poor). But that was as far as he dared try to go, and, like Obama, he was vilified and called a socialist for pushing even those limited programs. Then President Clinton tried again, and encountered the same fate as Roosevelt and Truman. Now, 18 years later under President Obama, we are closer to reform than we have ever been, with bills having passed both the House and Senate. History tells us that if we miss this opportunity, it could be another 20 years before we have another chance – and you easily could interpret history to tell us it could be another 100 years until we SUCCEED. This is why, in one way or the other, we MUST take advantage of the fact that, for the first time in U.S. history, both houses of the U.S. Congress have passed bills that would allow for universal or near-universal health care. This is an opportunity that simply must not be missed, and it is why the option of doing nothing or passing a watered-down bill that does not cover most of the uninsured is unacceptable. Literally thousands of lives are at stake! Let’s get the job done and enact either Option 1, Option 2, or Option 3!
1 http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/
Some of the ideas being batted around regarding ways to address the current unemployment crisis may finally be getting some serious attention, and hopefully will get a boost at the upcoming jobs summit. Here's an interesting article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/B95AEFE3B984158786257680000AEF95?OpenDocument
In particular, I am encouraged by the following quote in the article:
"Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, there's growing Democratic support for a new jobs bill to provide more economic stimulus next year. Among the ideas Congress is weighing are tax credits for employers for new hires, a payroll tax holiday for employers, and big government work programs like those of the 1930s, with today's efforts likely to boost inner city jobs and reverse years of neglect. Democrats worry that the jobless rate will keep rising ahead of congressional elections next year, threatening the majorities they now hold in the House of Representatives and the Senate."
Less encouraging is the following quote:
"Weighing against new jobs programs, however, are trillions of dollars in projected federal budget deficits over the next decade, which threaten long-term economic stability."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The current level of unemployment is both morally unacceptable and politically untenable for the Democrats. And it is not necessary - there is no doubt that the unemployment rate can be lowered through a combination of tax credits to employers for new hires, an extension of the portions of the previous stimulus bill that prevented massive layoffs of teachers and state employees, and a resurrection of New Deal-style government work programs such as the WPA and the CCC (which I have previously called for a re-creation of; see post below). If we do all that, the unemployment rate WILL go down, probably substantially.
Once again, I know I am onto something in regard to my comments about the WPA and CCC, because no less than Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman agrees with me, in this column calling for bringing back the WPA:
Now, as to the deficit - it IS a big problem, but right now the real crisis is unemployment. Deal with what is affecting us now! Still, on the deficit, there are things that can be done.
First, the Bush tax cuts for everyone with incomes above $250,000 should go NOW, not later. This would reduce the deficit, and despite their complaining, these poor, unfortunate souls would still be paying less tax on their high incomes than the did under the king of anti-tax leaders, Ronald Reagan!
Second, ASAP implement the recommendation of the Economic Policy Institute to tax financial transactions. The constant buying, selling, and speculation in financial paper doesn't produce anything real that you and I can use, and is in some ways a socially useless activity. Why not tax it?!?
Third, pay for costly but necessary new initiatives, such as health care reform and the increased resoures needed in Afghanistan, through an increase in taxes for those with incomes above $250,000. You could still increase them quite a bit more than just rescinding the Bush tax cuts before you even get them up to the level they were at under Ronald Reagan, and that is still a lot lower than the taxes that upper-income folks paid in the relatively prosperous 1950s and 1960s. These folks will be just fine, and it won't hurt the economy, because high-income people spend less of that money anyway, so the taxation won't have a big impact on how much they buy. Public opinion polls have shown that the majority of Americans support this method of funding health care reform, so I say it is time for Democrats to start acting like Democrats and put jobs for working folks ahead of low taxes for rich folks.
And finally, accellerate the timetable for getting out of Iraq. We should never have been there in the first place, and that, together with the ill-advised Bush tax cuts for the rich, is what got us into a big deficit mess in the first place.
OK, time to chime in on what I think about last night's announcement on Afghanistan. My opinion is that President Obama has gotten it just about right.
Now, I know there are many on the left who think the war in Afghanistan is a pointless, hopeless quagmire to which committing another 30,000 troops is a big mistake. I do not agree. Afghanistan DOES carry a risk of getting bogged down in a quagmire, but it is neither Iraq nor Vietnam. Most important, unlike either of those countires, Afghanistan was the base for a deadly attack on the United States that was organized with the protection of the government of Afghanistan at the time, which was controlled by the Taliban. Let the Taliban regain control, and that base will be there again. So unlike Vietnam or Iraq, the United States has a vital defense interest in Afghanistan.
At the present time, the Afghan government and military are not capable of getting the job done with the level of US and NATO troops currently in the country. They need more training and security to build their capabilities, and the Taliban must be kept from regaining ground in the meantime. This can only be accomplished with a temporary strong infusion of resources that will permit the needed training and stabilization. Unfortunately, if the U.S. had stayed focused on the country from which we were attacked and put the necessary resources there instead of diverting them to a pointless and counterproductive war in Iraq, this would not be necessary now. If the U.S. under Bush's command had had the smarts to capture Bin Laden when we had the chance instead of letting him escape while hoping the Afghans would catch him, this also might not be necessary now. But this war was badly bungled and was chronically under-resourced so Bush could carry out his vendetta with Iraq, so President Obama inherited a huge mess here, as in so many other places.
Now, to those on the right who are lambasting President Obama for committing to begin a withdrawal of troops after a year and a half, two points. First, your argument is that this tips off Al Quaeda and the Taliban that we do not have the intention to stay forever, no matter how long it takes. NEWS FLASH: They know that, no matter what the President says. They understand after Vietnam and Iraq that the U.S. public will not stomach (and for that matter the U.S. military does not have the resources for) a permanent large-scale commitment of troops in Afghanistan or anywhere else. That being the case, it seems much wiser to put in the resources for a limited time and get the Afghan government and military strong enough to take over, while weakening the Taliban in the meantime, than to make a vague threat of something everyone knows we are not prepared to do. Second, the President's commitment only pertains to when U.S. troops will begin to withdraw. He has made it clear that the pace and extent of withdrawal will depend on conditions on the ground. So while the goal is to have the troops out by the end of President Obama's first term, the actual pace of withdrawal and date of complete withdrawal will depend on conditions on the ground.
I think everyone, on the left and on the right, ought to cut President Obama a little slack on this. Unlike Bush, President Obama has given a clear explanation to the American public of why this is necessary and why he believes this is the most effective approach. On the whole, that explanation makes sense. And unlike Iraq and Vietnam, we are now dealing with a country from which a deadly attack on the U.S that killed nearly 3,000 people was launched with the protection of the country's government at the time. It is a completely different situation.
As I have said before (see post immediately below), it is quite obvious to me that the Obama administration needs to be doing more than it is to fight unemployment. I see now that Paul Krugman feels the same way. When the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman agrees with me, I always take that as a sign that I am on to something!
In this week's colunm, Krugman talks about possible reasons why the Obama administration is holding back on taking action to lower unemployment, and why this is a mistake. He also points out that the current unwillingness to take strong action against unemployment is a flip-flop from what Obama and his economic advisors were saying when Obama took office. You can read Krugman's colunm at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=1
I think it is not only bad policy, but bad politics, to be so hesitant to take strong action to reduce unemployment. If unemployment is still near 10% a year from now, the Democrats will be toast in the midterm election. But more important, millions of Americans will continue to suffer - lost jobs, lost homes, lost opportunities to educate their children. It's too bad Obama didn't pick Krugman, instead of Larry Summers, to be his top economic advisor.
It's been a while since I have had time to post anything here, and it will likely be a while more before I have a chance to post much more. So today, the first day of a new month, I made time to put together something a little more detailed than my usual post. It is clear to me that more must be done to get Americans back to work, and in this post, I explain why I feel this is critical and how we might do it:
Time to Bring Back the CCC
There has been a lot of discussion lately as to whether the recession has ended – i.e. are we now past the date which economists will, 6 months or a year from now, decide is the date when the recession ended? I say, who cares? It is true that stocks are up sharply from last March, housing sales have started rising again after something like 2 years of decline, and things are a lot better on Wall Street than they were a year ago. But unemployment is the highest it has been in many years and is still rising, and if you are one of the millions without a job or working part-time when you want to be working full time, none of the things I mentioned in the last sentence have done anything yet to make your life better. Moreover, wages remain stagnant, because there are so many unemployed workers ready to step in if workers or their unions get even a little pushy about the current prevailing low pay, and employers continue to move jobs offshore in the endless search for cheap labor. In short, while Wall Street is enjoying the early benefits of a turnaround, there’s no joy yet on Main Street.
The Obama administration has pointed out that employment is a “lagging indicator.” As in past recessions, employment is the last thing to bounce back, and we are warned that it could be a couple years before employment gets back on track. Well, from a historical standpoint, this is accurate, but here is another bit of history: What I hear the Obama administration saying now sounds a lot like what I have heard from various Republican Presidents in the past, including, at the least, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and both Bushes. The additional thing most of them said, which I thankfully haven’t heard from Obama yet, is that it would not be good to undertake efforts to create jobs, because that might lead to inflation. In other words, unemployed workers would just have to stay unemployed for a while, so someone else who actually has the money to buy it might avoid having to pay a couple cents more for a loaf of bread. What the Republicans left out of their speeches, of course, was that at the end of virtually every recession in the 20th century, the share of income going to the wealthiest increased, while the share going to those who were less fortunate decreased. In other words, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer. In other words, class warfare, in support of and for the benefit of the rich.
You, of course, won’t hear this from Obama, and I certainly don’t think this is his intention. But if his administration just sits back and does nothing to create more jobs, this is what will happen. To the credit of the Obama administration, its much-maligned stimulus program DID save a lot of jobs, and together with the TARP, almost certainly kept this current severe recession from becoming another Great Depression. I know that at the university where I taught until my retirement a few years ago, as with other public schools and colleges throughout the country, the only thing that saved it from massive job cuts, tuition increases, and probably enrollment limits this school year was the stimulus money. Hundreds of thousands of teachers across America would be out of work without it, and I have no doubt that, despite whatever accounting errors there may be, the recent 640,000 estimate of jobs saved by the stimulus is undoubtedly an underestimate. That’s because it counts only jobs DIRECTLY saved, not ones saved indirectly – ones that are around because those still working still have money to spend at businesses in their communities.
But while the stimulus was successful, it was not nearly enough. 3 million more folks have lost their jobs this year, and while this may have been perfectly acceptable to folks like Reagan or Daddy Bush, it should not be acceptable to President Obama or his supporters. We cannot afford to wait two more years for these 3 million folks, and others who may yet lose their jobs, to get back to work.
So what to do? The most obvious thing is to have another stimulus program, but target this one to direct job creation to a greater extent that was the case with TARP or the first stimulus program. Spend federal money to directly create new jobs on things that need to be done. It would be hard to imagine a better model for this than the Civilian Conservation Corps that was created by President Franklin Roosevelt. This program put young unemployed men to work on conservation projects – building trails, buildings, and various facilities in national parks and forests, state parks, and the like. It took thousands of young people off the unemployment rolls, gave them valuable work experience, and taught them things about conservation and the environment that shaped the rest of their lives. It built beautiful buildings that introduced Americans everywhere to nature and the beauty of the great outdoors. Here are just a few examples:
Starved Rock State Park Lodge, IL - http://galenfry.com/il/ccc09.jpg
Pere Marquette State Park Lodge, IL (exterior) - http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/3f2858f4-e0b8-4f73-a387-299098f899d7.jpg
Pere Marquette State Park Lodge, IL (interior) -
http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/6fb276ba-4bac-4a03-be08-26631e8f6f5f.jpg
Bandelier National Monument Visitor Center, NM -
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1321/722936595_b73bfd1ba1.jpg (Copy and paste - for some reason this one would not parse)
Grand Canyon National Park, AZ -
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QZdwFM-UwK4/Rzpig7qcrBI/AAAAAAAAAOw/dlk4ZNZGlm4/s320/Stop+1+a.JPG
Why does bringing back the CCC now make sense? First, because it would create jobs and help to lower the unemployment rate, now near 10%. Second, because it would put people to work doing something that needs to be done. Our state and national parks have been loved to death but underfunded, and many need repair and upgrading much like what was done in the CCC days. Budget cuts have hurt both national parks state parks and, as state budgets have tightened, state parks in many states have suffered even more cutbacks. In President Obama’s (and my) home state of Illinois, a number of parks, museums, and campgrounds closed for a time last year due to the budget crisis.
Additionally, there is another environmental angle that could greatly benefit from a new CCC – clean energy. President Obama has correctly set a goal of making the U.S the world leader in the development and application of clean energy technology. While some of that takes research, there is a lot that we already know must be done, like building the infrastructure – a new system of powerlines, for example, to get wind-generated electricity from the prairies and plains where the wind blows to the cities where people need clean, affordable power. Much of this work could be done by a new CCC.
And finally, there is a third reason this should be done – it is politically smart, maybe even politically essential for the Obama Administration to do so. Anger is clearly growing across America because of the perception that Wall Street has been bailed out while Main Street continues to suffer. If this does not change by a year from now – midterm election time – the voters will take out their frustration on President Obama’s party. So a new CCC isn’t just the morally right thing to do, it is also the politically smart thing to do – and do in time that, by election time, 2010, voters have friends and family members who are back at work, doing what needs to be done, in a new CCC. To make that happen, the administration and Congress need to act fast. That’s not easy, as shown by the interminably slow pace Congress has taken to address critically-needed health care reform. But if they stall on getting people back to work as long as they have stalled on health care reform, a lot of Democratic Congressmembers will themselves be out of a job and looking for work a year from now. Now is the time to get to work on a new stimulus that will be creating jobs by election time next year, and it is hard for me to see a better way to do it than, in some form, a new CCC for our times.
Yes, it is true. Read all about it in this St. Louis Post-Dispatch column by Kevin Horrigan:
Horrigan Article
And you can learn more about socialism in this piece from the Post-Dispatch's Illinois writer, Pat Gauen:
Lately, I've gotten lots of email from progressive groups urging me to take action to ensure a public option in health care reform. A public option IS important, but an employer mandate (a requirement that employers purchase insurance for their employees or pay into a pool to subsidize insurance for those not covered at work, with exemptions of some kind for very small businesses) is equally important, and I haven't had a single email in the past 2 weeks (at least) urging me to support an employer mandate.
There are many reasons an employer mandate is important. First and foremost, it is the fairest way to cover the largest number of people. This country's system of health insurance, for better or worse, has come to rely on employer-provided coverage as the means by which most people get insurance. Any change of that, short of a single-payer system, will likely result in individuals - many with very limited incomes - having to pay for their own health insurance, or having to do without. And if we pass a political compromise that includes an individual mandate (i.e. a requirement that individuals purchase insurance or pay a penalty) but lacks an employer mandate, more employers will figure that their workers will have to buy insurance whether they provide it or not, and will in some cases get some subsidy for it, so why continue to provide coverage if they don't have to? The result is that the costs of insurance will be shifted from the large employers who cover it now for the majority of workers, to the workers themselves, who have already lost ground due to 1) the recession and 2) the ongoing shift of income from the bottom to the top over the last 35 years. The result will be that many workers could be worse off than they are now, and many will simply pay the penalty and take their chances without insurance.
Which brings me to my second point. Yesterday (October 12), the insurance companies released a study they commissioned purporting that the cost of premiums will go up under the Senate Finance Committee bill, because the bill's individual mandate does not carry sufficiently high penalties to get people to actually buy insurnace until they are sick (and can no longer be excluded because of pre-existing conditions). Now, the study's conclusions are flawed, because even by the admission of its authors, it does not look at other factors in the Finance Committee bill that will reduce costs (like capping administrative costs at 15%, for example). But by leaving out the employer mandate (which of all the committees reporting out health reform bills, only the Senate Finance Committee has done), the committee has given considerable cannon fodder for the insurance companies to use these scare tactics. That is because with an employer mandate, there would be far fewer people who would have to purchase insurance on their own, and thus far fewer who would be even tempted to try going without insurance. The Finance Committee could have utterly destroyed the insurance companies' argument before it was ever made by including an employer mandate, but they did not. Thus, the insurance companies now have an opportunity to scare people into believing that health care reform is going to increase their premiums, even though the reality is quite different.
Fortunately, the Senate H.E.L.P. Committee and all 3 House committees that have reported out health reform bills do include an employer mandate in their bills. It is esseintial that as the Senate deliberations go forward and efforts are made to meld the H.E.L.P. Committee bill and the Finance Committee bill, that the bill that emerges from those negotiations must include an employer mandate. Leave that out, and we will have more people uninsured, more of the cost being paid by those who can least afford it, and probably higher premiums for everyone than we would have with an employer mandate in the bill. That is why an employer mandate is every bit as important to successful health care reform as a public option. And it is time that progressive groups start pushing for an employer mandate just as seriously as they are pushing for a public option.
