Though comparatively less divisive than abortion debate roiling the House this weekend, the immigration issue in the health-care bill also has yet to be settled. The controversy is over whether to prohibit unauthorized immigrants from purchasing insurance that’s available through the new insurance exchanges. The Senate Finance bill includes such a prohibition, and conservatives have been pushing to include a similar one in the House bill. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus oppose it, arguing that unauthorized immigrants should be able to buy coverage using their own private money, and that enacting such a prohibition could discourage legal immigrants and other groups from using the exchanges.
As The Washington Post reports, House Democratic leaders have assured members of the Hispanic Caucus that the measure won’t end up in the bill. But as the Post explains--and as various sources close to the debate confirm--Democratic leadership is anticipating Republican amendments and parliamentary measures on the floor that could force a close vote on the issue--with moderate Democrats worried about looking soft on unauthorized immigrants.
The whole episode shows just how much the Republican “government takeover” meme has warped the health-care debate. As I noted earlier this week, unauthorized immigrants are prohibited from receiving any government subsidies on the exchanges. They would simply be buying private insurance plans within the exchange infrastructure that’s set up by government. And, as I’ve argued, the logic of prohibiting unauthorized immigrants from doing so would be akin banning them from buying a tank of gas--another industry heavily subsidized and supported by government infrastructure.
Such logic has also extended to the abortion debate. Under the original Capps amendment, the bill would have prohibited federal dollars from paying for abortion services in the insurance exchange. Anti-choicers argued such measures weren’t sufficient, as insurers offering abortion services were still participating in an exchange the government set up--which they conveniently translate into meaning “government-funded abortions.” As the Wonkroom asks, should women also be prohibited from traveling on government-funded highways to travel to abortion clinics? The fact that such extreme thinking has gathered steam is a sign of just how effective the conservative opposition has been this week in shaping the debate.
Opponents of abortion rights won a significant political victory last night, making it more likely that millions of American women will no longer be able to purchase insurance that covers abortion services.
At issue is what happens inside the new insurance exchanges, through which small businesses and people purchasing coverage on their own would shop for insurance. Because the exchanges would make government financial assistance available to poor and even some middle-class people, opponents of abortions rights have insisted that the policies not pay for abortions, since that would mean taxpayers opposed to abortion were, in effect, subsidizing the procedure.
While such "mixing" of funds happens all the time, as writers like Amy Sullivan have observed, the Democratic leadership have tried to accommodate the opposition by proposing to create nominally distinct funds for abortion services or contracting out the financing to a private entity.
But the abortion rights opponents, led by Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, wouldn't budge. They wanted the chance to introduce an amendment that would bar abortion coverage altogether. After a furious day (and days) of negotiation, last night the Democratic leadership--desperate for every vote it could get--finally and very reluctantly gave in.
At around 10:40 a.m., the House erupted into applause as Representative John Dingell of Michigan took the gavel in order to preside over the House of Representatives. Dingell, the longest serving representative in Congress, has been pursuing universal health care since the day he took office in 1955.
It's a crusade that Dingell inherited from his father, John Dingell, Sr. who in 1945 co-sponsored the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill. That bill proposed to "expand the Social Security Act to include a vast program of medical care and hospitalization insurance."
According to Dingell's office, the last time he served as Speaker Pro Tempore was April 8, 1965--the day the House passed Medicare.
The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank governors are meeting today in St. Andrews, talking about the data they will need to look at in order to monitor each other’s economic performance and sustain growth (seriously).
The underlying idea is that if you talk long enough about the U.S. current account deficit and the Chinese surplus, stuff happens and the imbalances will take care of themselves--or move on to take another form.
Warren Buffett seems to agree.
From a new cover story on Sarah Palin by Weekly Standard hack Matthew Continetti:
Last week, when Joe Biden traveled to upstate New York to campaign for Democratic congressional candidate Bill Owens, the vice president took aim at Sarah Palin. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'drill, baby, drill,' " Biden said. "No, it's a lot more complicated, Sarah, than 'drill, baby, drill.' "
A good sign of condescension is when someone tells you that "things are more complicated" than you think.
Now direct your attention to a previous paragraph in the same article!
Because Andrew Jackson was the founder of the modern Democratic party, we have a tendency to look at him through big-government eyes. We draw a line that starts with Jackson, runs through Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR, and ends up at Barack Obama. But the facts are more complicated than that.
Do they still edit at the Standard? Is there no one around to keep poor Continetti from embarrassing himself in public? And then, naturally, a cursory Lexis search of his work reveals the following:
--Jan 2, 2004: In other words, he screams at Person X because Person X is an obstacle to Desire Y. But it may be more complicated than that.
--June 18, 2007: Gerald Ford typically is cited as the last pro-choice Republican nominee, but the history is more complicated than that.
--June 9, 2007: According to this line of thinking, most GOP voters are still unaware of his positions on these issues, and when they find out, they'll go elsewhere. The reality is more complicated.
--August 25, 2008: But even here, the story may be more complicated than Georgian provocation and Russian reaction.
ScheiberAs always, be sure to check out economic news on The Stash, environment and energy coverage on The Vine, the latest on health care at The Treatment, metro policy debate on The Avenue, and Marty Peretz's The Spine. Also be sure to take a look at TNR's new blogs by William Galston, Simon Johnson, Ed Kilgore, Damon Linker, and John McWhorter.
Prediction: If health care reform comes up for a vote in the House of Representatives tomorrow, it will pass.
OK, that’s not much of a prediction. Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t actually bring a bill to the floor unless she has the votes. And as of late Friday afternoon, she didn’t. On Capitol Hill, staff began talking about the possibility of a postponement until Sunday, or even early next week.
The sticking points are the ones you’ve read about elsewhere: abortion and immigration. On both issues, Pelosi and her lieutenants spent the day reaching out to both sides of each debate, trying to find mutually acceptable language. But the efforts kept failing.
Meanwhile, plenty of members are downright unhappy about the bill, because they think it’s too ambitious or, at least, more ambitious than what the Senate is likely to support. And they don’t want to take “hard votes” like raising taxes (even if it’s only on the very wealthy) if it’s not necessary. For more on the different groups--and where they stand--see Ezra Klein’s writeup here.
President Obama is still planning on paying a visit to the House on Saturday, to make a personal appeal in front of the entire Democratic caucus. He’ll remind them of the bill’s historical significance--and, you can be sure, its political significance. It’s nothing they haven’t heard before, of course. But don’t underestimate the ability of the president, in person, to change a few minds.
Update: As of Saturday morning, it's all systems go. A source reports that an abortion deal is in place, but that it's "very fragile." Pelosi either has the votes or is confident that she will have them, particularly after the presidential visit. For those who want to follow the debate today, the Washington Post has a great "viewer's guide" on everything from the debate over the Rule to the possibility that Republicans could derail things with a "motion to recommit."
Paul Krugman wants lawmakers to create a modern version of the Works Progress Administration, an important New Deal-era agency which put millions of people to work on public infrastructure projects:
A question I’m occasionally asked at public events is, why aren’t we creating jobs with a WPA-type program? It’s a very good question. ...
You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work. Think of it as the stimulus equivalent of getting the middlemen out of the student loan program.
Putting aside the standard concern about central planning, there are some unintended consequences that could come with a modern WPA. This 1990 paper by Robert Margo points out that the long-term unemployed with Depression-era WPA jobs were more likely to be unskilled, and when economic conditions picked up, were less likely to get back into the private sector:
The results indicate that employment growth had an insignificant (though negative) effect on the probability of holding a long-term job with the WPA; thus the long-term unemployed on work relief were not very responsive to improved economic conditions. Long-term unemployed not on work relief, however, were responsive to improved economic conditions -- the incidence of long-term unemployment, among persons not on work relief, was significantly lower in states with higher-than-average rates of employment growth.
So what happens if we create a new WPA, employment growth resumes, and there are large numbers of WPA-type workers who don't want to give up their jobs? What makes our era different than the Great Depression is that we (hopefully) won't have a war-driven employment boom to help encourage people to leave public works jobs. You could argue, as David Leonhardt and Noam do, that some other sort of employment boom could be coming. But for the pessimists like me, a creakier job market would mean that it'll be relatively more attractive to an unskilled worker to hold onto a WPA job than to take on riskier private-sector work. Would lawmakers then decide to terminate the program and send these workers back on unemployment? Do we transition these workers into some sort of new long-term social security program? Or do we just keep the WPA for good?
John Reed apologizes for creating Citigroup.
What Europe is getting right in tackling unemployment.
Public works projects successful in rural India?
Study: Pork-barrel spending a symptom, not cause, of budget woes.
Did Malcolm Gladwell cause Lehman's collapse?
In case you haven't gotten your issue of Der Spiegel this month, the German mag has some very cool details on the intelligence work that led to the discovery--and eventual destruction by Israeli airstrike--of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor being built with North Korean help:
In the spring of 2004, the American National Security Agency (NSA) detected a suspiciously high number of telephone calls between Syria and North Korea, with a noticeably busy line of communication between the North Korean capital Pyongyang and a place in the northern Syrian desert called Al Kibar. The NSA dossier was sent to the Israeli military's "8200" unit, which is responsible for radio reconnaissance and has its antennas set up in the hills near Tel Aviv. Al-Kibar was "flagged," as they say in intelligence jargon.
In late 2006, Israeli military intelligence decided to ask the British for their opinion. But almost at the same time as the delegation from Tel Aviv was arriving in London, a senior Syrian government official checked into a hotel in the exclusive London neighborhood of Kensington. He was under Mossad surveillance and turned out to be incredibly careless, leaving his computer in his hotel room when he went out. Israeli agents took the opportunity to install a so-called "Trojan horse" program, which can be used to secretly steal data, onto the Syrian's laptop.
The hard drive contained construction plans, letters and hundreds of photos. The photos, which were particularly revealing, showed the Al Kibar complex at various stages in its development.... One of the photos showed an Asian in blue tracksuit trousers, standing next to an Arab. The Mossad quickly identified the two men as Chon Chibu and Ibrahim Othman. Chon is one of the leading members of the North Korean nuclear program, and experts believe that he is the chief engineer behind the Yongbyon plutonium reactor. Othman is the director of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission.
A year later, the nascent plant was a pile of smoking rubble. This episode has always struck me as curiously under-discussed in foreign policy circles.
Let's understand this, just for starters.
And I know that Nidal Malik Hasan was also crazy. But which suicide bomber, even one inspired by what the president continues to call the "Holy Koran," as if that nomenclature would moderate the hatred of America in the world of Islam, is not crazy? Stark raving crazy, in fact?
(Just like the assassination of Robert Kennedy, to begin at the beginning, was an act of jihad, as well. And Sirhan Sirhan was also nuts.)
Jihad aside, how could this deeply troubled man about whose troubles his superiors were fully aware, be permitted to serve as a psychiatrist among men and women who, like he himself, were about to be sent to war ... or were returning from war? And not just any war. But a war in the Muslim orbit and actually fighting Muslim men and, lest we forget, Muslim ideas.
Come to think of it, if you had just returned from duty in Afghanistan or Iraq and having troubles readjusting to home, wouldn't you be a little freaked out that your decommissioning shrink was wearing native Arab dress as Hasan often did at Fort Hood?
We are now about to enter a period of dissimulation. Ours is a culture very edgy about discussing such matters lest someone in the room be offended or that our conclusions turn out to be, well, very uncomfortable.
In the meantime, don't forget that Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 men and women, 12 of them U.S. soldiers, and wounded 28 others. This is, for wont of a better word, a massacre.
Yesterday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted to report out climate legislation, with ten Democrats voting yes, one Democrat (Montana’s Sen. Baucus) voting no, and all of the Republicans boycotting. If you look at the vote tally (using Project Vulcan data), you find that the states of senators voting "no" emitted 29.4 tonnes of carbon per capita, and the states of "yes" voters emitted 13.3 tonnes per capita, compared with a national average of 20.9 tonnes per capita.
What do you think? Does this mean that the likely impact of cap-and-trade legislation on the members’ states influenced their votes? We would say it does, as we implied in a post we put up the other day on the household costs by a bill by metro. However, Matthew Yglesias would likely disagree, going by his response to our previous examination of this issue.
Matt doesn’t think representatives from metros (or states) with higher carbon emissions are less likely to support cap-and-trade. Instead, he argues that “the primary driver of the politics of climate change is general ideological factors, followed by the interests of energy producers rather than consumers.” That is, he thinks that industry opposition to carbon legislation is a stronger motivator of "no" votes than consumer opposition—an interesting theory that we can almost buy. Did you see all those anti-climate bill industry ads during the World Series?
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