If health care reform weren't such an enormous deal, people would be paying more attention to the sweeping student loan reform that's being attached to it and could pass on the same vote. It's a pretty simple issue, though opponents do their best to muck it up.
From: Ben Wildavsky
To: Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, and Kevin Carey
Subject: Ravitch misunderstands the roles of charter schools, teacher professionalism, and bipartisanship in education reform.
February 26, 2010
President Barack Obama
Senator Harry Reid Majority Leader
Senator Max Baucus, Chairman, Committee on Finance Senator
Tom Harkin Chairman, Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House of Representatives Congressman
Charles Rangel Committee on Ways & Means
Congressman Henry A. Waxman Committee on Energy and Commerce
Congressman George Miller Committee on Education and Labor
The White House has released some more details about Thursday's Blair House meeting: Who will be there and the shape of the table where they'll all be sitting:
The President will be seated in the middle of one side of the hollow square, with the Vice President, Secretary Sebelius, and congressional Leadership seated alongside him. Members will be seated by caucus around the square.
Harold Pollack is a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment.
At a low moment of the Second World War, a breathless young aide barged in on Winston Churchill to report some bad news. Showing the aplomb one fully achieves only within the pages of one’s own memoir, Churchill quotes himself responding: “I’ve heard worse.” That’s the resilience Democrats need.
Treatment readers already know that many health policy experts across the political spectrum support House passage of the Senate bill, with an accompanying fix of the bills various shortcomings through the reconciliation process. Like Paul Krugman, Jonathan Cohn, Ezra Klein, and Jacob Hacker, Tim Jost and I very much agree that this is the best approach.
Yesterday, Tim and I crafted a simple letter (shown below), which we emailed other health policy experts we know. Some are progressives who identify with a single-payer approach. Others are more politically moderate economists, sociologists, and political scientists. Still others identify with organized labor, medicine, or public health.
Within several hours, many outstanding scholars, activists, and practitioners signed on. Signers include Henry Aaron, David Cutler, Jon Gruber, Theda Skocpol, Paul Starr, and many others, including Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU.
Some people we contacted could not sign on, but reported that they are seeking the same goal through more private means. Virtually no one we contacted disagreed with this letter on either political or policy grounds. Our letter represents a broad consensus of those supporting health care reform.
We are so close to enacting a historic reform. Now is the time for calm and resolute Congressional action. The Massachusetts election was a setback. Democrats still have large majorities in both the Senate and the House. We’ve heard worse. It’s time to act.
About 20 minutes into my sit-down with House Minority Leader John Boehner, I am overcome by the desire for a drink. Scotch, maybe. Or a bone-dry martini, extra olives. It’s not that the Ohio congressman is shaping up to be confrontational or unresponsive or in any way unpleasant.
WASHINGTON--The next health care fight has already started. It's the battle to define the bill that President Obama will eventually sign as a victory for consumers, taxpayers and the common good.
You might say this view is premature. Legislation has yet to pass the House or the Senate, there are differences between the two bodies, and some moderates still have doubts.
WASHINGTON -- It's time to cast aside the political shorthand and ideological pigeonholing that distort our debates over health care in particular and government's role in American life more broadly.
The way words such as "centrist" and "bipartisan" are now deployed turns the discussion away from useful arguments over how various proposals might work and toward arid talk about how ideas fit into prefabricated boxes.
On Monday, Nancy Pelosi made an announcement that was buried amid the tumult over the Steny Hoyer-Jack Murtha battle for House majority leader. It was the appointment of Representative Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, to be the head of Pelosi's "transition team" as she assumes the job of House speaker.
