Monthly Archives: March 2010

Health Care Reform: A Wrench In The Works?

The CBO score for the health care reconciliation bill was expected yesterday, but it was not released. The issue appears to be related to the hazards of reconciliation. To survive challenges during the reconciliation process, the items in the bill must be directly related to budgetary items and they must reduce the deficit. Right now, the Feinstein-proposed oversight committee for insurance rates is out of the bill. There also appears to be a problem with the excise tax. The changes to the tax lowered the CBO score more than expected:

On Wednesday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was called into an unplanned meeting at the White House to discuss late-stage negotiations on a proposed tax on high-end insurance plans. According to sources familiar with what transpired, congressional leaders had begun discussions earlier in the day (perhaps last night) about accelerating the tax’s impact in order to produce more savings under the president’s revised health care bill.

Under the president’s plan, those families with health care plans over $27,500 and individuals with plans over $10,200 would be taxed starting in 2018. That tax would be indexed to the Consumer Price Index plus one percent, which would provide some additional comfort to those with high-end policies — specifically for labor workers who had bargained for these plans.

The plan, however, got tripped up after congressional negotiators received poorer-than-expected feedback from the Congressional Budget Office, a senior Democratic hill aide confirmed. And as a compromise, on Wednesday, they began discussing indexing the tax simply to the Consumer Price Index.

“What the White House is putting out is not any big major changes to the deal,” said a source briefed on the matter. “What they are talking about is the way things are right now the tax was indexed to CPI+1 and they want to change it to CPI general inflation.”

The new CBO score is expected sometime today. This means the earliest the bill can be voted on is Sunday. Yesterday it looked like the bill was really gaining some momentum, we’ll have to wait and see if this derails that momentum.

Wednesday’s Evening Read

Time Magazine looks at 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years. Here is Gregory Rodriguez on The White Anxiety Crisis.

The Times’ Washington correspondent Giles Whittell looks at the our health care crisis, Obama is bashing on the brick wall of unlogic.

Politics editor of The Atlantic Marc Ambinder comments on 3 Reasons Why Republicans Might Not Take Over The House.

Meet our Newest Contributor, MJ!

In anticipation of the upcoming election season, and to try to balance out the Northern Delaware / New Castle County bias of Delaware Liberal, we have invited another of our wonderful and insightful commentators to join us as a contributor: MJ of the aptly titled Lower Slower Delaware.

MJ is from Sussex County and has been involved in local politics downstate for a long time. So add to that Pandora’s Sussex County exile during the summer months and my parents living in Sussex County, Delaware Liberal is now up to 1.75 contributors* from Sussex County, out of 10 total contributors. Kent Countians need to get up in arms, as they are still unrepresented.

Seriously though, MJ has been an excellent and loyal commenter here at Delaware Liberal, and we are very pleased to welcome him aboard as a contributor.

*–Counting Pandora as 1/2 and myself as 1/4. LOL.

Industrial Park

As you know, Clinton Bunting, the son of Senator George Bunting, is proposing a casino in the North Side State Park at the Indian River Inlet.

Apparently, he was on WGMD this morning “challenging” people to drive down to the inlet to see the piece of land, calling it “industrial”.

Mr. Bunting, did your father drop you on your head when you were a baby?

This is what the area looks like:

The arrow is pointing to where the casino will go. I see a marina, and water and trees and other greenery, which, as you know, are common byproducts of industry. Here is another picture showing how the Delaware Seashore Industrial Park rivals anything duPont has up in Edgemoor.

Bunting, Jr. is obviously confused by the presence of bridge construction materials and equipment, in the park right now, and perhaps he thinks that the replacement Inlet bridge has always been under construction throughout history, but I can assure him, it only feels that way. Once the construction is completed on the new bridge, the staging area, which Mr. Bunting feels is industrial, will be converted into a parking lot for the North Side beach, an additional picnic pavillion, a playground, and will feature nearly 2 miles more of paths and walkways, a promenade along the Inlet and an additional bath house.

St. Patrick’s Day Open Thread

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, a celebration of all things Irish. I hope you’re all wearing green and drinking green beer in celebration. I thought I’d share some St. Patrick’s Day facts (from History.com):

The Celebration

  • Corned beef and cabbage is a traditional St. Patrick’s Day dish. In 2007, roughly 41.5 billion pounds of U.S. beef and 2.6 billion pounds of U.S. cabbage were sold. Many St. Patrick’s Day celebrants enjoyed corned beef from Texas, which produced 6.8 billion pounds of beef, and cabbage from California and New York, which produced 581 and 580 million pounds, respectively.
  • Irish soda bread gets its name and distinctive character from the use of baking soda rather than yeast as a leavening agent.
  • Lime green chrysanthemums are often requested for St. Patrick’s Day parades and celebrations.

The Parade

  • The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in the United States on March 17, 1762, when Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City.
  • More than 100 St. Patrick’s Day parades are held across the United States. New York City and Boston are home to the largest celebrations.
    At the annual New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade, participants march up 5th Avenue from 44th Street to 86th Street. More than 150,000 people take part in the event, which does not allow automobiles or floats.

According to the History.com website, Irish is the leading ancestry group in the state of Delaware and in the top 5 in every state except Hawaii and New Mexico.

I hope everyone has a happy, fun and safe St. Patrick’s Day!

Kucinich To Vote Yes

Rep. Dennis Kucinich held a press conference to announce that he will vote yes on the the health care reform bill, despite previously announcing he would vote no.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced this morning that he will in fact vote for the Senate health care bill. Kucinich’s switch was a major pickup for Democrats who are clinging to a razor thin majority on health care reform and have been struggling to find the votes to get it passed.

“This is not the bill I wanted to support,” Kucinich said. “However after careful discussions with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, my wife Elizabeth and friends, I decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation.”

…

“I know I have to make a decision not on the bill as I would like to see it but as it is,” Kucinich said, noting the Senate bill at least gave health coverage to 31 million more Americans. “My criticism of the legislation has been well reported. I do not retract those criticisms. I incorporate them into this statement.”

This is a big deal. Kucinich is a leader of the progressive block and had come in for a lot of criticism for saying that he would vote no. Obviously the pressure helped to flip his vote. I would like thank Rep. Kucinich for doing the right thing, though I don’t doubt that it is painful for him.

I think we all agree that this bill is not as good as it should be. In my opinion, it’s a big step forward. It’s establishing health care as a right guaranteed by the government and it will provide subsidies to help uninsured people purchase insurance, people who couldn’t afford insurance before. It’s also making the government responsible for absorbing the rise in health care costs, which I hope will lead to a better health care system in the future. It also helps to curb the worst abuses of health care providers.

I plan to keep on fighting. I think the next step is to support Rep. Grayson’s Medicare buy-in bill.

Legislative Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Report-St. Patty’s Day 2010

Fearless Prediction #1: Garish green will be worn in Leg Hall today by people who should not wear garish green in this lifetime or any other.

Fearless Prediction #2: For the second consecutive day of this 3-week session, the Senate will have no agenda. Not necessarily a BAD thing, mind you, but couldn’t they at least save the taxpayers some $$’s by not bothering to convene for purely ceremonial purposes at least ONE of those days?

Before I go any further with my Somnostradamusian visions, let’s recap yesterday, shall we?

Here’s the record of yesterday’s ‘action’:

The Senate did nothing save releasing 1 bill from committee and assigning some bills to committee. A couple of bills were introduced, and we’ll get to them later.

The House passed two bills sponsored by Brad Bennett. One broadens the definition of first responders, and applies penalties to those who would attack these first responders. The other increases the penalties for those “…who stand(s) in a position of trust, authority or supervision over a child who is at least 16 years old but not yet 18 years old and intentionally engages in sexual intercourse or sexual penetration with such child or an invitee or designee of such person.

Rep. Bryon Short’s bill, providing for the registration and oversight of two types of captive insurance companies, also passed.

None of the bills faced any opposition.

Today is Committee Day in both the House and Senate, and there are some real interesting bills on the docket.

You can find a complete list of Senate committee meetings here.  The complete House committee meetings are here.

There’s some seriously-interesting legislation being considered today.

First, in the Senate:

Rep. Debbie Hudson (Capano)’s misbegotten HB 3 is in the Senate Health & Social Services Committee. This bill places a lobbyist for the nursing home industry onto the Hospital Inspection Advisory Board. This is special interest legislation at its worst, and it’s the kind of stuff that generally coasts through the General Assembly unchallenged. Maybe this time will be different.

Rep. Dan Short’s HB 85 will be considered in the Senate Insurance Committee. This bill seeks to provide more predictability and certainty to small businesses regarding health insurance premiums. This bill passed unanimously in the House.

Lotsa action in the Senate Judiciary Committee today:

SB 158 (Peterson)-Creates a civil remedy for those victimized by child pornography, i. e. those whose visual images were captured on film or photograph. Those held liable include “those who are responsible for producing, or knowingly possessing, pornographic visual images of the victim.”

SB 197 (Blevins)-Creates a ‘felony strangulation statute’. Strangulation is viewed by proponents as one of the leading manifestations of domestic violence. This has led to a nationwide impetus to have a ‘stand-alone’ statute for strangulation. 18 states have adopted similar legislation.

HB 197 (Brady)-Gerald Brady is obsessed with red light cameras. Were it up to him, every intersection would have one, presumably to protect the public from people like him in his drinking days. This is his attempt to have them added “within ¼ mile of any work zone and/or school.” It barely passed the House, with 22 yes votes and 12 nos. Should be another close one in the Senate…if it gets out of committee.

The House also has some heavyweight stuff on tap (subtle St. Pat’s reference) today:

HB 317 (B. Short)-Requires door-to-door solicitors to ‘display a door to door salesperson identification card which shall include the person’s name, employer, employer telephone number, employer address and State of Delaware business license number’. Also restricts in-person solitications to the hours of 9 am to 7 pm. Presumably, politicians are exempt, per usual.

Joint Education Committee Meeting: Now, this gets a little weird. Someone will be addressing the joint committee. According to the House, it will be Dr. Harker from the University of Delaware. According to the Senate, it will be Dr. Williams of Delaware State University. Maybe it’ll be both. You can bet that whoever speaks will be begging for more $$’s.

Look for rhetorical guns to be a’blazin’ when the House Administration Committee considers Rep. John Atkins’ HB 357, which is the NRA’s demand for ultimate surrender on any and all gun laws in Delaware. It is no surprise that Delaware’s most embarrassing legislator has brought forth Delaware’s worst bill of this session. Kill it dead. Now.

The House Judiciary Committee will consider Rep. Keeley’s newly-reconfigured attempt to put more teeth into Delaware’s consumer protection statutes. I’m pretty sure that this is an initiative that has been led by AG Beau Biden.

Two bills limiting the use of cell phones while driving are due for consideration in the House Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee today. It appears that Rep. Scott’s HS 1/HB 229 is most likely to get the committee’s blessing as it is the most recent of the bills and has Rep. Miro as a prime co-sponsor. Rep. Miro has fought in vain for years to ban hand-held cell phone usage while driving. Now, let’s just get the bleeping thing passed.

As a special St. Patty Day’s treat, I leave you with the perfect antidote to the garish green:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTSkpOJokHw[/youtube]

Jackie Wilson- ‘Danny Boy’

Is Graham a RINO in Recovery?

Sen. Linsdey Graham, John McCain’s BFF, talking about health care reform on South Carolina radio inteview:

Nancy Pelosi, I think, has got them all liquored up on sake and you know, they’re making a suicide run here.

Rep. Mike Honda, a Democrat of Japanese-American descent, was not too pleased:

I am disheartened that Senator Graham chose to use racially tinged rhetoric to express his opposition to health care reform. There is a way to engage in healthy debate without alienating Asian Americans, who are an important part of this democracy and healthcare reform.

I guess Graham is trying to rebuild his racist-conservative street cred after being called out as “half-a-sissy” by Tea Party activists in October.

Hissy Fit

As the passage of health care reform becomes more and more likely, the Republican hissy fits have become more and more vehement and more dishonest. First the Republicans were throwing public tantrums about the use of reconciliation, despite the fact that reconciliation had been used multiple times by Republicans (ones currently servng in the Senate). Their latest hissy fit is about the “deem and pass” or self-executing rule the so-called “Slaughter House rule” in which the House would deem the Senate bill passed along with the reconciliation sidecar.

Some Republicans like Mike Pence and Michele Bachmann have been screaming that this is unConstitutional and that they will challenge the law in court if it is passed in this fashion. Now I might have some sympathy for the argument about using an odd procedure – I don’t understand why they just don’t pass both bills, voting on one just seems silly. However, this procedural move is nothing new and was used multiple times when Republicans controlled Congress and has been used multiple times in the current Congress without a peep of protest. I’ll let Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute explain (shrilly):

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

No Norm, there is no shame anymore and the Republican noise machine has made this a front page story in the mainstream media.

A Quiet Victory

The one debate between scientists and deniers that I don’t relish is the argument vaccinations cause autism. Maybe as I parent, I understand the need, the desire to find answers to questions that remained unanswered. Earlier this week, three separate rulings determined that vaccines — specifically thimerosal —are not linked to the cause of autism in children. One ruling said the following:

This case . . . is not a close case. The overall weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners’ causation theories.

Conversely and predictably the antivax community responded with:

Government attorneys defend a government program, using government-funded science, before government judges.

Obviously there is still a long way to go to convince the antivax parents that they are fighting a losing battle. Scientific blogger Phil Plait summarizes the problem succinctly:

This [antivax] movement is doing serious damage in two ways. One, it’s scaring parents unreasonably into not vaccinating their kids, putting these children and others at risk for contracting preventable diseases. But second, this whole debacle is distracting researchers against looking for the real causes behind autism. In other words, these people are fighting against their own cause.

We need real answers about autism, and the antivax movement is wasting tremendous resources that could be far, far better spent looking at the reality of the situation. Instead, they rail against phantoms, and the real victims are children, theirs and everybody’s.

The Price of Taking the United States for Granted

The story and repercussions of Israel’s insult to Vice President Joe Biden and the US by announcing hugely controversial expansion of East Jerusalem settlements right as the VP visits doesn’t seem to stop. Allan Loudell has been following this and has up a blog post that he has been updating as the story develops:

If Israelis wanted to peek at the FUTURE world – dominated by now emerging Third World powers with no particular religious / historical affinity for the State of Israel, and in which the United States is not always or necessarily the centerpiece of the diplomatic world – they got a glimpse.

It should have been frightening, especially against the still escalating rift between the United States and Israel.

Long-held assumptions are evaporating. There was a time when U.S. conservative talk-show hosts reverently quoted the words of General David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command.

That love affair may be ending: General Petraeus has questioned – out loud – Israel’s value as a “strategic” ally of the United States. He questions whether unilateral Israeli moves, and intransigence on the peace process, threaten U.S. lives.

That’s huge. It’s more than just about Obama.

I think that Allan is on to something here and even more I think that Hillary Clinton and President Obama are deliberately capitalizing on it. Mrs. Clinton’s 45 minute call to Netanyahu reminding him “who the junior partner in this relationship” is (thanks to John Cole at Balloon Juice for that) may have hit the necessary reset button here. One that reminds the Israelis that we are on their side and we are committed to their security, but that license to do what they want with impunity is pretty much up. Netanyahu was reported to be thinking that the Obama Admin was weakened, so he could do what he liked. And apparently the Obama Admin capitalized on this situation to remind Netanyahu of the US’s seriousness here. General Petraeus told Congress this week that the persistent hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians is not in the long term security interests of the US which — as Allan notes — is occasionally said by senior officials and often shouted down. It is tough to know where this will go — Netanyahu is expected in the US this weekend — but if it results in Netanyahu forgetting any strategy of taking the US for granted any time soon, that looks like progress to me.

Make sure you go over to Allan’s place to read his entire piece. I expect he’ll be updating this as events unwind.