In an op-ed today in the Washington Times, Frank Donatelli smeared efforts to pass portions of health reform through reconciliation as an “arcane backroom procedure,” while referring to the legislation with the pejorative label “Obamacare.” Donatelli, who is a regular opinion writer for the Times, is also a frequent political pundit on CNN. In giving Donatelli a free platform to attack health reform, neither media outlet has disclosed that Donatelli is the director of public affairs for McGuireWoods Consulting (an affiliate of the law firm McGuireWoods LLP), a major lobbying firm that is currently representing Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Donatelli, whose firm has already received three separate payments of $54,000 from Blue Cross Blue Shield to lobby Congress and the administration, is also associated with various right-wing groups organizing to defeat reform:

– Donatelli is a member of Citizens for the Republic, a group organizing tea party protests against health reform.

– Donatelli’s McGuireWoods is a client of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, an infamous GOP public relations firm with a history of working for health insurers like CIGNA and Aetna. Shirley & Banister is currently managing Let Freedom Right, a right-wing group preparing to run anti-health reform videos.

– Donatelli is the chairman of the Republican recruitment group GOPAC. At a GOPAC conference earlier this month, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) declared that President Obama’s health reform plans should “be put out of business.” Other speakers lined up to similarly malign reform.

But Donatelli is not the only opponent of reform mobilizing opposition without disclosing ties to the health insurance industry.

The American Conservative Union is a right-wing “grassroots” organization that is currently mobilizing anti-reform activities around Congressional town halls. The group boasts that attendees at Democratic town halls were reading questions from “talking points off a guide produced by the American Conservative Union,” and recently the group distributed a letter that said health reform would “pull the plug on grandma.” ACU’s chairman David Keene is a lobbyist for the Carmen Group, a firm that represents various health care interests, including the New York health insurer HealthFirst.

In Florida, Richard Willich attempted to organize a “leaded tea party” where opponents of reform could gather for speeches while firing guns at a shooting range. Willich, the new state chairman for Americans for Prosperity — a group run by a former associate of Jack Abramoff — is also the president of MDI Holdings, a company with several health care subsidiaries which work closely with insurers. Similarly, Corey Lewandowski — the New Hampshire state director of Americans for Prosperity who organized the protest outside of President Obama’s health reform town hall a few weeks ago — is a chief lobbyist for Schwartz Communications, a firm representing pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Fox News aired several interviews of Lewandowski without once noting his role representing corporate health care interests.

Today, both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget released revised deficit projections, which take into account changes in the economy that have occurred since the last projections were made. The projections reveal a lower deficit for 2009, but $2 trillion more in deficits over ten years due to the recession being deeper than previously calculated.

Conservatives have inevitably started using the projections to criticize the administration’s economic policies. For instance, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) wrote in Politico today that the administration is being economically dishonest and that its economic credibility “has taken a sharp hit”:

The facts are disheartening. This year’s deficit is set to swell to more than $1.5 trillion…In this economy, as families review their own budgets and adjust accordingly, they expect their government to act in a manner that reflects the challenging times we are in. Much of the public frustration with Washington has been evident in town halls across the country, and many Americans believe the administration’s top priority should be cutting the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term.

First, Cantor is being disingenuous when he claims that the 2009 deficit is “set to swell” to $1.5 trillion. The 2009 projection has actually been revised downward, from $1.8 trillion, because less money than anticipated was spent on the bank rescues.

But more importantly, Cantor penned an entire op-ed hooked to the new projections, seemingly without reading them. If he had, he might have noticed that what he calls the “top priority” — halving the deficit by the end of the President’s first term — the administration is on course to achieve. Both the CBO (the top table) and the OMB (the bottom table) project that the deficit will be cut by more than half in 2013:

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out, all the new projections indicate is that the administration and Congress should “begin taking steps to ensure that the deficit will come down to reasonable levels (3 percent of Gross Domestic Product or less) in the slightly longer run (through 2019) and that the deficits do not begin to grow very rapidly in the following decades.”

Today, President Barack Obama interrupted his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to nominate Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for a second term. Bernanke’s first term ends on January 31, 2010, and his reappointment will require confirmation by the Senate Banking Committee.

During his announcement, Obama praised Bernanke’s action during the current crisis, and looked to the future of financial markets:

We have already seen how lax enforcement and weak regulation can lead to enormous wealth for a few and enormous pain for everyone else. And that’s why even though there is some resistance on Wall Street from those who prefer things the way they are, we will pass the reforms necessary to protect consumers, investors, and the entire financial system. And we will continue to maintain a strong and independent Federal Reserve.

I think there are some definite advantages to reappointing Bernanke. He has been admirably non-ideological, and the Fed under his guidance has taken very necessary steps to fight the economic crisis, particularly once the traditional Fed tool (cutting interest rates) was exhausted. He was slow in both noticing and reacting to the housing bubble and burst, but once the Fed was in full swing its actions helped to mitigate the worst of the downturn. I agree with Brad DeLong that there is no obvious better choice.

That said, his appointment makes the regulatory reform effort more difficult, even with Obama’s firm committment to it. Bernanke has been critical of many of the ideas that the administration has put forth, particularly the proposal to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). He still has a very bank-centric notion of regulation, and he has jealously guarded the Fed’s consumer protection turf, even though the Fed undeniably failed in that duty.

As National Journal reported, in opposing the CFPA the financial service industry is “focusing on regulators’ qualms to make their point instead of emphasizing complaints of the industry that stands to come under tighter scrutiny.” So the administration has now given even more credibility to the prevailing view of the regulators, providing the industry with even more ammunition. Also, Bernanke’s reappointment will probably provide some jet-fuel to the effort to audit the Fed, and the plan to bestow the Fed with responsibility for regulating systemic risk will give Congress even more pause than it did before.

In re-upping with Bernanke, the administration chose macroeconomic policy over bringing in someone more sympathetic to its views on regulation or who could ease concerns over giving the Fed more power. Bernanke may be the right person to untangle the Fed from its various economic rescues and for promoting a recovery, but it may come at the expense of meaningful changes to the system.