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Yglesias

People Think Health Reform Will Mostly Help Someone Else

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 19, 2010 at 4:44 pm

This Gallup poll is, I think, the best window into the public opinion challenge facing health reform:

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Basically, people see this as a bill that will take resources from people who have health insurance and give it to people who don’t have health insurance. Since most voters have health insurance, that creates a climate of skepticism.

And this has really been the uphill climb from the beginning. Progressives—ranging from single-payer advocates to centrist technocrats—all have a variety of visions of systematic change we’d like to impose on the system. But most people with private insurance are happy with the insurance they have until they get sick. And most people have insurance. And most non-elderly people are pretty healthy. And the elderly have a nice single-payer system all set up for them already. Under the circumstances, persuading people to be broad-minded and expand these benefits to everyone is a bit of a tough sell. But the polling on health reform, while not great, isn’t so bad anymore.

Politics

GOP To Kill Health Bill For Nonexistent Abortion Coverage, But Provide Abortion Coverage To GOP Staff

By Lee Fang on Mar 19, 2010 at 4:25 pm

Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA)

Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA)

Republican lawmakers, as well as Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), have falsely claimed that the health reform bill allows taxpayer funded abortions. At a press conference yesterday, GOP members of Congress convened to again hammer the lie home that health reform will provide taxpayer funds for abortion.

Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA), a member of the GOP leadership team at the press event yesterday, blasted Democrats for trying to pass a health reform bill with supposed funds for abortion coverage. ThinkProgress spoke to McMorris-Rodgers after the event. According to disclosure reports, McMorris-Rodgers’ state Republican Party provides health insurance through AWB Health Choice — a consortium of benefit packages including Lifewise Health Plans of Washington, which covers abortions. McMorris-Rodgers assailed the nonexistent abortion coverage in the health reform bill, while brushing aside her own campaign dollars going towards plans which cover abortion. Eventually, the congresswoman relented and admitted that her campaign dollars funding abortion coverage is “not” okay:

TP: But at the same time, Lifewise Health Plans, which is what the Washington State GOP uses to provide health insurance to their employees, they cover abortion. So when you fundraise for the Washington State GOP, aren’t you providing dollars to abortion?

MCMORRIS-RODGERS: Uh, we’re talking about federal taxpayer dollars.

TP: Yeah, but isn’t this kind of like, you know, “do as I say, but not what I do?”

MCMORRIS-RODGERS: Um, I think the issue at hand is whether or not federal taxpayer dollars should be used to fund abortion –

TP: But your fundraiser dollars are used for abortions. … But campaign dollars are okay, Republican campaign dollars that you raise?

MCMORRIS-RODGERS: No, that’s not.

Listen here:

McMorris-Rodger’s initial indifference to her own state party funding abortion coverage reveals the partisanship of her ploy to lie about the health bill and claim that it covers abortions. Like McMorris-Rodgers, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Newt Gingrich have health insurance plans for their campaign employees which provide abortion coverage. And until recently, even the staunchly anti-choice Republican National Committee provided abortion coverage to its employees.

The Catholic Health Association and a group of 59,000 Catholic nuns recently endorsed health reform, noting that the bill in Congress does not provide taxpayer funded abortions. Additionally, T.R. Reid, writing in the Washington Post this week, explained why anti-abortion activists should support health reform. “Increasing health-care coverage is one of the most powerful tools for reducing the number of abortions — a fact proved by years of experience in other industrialized nations.” Regardless, partisan hypocrites like McMorris-Rodgers are plowing ahead, hoping to exploit a polarizing issue to kill reform.

Economy

Boehner: Student Loan Reform Will ‘Eliminate Every Bank In The Country’

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 19, 2010 at 4:00 pm

This weekend, Democrats plan to vote on their health care reform reconciliation package, which also includes student loan reform. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which would cut billions of dollars in senseless subsidies to private student lenders, passed the House last year. As of yesterday, it has a corresponding senate counterpart, which will be included in the reconciliation bill.

Currently, the federal government gives billions of dollars to student lenders to originate loans, and then guarantees loan repayment up to 97 percent, so the lenders are essentially useless middlemen that aren’t exposed to any of the loan risk. This is corporate welfare at its finest. So in order to build opposition to the bill, both the lenders and Republicans in Congress have been borrowing a tactic from the health care debate by falsely characterizing student loan reform as a “Washington takeover” of lending.

But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) took this a step further last night, saying that student loan reform would actually “eliminate every bank in the country and all student loan lenders,” replacing them with the government:

Well, if you look at this student loan provision in there, they eliminate every bank in the country and all private student loan lenders so the government can do it instead.

This is just astoundingly wrong. On a very basic level, it could only be true if the sole thing banks did was make student loans, which is obviously not the case. The day after student loan reform passes, banks will still be there, cashing checks, taking deposits, making home loans, and on and on.

But the greater point Boehner was trying to make is that student loan reform is somehow a new expansion of government into the private economy. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) echoed this sentiment yesterday, saying that student loan reform amounts to “seizing control of industries and squeezing out private competition.” But the government already provides the money for the loans and guarantees the lenders against loss, in addition to directly making millions of loans every year. So student lending is, for all intents and purposes, already a federal program.

In fact, the subsidized private program that Boehner and Enzi want to preserve is called the Federal Family Education Loan Program. By cutting the middlemen out of the process, the government will not only save billions of dollars to be used for deficit reduction, but will also have the money to increase Pell Grants and thus boost the number of college graduates. According to an analysis by CAP Senior Fellow Ulrich Boser, the boost in incomes due to student loan reform will top $100 billion.

And at the end of the day, the bill doesn’t even cut private lenders completely out of the loop, as they still would be contracted to service the loans (collect payments, etc.). But Boehner has decided that this is his week to go all out for the bankers — telling them to stand up to “punk staffers” trying to write new regulations — so it’s really not surprising that he’s willing to distort student loan reform to argue for his bank-friendly policies.

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Yglesias

Arizona Eliminating Children’s Health Care Program

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 19, 2010 at 3:58 pm

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In part this reflects the insanity of Arizona political culture. In part it reflects the dubious decision to make Janet Napolitano Secretary of Homeland Security and abandon Arizona to the depredations of the right-wing. But most of all it illustrates why the stimulus was needed and why health care can’t be left up to the states:

Arizona on Thursday became the first state to eliminate its Children’s Health Insurance Program when Gov. Jan Brewer signed an austere budget that will leave nearly 47,000 low-income children without coverage.

The Arizona budget is a vivid reflection of how the fiscal crisis afflicting state governments is cutting deeply into health care. The state also will roll back Medicaid coverage for childless adults in a move that is expected to eventually drop 310,000 people from the rolls.

One of the least-understood things about the stimulus is that its largest non-tax-cut provision is spending a bunch of money on giving funds to state governments so as to allow them to avoid tax hikes and spending cuts. In other words, ARRA cut taxes a lot and counteracted downturns in state revenues. On net, all the stimulus has done is offset the state and local anti-stimulus. The reason a bigger stimulus would have been better is that that’s the only way we could have gotten any net stimulus at all.

This is also why you can’t just do universal health care on a state-by-state basis. You need health care to be financed by an entity that’s allowed to run a deficit, or else your program is going to start to buckle every time there’s a recession.

Politics

Seven years of war in Iraq.

By Matt Duss on Mar 19, 2010 at 3:34 pm

President Bush Seven years ago today, President Bush launched the Iraq war. In a televised address to the nation, Bush told the American people “at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” Over the last several years, ThinkProgress has been keeping a Timeline of the Iraq War, marking the key events in the U.S. invasion, occupation, and now ongoing withdrawal from the country. Among the most significant events of the last year were:

JUNE 30, 2009: Jubilation as U.S. Combat Troops Withdraw From Cities. Six years and three months after the March 2003 invasion, the United States has withdrawn its remaining combat troops from Iraq’s cities and is turning over security to Iraqi police and soldiers. While more than 130,000 U.S. troops remain in the country, patrols by heavily armed soldiers in hulking vehicles have largely disappeared from Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq’s other urban centers. Iraqis danced in the streets and set off fireworks overnight in impromptu celebrations of a pivotal moment in their nation’s troubled history. The government staged a military parade to mark the new national holiday of “National Sovereignty Day,” and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made a triumphant, nationally televised address. [Washington Post, 6/30/09]

AUGUST 11, 2009: Massive Bombings In Northern Iraq and Baghdad. Two truck bombings in northern Iraq and attacks targeting day laborers in western Baghdad killed at least 51 people and wounded scores early Monday, Iraqi authorities said. The attacks underscored the Sunni insurgency’s continued ability to inflict mass casualties as the country’s Shiite-led government tries to demonstrate it can handle security with minimal assistance from the U.S. military. [Washington Post, 8/11/09]

JANUARY 7, 2010: Iraq bars 15 political parties with Baathist ties from upcoming elections. At least 15 parties will be banned from upcoming parliamentary elections because they have been linked to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party or have promoted Baathist ideals, Iraqi officials said Thursday. The decision by the Justice and Accountability Commission, in charge of cleansing high-level Baathists from the ranks of the government and security forces, seemed to be an attempt to purge candidates with links to the old political order, many of whom are popular among secular nationalist voters. The move is a blow to hopes of bringing opposition figures — who turned to violent resistance over the past seven years — into the political fold, part of the U.S. strategy to bolster the government. [Washington Post, 1/8/10]

On March 7, Iraqis braved terrorist attacks to go to the polls in Iraq’s second parliamentary election since the U.S. invasion. Latest returns show that incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Maliki “has strengthened his lead over main rival Iyad Allawi in Iraq’s parliamentary elections, with partial results now in from all 18 provinces.”

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Yglesias

All Deficit Reduction Plans Involve Promises About Future Action

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 19, 2010 at 3:14 pm

healthcare_costs1

Ruth Marcus becomes the latest in a long line of commentators to disparage the health reform bill’s deficit-reduction possibilities because they’re about the future:

And here is the accompanying tablespoon of salt: The CBO is required to assume that Congress will do what it promises. So, for example, Congress promises in the measure to cut several hundred billion dollars in Medicare spending. Sometimes such promises have come to pass. Other times, as in the current difficulty with scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursements for doctors, they are put off because of a public — or politically connected — outcry.

Look, I’d certainly say that forecasts of the future legislative environment should be taken with a grain of salt. But Marcus adds up several grains worth of doubts and then says the CBO’s assumption that Congress will do what it promises deserves a full tablespoon of salt. It’s of course true that this is how the CBO works, but disparaging its scores on these grounds is a universal solvent that would destroy any effort at policy analysis. The long-term fiscal deficit, after all, is itself a prediction about future events so the only thing Congress can possibly do to change it is to make repealable promises about what future policy will be.

I think you could coherently say that the 111th Congress just shouldn’t worry about the deficit beyond 2011 at all. You could say it’s silly to even talk about events in 2012 or 2013 and absurd to talk about events in 2027 since those deficits will be determined by future congresses. But if you don’t care about future deficits, then there’s no reason to carp that the deficit reduction isn’t strong enough. And if the 111th Congress is going to care at all about long-term fiscal problems, that caring will necessarily take the form of promises about the future course of policy that will be subject to repeal by future congresses.

It’s also worth noting that default rules matter. George W Bush pushed his tax plans with, among other things, phoney baloney deficit numbers based on the expiration of tax cuts that he never intended to let expire. But notwithstanding his subjective desire to see those cuts never expire, many of them will in fact expire and the fact that current law schedules them to expire makes it much easier for proponents of higher taxes to achieve their policy objective.

Security

Allawi’s Gains Evidence Of Non-Sectarian Constituency

By Peter Juul, Guest Blogger on Mar 19, 2010 at 3:00 pm

allawiIn the coverage of Iraq’s recent parliamentary election, former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi and his Iraqiya bloc has been characterized as, in the words of reporter Anthony Shadid, “a default leader for Sunnis” and, in the words of fellow reporter Leila Fadel, “the candidate of choice for Sunni Arabs.” Fadel and Shadid are excellent journalists and are reflecting the reality that provinces with heavily Sunni Arab populations are voting for Iraqiya, but casting Allawi and his coalition as a “Sunni bloc” further perpetuates the false notion of an underlying sectarian and communitarian basis for Iraqi politics that has driven much of the discourse in the United States about Iraqi politics.

First, while Iraqiya includes several Sunni Arab politicians like Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and al-Hadbaa leader Osama al-Nujaifi, it is, unlike other prominent vote-getters, an explicitly secular list. Allawi himself is a secular Iraqi of Shi’a religious background — and a former Baathist who left the party as Saddam Hussein rose to power in the late 1970s, nearly paying for it with his life.

Calling Allawi a “candidate from a Sunni electorate,” as a rival from current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bloc did, is misleading. While it may be true that many Sunni Arabs voted for Iraqiya, it remains possible that they see their lots better off under secular, non-sectarian government than under a government run by Shi’a sectarian parties like Maliki’s Dawa, the Iranian-backed Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, or the Sadrist movement. In other words, even if Sunni Arabs strongly define themselves as such they may conclude that their interests lay with secular and not religiously-based politics.

It’s not difficult to see why Sunnis and other Iraqi religious minorities might find Allawi’s secular message appealing. As he told al-Jazeera in the days before the election, “… the trend in Iraq is moving away from sectarianism, towards secularism. And we believe very strongly that… we [must] create a real partnership in Iraq, and we respect all the sects, we respect all religions. But the way forward for Iraq is definitely secular-rooted.”

Ultimately, the main problem with writing off Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition as basically a Sunni Arab-only party is that it marginalizes an invisible secular nationalist constituency in Iraq. This constituency has been ignored, especially by policymakers in Washington, largely thanks to preconceived notions of Iraq as an uneasy confederation of three main ethno-religious sects and the superior organization of sectarian political parties. But Iraqiya’s ability to run neck-and-neck with Prime Minister Maliki’s State of Law coalition for a plurality both in overall vote totals and parliamentary seats suggests that secular nationalism still has a strong political pull for many Iraqis — not necessarily just those of Sunni Arab background.

While we should recognize that Iraqiya has tapped into a considerable secular nationalist constituency, we shouldn’t go too far and hail the end of sectarian politics in Iraq. As mentioned, Iraqiya is running strongly and Allawi could very well wind up Iraq’s next prime minister. But Iraqi politics remain extremely fragmented and sectarian parties — mainly Shi’a Islamist parties like Dawa, ISCI, and Sadrists, but also the Kurdish parties — still managed to win the majority of the vote.

What Iraqiya’s strong showing should do, however, is disabuse observers and policymakers of ideas that Iraqi politics are to be conceived of in strictly sectarian terms. Allawi has shown that a previously unexploited secular nationalist constituency exists, and DC pundits ought to adjust their analysis accordingly.

Politics

New Study Estimates Mass Deportation Of Undocumented Immigrants Would Cost $285 Billion

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Mar 19, 2010 at 2:40 pm

deportationThis weekend, several thousands of people are expected to gather on the National Mall to demand action on immigration reform. The immigration restrictionist group NumbersUSA is meanwhile responding with a four-day campaign to “stop amnesty” which starts today.

However, a study released this afternoon by the Center for American Progress shows that the enforcement-only approach that restrictionist groups incessantly advocate for isn’t sustainable in the long-term. CAP estimates that a strategy aimed at deporting the nation’s population of undocumented immigrants would total approximately $285 billion over five years. According to the report, a deportation-only policy would amount to $922 in new taxes for “every man, woman, and child in this country”:

The undeniable conclusion from these findings is that the federal price tag to deport all undocumented immigrants currently in the United States is prohibitive. The operational feasibility of such a massive effort is dubious at best. It would require an unprecedented deployment of resources, and the problems currently plaguing our detention system and immigration courts would be exacerbated in the extreme and would likely precipitate widespread human rights and due process violations. Moreover, a mass deportation strategy would have a crippling impact on economic growth. The exorbitant direct costs of such a strategy detailed in this report should be the final nail in the coffin of a moribund idea.

Groups that support an enforcement-only approach to immigration insist that they do not advocate a policy of mass deportation, but rather support an “attrition through enforcement” strategy — a harsh strategy used to “wear down the will” of undocumented immigrants through increased deportations, detentions, and anti-immigrant ordinances. According to these groups, many immigrants will choose to deport themselves at minimal cost to the U.S. taxpayer. However, research has shown that ramped up enforcement doesn’t drive most immigrants back to their home countries, rather it only pushes them deeper into the shadows.

Even if the U.S. didn’t aim to deport every single undocumented immigrant, the costs associated with any large-scale deportation program like the anti-immigration groups propose are significant. CAP estimates that it costs $23,148 for each person to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and finally transported
out of the country. ICE deported 349,041 immigrants during the 2008 fiscal year ending September 30. Using CAP’s estimates, that means that the government spent approximately $8,079,601,068 last year alone.

Ultimately, anti-immigration groups couldn’t even wish undocumented immigrants away for free. In a paper released in January, UCLA professor Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda published research which found that if undocumented immigrants were removed from the economy, it would reduce U.S. GDP by $2.6 trillion over ten years. Hinojosa-Ojeda also affirmed that if undocumented immigrants were put on an earned path to legalization as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package, it would result in at least $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years.

More at Wonk Room.

Climate Progress

Scientists: “There are multiple, consistent lines of evidence from ground-based studies published in the peer-reviewed literature that Amazon forests are, indeed, very susceptible to drought stress.”

By Joe Romm on Mar 19, 2010 at 2:38 pm

Major amplifying carbon-cycle feedback is not a “myth”

Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation.

This statement in the 2007 IPCC is “basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced,” as tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis told the BBC in January.

That didn’t stop the anti-science blogosphere from spinning this into another phony “gate,” as ClimateSafety explained in an excellent post, “AmazonGate: how the denial lobby and a dishonest journalist created a fake scandal.”

Recently, the anti-science crowd, from FoxNews to Anthony Watts, has been crowing about a new study that supposedly shows the IPCC paragraph was wrong.  But a major statement by 19 top U.S., U.K., and Brazilian scientists who “conduct research on Amazon forests, climate, and/or fire,” thoroughly debunks that notion:

Read more

Yglesias

More Sprawl Commentary

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 19, 2010 at 2:28 pm

Kevin Drum chimed into the sprawl debate with a contribution that I think is a little confused:

I’m just saying that everyone needs to understand what they’re up against here. It’s not zoning per se that causes sprawl, it’s the fact that lots of registered voters actively want sprawl and have successfully demanded rules that keep density at bay. These kinds of land use regulations aren’t going away without the mother of all knock-down-drag-out fights first.

Ryan Avent observes part of what this gets wrong. It’s true that the problem of overly restrictive land-use rules is in large part a problem of voter-preference. But it’s not a problem of voter-preference for sprawl per se. It’s a general problem of homeowner eagerness to exclude outsiders. It’s politically difficult to build dense infill development in Washington, DC and that’s not because DC residents want to live in sprawling areas or because DC residents approve of sprawl as a phenomenon. It’s a mixture of selfishness, misunderstanding, and poor institutional design. As Ben Adler reminds us, surveys indicate that about a third of Americans would like to live in walkable urban areas but less than 10 percent of the country’s dwelling units are in areas that fit the bill. That’s why houses in walkable central cities (Manhattan) and walkable suburbs (near Metro in Arlington Country, VA for example) are so expensive.

Obviously we don’t have good near-term prospects for eliminating selfishness from human affairs. But based on informal discussions with people, reading of neighborhood blogs, and participation on listserves of various kinds it’s clear to me that there’s a fair amount of genuine misunderstanding about the impact of land use decisions. So hear on the blog we seek to improve understanding!

There are also real issues of institutional design. Incumbent residents of developed areas generally prefer that new development happen someplace else. But because everyone desires this, we all wind up worse off than we would be if we couldn’t all get our way. Federal transportation spending can and should be used as leverage to encourage more efficient (both economically and ecologically) use of land. Property taxes could be replaced with taxes on land. The lines of political authority over land use decisions could be rationalized so as to allow for some accountability—how many DC residents can name their ANC Single-Member District representative or even know what that means?

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