‘It will be his Waterloo’

By Jennifer J. Foster

Let’s talk health care reform.

I have been watching this with interest as Congress has started to take on the details of reform. As I did with the Sotomayor nomination, I held my fire until it became apparent what was being done.

I said a couple of weeks ago that the deadline House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set to get the proposal out of her chamber was arbitrary and had no basis in reality. It was just a date she picked out of the air.

Well, there are 434 other folks who serve with Pelosi. And they didn’t like being bullied. Many of those don’t-tell-us-what-to-do-congressmen are ... Democrats.

As I told you last week, the Blue Dog Democrats started expressing concern even before the House bill was rolled out (which, incidentally, was after Pelosi set the deadline. Nothing like having a deadline four to six weeks away and not even having a bill).

Pelosi ignored them.

The bill was rolled out anyway, with no concern or regard whatsoever for the misgivings of those even in her own party.

But the Blue Dogs won’t be ignored. They know the power they have to—pardon the pun—affect change. So they made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they would put the brakes on this sucker if they didn’t get the concessions they wanted due to their concerns about the deficit, tax increases, protections for rural areas and even the possibility that the new plan could use federal tax dollars for abortion.

(Hey, President Obama. If you’re looking for a way to curry favor with conservative and moderate Democrats to help this thing along, you might consider ruling out abortion coverage as part of your reform package. But then, of course, that would be YOU making the compromise. We know how you think compromise is for everyone else.)

It’s no joke. The president decided to meet with them—and, as a matter of fact, they may all be having coffee and tea in the White House as we speak, because that meeting was to take place today.

I wonder if the little subject of the efforts of his political team to target those Democrats in new media spots will come up, you know, just in the course of conversation.

And while we’re on that topic, what do you make of the fact that President Obama is turning on members of his own party? What happened to the big-tent philosophy the Democrats were so busy crowing about and chiding the Republicans about just a couple of months ago?

It seems that President Obama and congressional Democratic leadership are only interested in a big tent if that big tent is filled with bobbleheads.

Anyway, the reality is that the president just doesn’t have the votes right now. So this is why we are seeing the stepped-up, full court public relations press from the White House and the president himself.

Yesterday, he made some remarks at a children’s hospital. In the course of those remarks, he signaled a new timetable for passing the bill—by the end of the year, instead of by the August recess in a couple of weeks.

It’s indisputable that the new timetable was more an acceptance of the political reality that he doesn’t have the votes right now than an acknowledgement of and concession to those folks who believe that the pace he’s set for a major reform package is simply insane.

But what really bothered me was the tone the president took.

The remark made by U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) about how it would be the president’s “Waterloo” if opponents were able to stop him on health care reform took center stage. It was the headline out of that statement.

I wondered as I listened to his speech how the president can say on one hand that it isn’t about him, but then make the remark one Republican senator made about Obama the centerpiece of the speech. That sounded pretty disingenuous to me.

And then there were Obama’s remarks about how those who oppose his efforts are doing it for political purposes.

That statement is simply NOT true. It IS simply unfair.

I’ll have more to say about this in my column this weekend, but suffice it to say that the president is starting to take on an ugly tone when it comes to getting things done.

You might say he’s adopting techniques and approaches that are indicative of the “tired old politics of the past.“

How’s that for a sound bite?

This week’s column

By Jennifer J. Foster

OK, folks, I’m back from a weeklong trip to Florida for my brother’s wedding. So it’s time to catch up the blog a bit.

First off, in case you missed it in Saturday’s print edition of the Opelika-Auburn News, my most recent column is now available on the web. Check it out:

Sotomayor hearings offer little surprises

I watched a good bit of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor last week. I had said that I was interested in hearing how she would explain her “wise Latina” remark, among other things. Having heard her responses, I used this week’s column to wrap my thoughts on the Supreme Court confirmation process in general, her explanation of her infamous remark and why that explanation is important.

It might surprise you.

In related news, Alabama’s own U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, exercised his right to request a one-week delay in the committee’s vote on Sotomayor’s nomination. Sessions wanted the time to review the answers Sotomayor provided to written questions GOP senators posed to her following the televised hearing last week.

The delay makes sense: Sotomayor turned in her answers this morning.

‘Blue Dogs’ may block health care bill

By Jennifer J. Foster

I won’t say I told you so, but ...

From the CNN Political Ticker:

A leader of the conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats told CNN Wednesday he and other group members may vote to block House Democrats’ health care bill from passing a key committee if they don’t get some of the changes they want.

“We remain opposed to the current bill, and we continue to meet several times a day to decide how we’re going to proceed and what amendments we will be offering as Blue Dogs on the committees,“ said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Arkansas.

Remember that the Blue Dogs include freshmen Alabama congressmen Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith.

Blue Dogs said that the House bill, about which I opined yesterday, did not address the concerns they shared with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter to her late last week, before the bill was rolled out with much fanfare on Tuesday.

I’ll tell you this: She’d better start listening now—or the only thing she’ll be delivering to President Obama by the congressional recess in August is her deepest apologies.

Health care madness

By Jennifer J. Foster

OK, folks, let’s talk health care.

I’ve held my fire on this issue until I knew more about what was being done and how fast it was being pursued.

It’s become obvious over the past 10 days that this effort is neither deliberate nor deliberative.

I told you in my column on Saturday about the breakneck pace with which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was determined to accomplish the passage of a bill—any bill, apparently—by a self-set deadline in August. Pelosi stuck her neck out and told President Obama that she would have it done by then, don’t worry.

Well, as it turns out, there are some lawmakers who actually care about what’s in the bill, so they aren’t thrilled about having an articifical timeline shoved down their throat—especially when it’s unclear, even to Democratic leadership, what the reforms will entail or how they will be paid for.

This from CNN:

“We are going to accomplish what many people felt wouldn’t happen in our lifetime,“ (U.S. Rep. Henry) Waxman (D-Calif.) said.

Yeah. They just don’t know exactly how.

Two ideas they have appear to be contradictory: On one hand, House Democrats want to expand Medicaid to individuals and families with incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level; but on the other, they include a “series of measures intended to reduce costs of Medicaid, Medicare and other existing systems.“

Hmm. There’s only one way you can expand coverage and reduce costs at the same time. And it’s not good for patients.

House Democrats did nail down one thing: The House plan involves a massive tax increase: A 5.4 percent surtax on couples earning more than $1 million, with a 1.5 percent surtax on couples with income between $500,000 and $1 million, and a 1 percent surtax on incomes over $350,000, including capital gains and earned income.

You know what this is called? It’s called PENALIZING SUCCESS.

And then you have the mandate. The House plan calls for a penalty of 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income for “non-compliance” by individuals.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Doesn’t a participation mandate fly in the face of remarks then-candidate Barack Obama made all along the campaign trail last year, when he insisted that Americans who don’t have health insurance lack it not because they don’t want it, but because they can’t afford it?

Yes, I’m pretty sure I remember hearing that sound bite ... oh, about 437 times.

President Obama, WHERE ARE YOU on this issue?

Paging President Obama. Leadership needed. President Obama to the Capitol.

Here’s a flowchart purporting to illustrate the mess that is the House bill. Granted, it is from the Republican leadership office. But note especially the inclusions of “Cultural & Linguistic Training” and a “Language Demonstration Program” and the involvement of the Office of Civil Rights. What are those things doing in a health care reform package?

I’m not sure I want to know.

And then you have the Senate.

You might have missed it, what with all the attention being diverted to the Sotomayor hearings in the Judiciary Committee. But the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, split 13-10 along party lines, passed a $600 BILLION overhaul this morning.

But it’s not really $600 BILLION. Oh, no. From CNN:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported it would cost $615 billion over 10 years, far less than estimates for other legislation. But the estimate did not include the cost of a proposed expansion of the federally funded Medicaid system for low-income families, which could add several hundred billion dollars to the overall tab.

Sen. Mike Enzi, the health committee’s top Republican, called the measure “a prescription for failure.“ He said the real cost would be about $1 trillion, and the measure would drive up cost and ration health care on lines similar to Britain.

I know U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy has worked on this for a long time, and I realize that Democrats, including President Obama, feel some sort of emotional connection to the senator because of his ongoing battle against brain cancer.

But Kennedy’s illness, even if it is terminal, is no reason to ram a bad plan down Americans’ throats.

If congressional Democrats insist on fast-tracking this legislation, this massive health care overhaul and its associated tax structure, through to President Obama, then at the very least, it should NOT include a mandate. People should have the—what’s the word? Oh yes, FREEDOM—to choose whether to enroll or not.

You know, freedom. That used to be big in these parts.

On my Twitter feed this morning, I mentioned a great editorial produced by the Chicago Tribune on Monday. It is full of common sense. Observe:

The White House is twisting arms and making side deals with the hospital industry, drugmakers and Wal-Mart. The administration is trumpeting billions in promised savings to finance this massive expansion. But it’s hard to understand exactly who has agreed to what and how all these alleged savings are supposed to materialize.

What’s the rush? When did reforming the $2.5 trillion-a-year health-care system become a sprint? ...

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that only 41 percent are willing to pay more, either in higher health insurance premiums or higher taxes, to increase the number of Americans who have health insurance. More than half of us—54 percent—say we aren’t willing to pay more.

But it doesn’t seem to matter what Americans want. The lawmakers in charge have an agenda, and they don’t have time to listen.

The Tribune editorial goes on to make a great case for incremental change in health care—first by covering uninsured children, then the poor, then by incentivizing individual health insurance through the tax code, then by expanding state-run risk pools—mostly, by controlling costs.

But none of this empowers Washington. And from the looks of the early plans coming out of Congress, that seems to be the real endgame.

The least lawmakers can do as they pursue this folly is leave Americans with the choice to stay out of the mess.

This week’s column, and more on health care reform

By Jennifer J. Foster

In case you missed it in Saturday’s print edition of the Opelika-Auburn News, my most recent column is now on the web. Check it out:

Blue Dogs barking on health care reform

It’s about the impact that the Blue Dog Democrats are having on health care reform efforts.

As fate would have it, there’s an article today about the impact another group of Democrats—pro-life Democrats—are having on the debate over health care reform. From NPR:

More than nearly any other issue, abortion has the potential to throw a wrench into the already fragile gears of the major health care overhaul now starting to churn on Capitol Hill.

“I take a view that there’s almost anything [that can be compromised] in public affairs except probably the issue of abortion,“ said Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), one of the leading Republicans seeking a bipartisan health bill.

Already in the House, 19 Democrats have written House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowing not to vote for any health bill that includes abortion funding.

“We cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan,“ said the letter, whose lead signers included Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Bart Stupak of Michigan and Minnesota’s Collin Peterson.

No wonder President Obama has been AWOL when it comes to leadership on specific provisions within the health care reform effort. The president, after all, doesn’t have all that much cat-herding experience.