A Blue View

Historic Overhaul Of Higher Ed Aid Also Becomes Law Of The Land

NY Times:

Ending one of the fiercest lobbying fights in Washington, Congress voted Thursday to force commercial banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new education initiatives.

The revamping of student-loan programs was included in — if overshadowed by — the final health care package. The vote was 56 to 43 in the Senate and 220 to 207 in the House, with Republicans unanimously opposed in both chambers.

Since the bank-based loan program began in 1965, commercial banks like Sallie Mae and Nelnet have received guaranteed federal subsidies to lend money to students, with the government assuming nearly all the risk. Democrats have long denounced the program, saying it fattened the bottom line for banks at the expense of students and taxpayers.

“Why are we paying people to lend the government’s money and then the government guarantees the loan and the government takes back the loan?” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.

Democrats celebrated the legislation, a centerpiece of President Obama’s education agenda, as a far-reaching overhaul of federal financial aid, providing a huge infusion of money to the Pell grant program and offering new help to lower-income graduates in getting out from under crushing student debt. Still, the final bill is less ambitious than the original proposal.

Congressional allies of the student-loan industry attacked the overhaul as an overreaching government takeover. The legislation substitutes an expanded direct-lending program by the government for the bank-based program, directing $36 billion over 10 years to Pell grants, for students from low-income families ...

Even as the Democrats’ decision to attach the student-loan overhaul to the health care package virtually ensured its passage, banks fought fiercely up to the last minute, prompting some lawmakers, like Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, where Nelnet has its headquarters, to cast their vote against the overall bill.

Although private banks will no longer be allowed to make student loans with federal money, many will continue to earn income by servicing those loans.

The Congressional Budget Office said the direct-lending approach would save taxpayers about $61 billion over 10 years. Roughly $40 billion of the savings will be redirected to higher education. Education programs will get an additional $10 billion from the health care package.

The bill includes some landmark changes, like automatic increases, tied to inflation, in the maximum Pell grant award. But for individual students, the increase in the maximum Pell grant — to $5,900 in 2019-20 from $5,550 for the 2010-11 school year — is minuscule, compared with the steep, inexorable rise in tuition for public and private colleges alike.

And because college costs are rising so quickly, the maximum Pell grant now covers only about a third of the average cost of attending a public university, compared with three-quarters in the 1970s, when the program began. So each year, more students graduate with debt of more than $20,000.

The legislation will make it easier to pay back student loans, by reducing the share of income that a graduate must devote to loan payments and by accelerating loan forgiveness — but not right away. Those who take out new loans after July 1, 2014, will have to devote 10 percent of their income to payments, down from the current 15 percent, and those who keep up their payments will have their loans forgiven after 20 years, reduced from the current 25.

“Income-based repayment is a fantastic addition to the Senate bill that will allow over a million students to avoid being crushed by unmanageable levels of debt,” said Rich Williams, a higher-education advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

With the new legislation, students will have to take out their loans through their college’s financial aid office, instead of using a private bank.

Cap & Trade Is Dead. Long Live Cap & Dividend!

NY Times:

Less than a year ago, cap and trade was the policy of choice for tackling climate change.

Environmental groups and their foes in industry joined hands to embrace the approach, a market-driven system that sets a ceiling on global warming pollution while allowing companies to trade permits to meet it. President Obama praised it by name in his first budget, and the authors of the House climate and energy bill passed last June largely built their measure around it.

Today, the concept is in wide disrepute, with opponents effectively branding it “cap and tax,” and Tea Party followers using it as a symbol of much of what they say is wrong with Washington.

Mr. Obama dropped all mention of cap and trade from his current budget. And the sponsors of a Senate climate bill likely to be introduced in April, now that Congress is moving past health care, dare not speak its name.

“I don’t know what ‘cap and trade’ means,” Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said last fall in introducing his original climate change plan.

Mr. Kerry’s partner in promoting global warming legislation, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, pronounced economywide cap and trade dead last month and has since been working with Mr. Kerry to try to patch together a bill that satisfies the diverse economic, regional and ideological interests of the Senate.

That plan, still being written, will include a cap on greenhouse gas emissions only for utilities, at least at first, with other industries phased in perhaps years later. It is also said to include a modest tax on gasoline, diesel fuel and aviation fuel, accompanied by new incentives for oil and gas drilling, nuclear power plant construction, carbon capture and storage, and renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

Why did cap and trade die? The short answer is that it was done in by the weak economy, the Wall Street meltdown, determined industry opposition and its own complexity ...

Two senators, Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, have proposed an alternative that they call cap and dividend, under which licenses to pollute would be auctioned to producers and wholesalers of fossil fuels, with three-quarters of the revenue returned to consumers in monthly checks to cover their higher energy costs.

Ms. Cantwell said that cap and trade had been discredited by the Wall Street crisis, the Enron scandal and the rocky start to a carbon credits trading system in Europe that has been subject to dizzying price fluctuations and widespread fraud.

She said her bill would require every pollution permit to be auctioned rather than given away and was 39 pages long, compared with Waxman-Markey, which weighs in at some 1,400 pages.

The Cantwell-Collins plan is almost exactly what Mr. Obama proposed in the campaign and after first taking office — a 100 percent auction of permits and a large tax rebate to the public.

“He called our bill ‘very elegant,’ ” Ms. Cantwell said. “Simplicity and having something people can understand is important.”

Poll: "By Slim Margin, Americans Support Healthcare Bill's Passage"

Gallup:

Nearly half of Americans give a thumbs-up to Congress' passage of a healthcare reform bill last weekend, with 49% calling it "a good thing." Republicans and Democrats have polar opposite reactions, with independents evenly split.

The findings, from a March 22 USA Today/Gallup poll conducted one day after the bill received a majority of votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, represent immediate reactions to the vote.

Americans' emotional responses to the bill's passage are more positive than negative -- with 50% enthusiastic or pleased versus 42% angry or disappointed -- and are similar to their general reactions.

Although much of the public debate over healthcare reform has been heated, barely a third of rank-and-file citizens express either enthusiasm (15%) or anger (19%) about the bill's passage. However, only Democrats show greater enthusiasm than anger. Independents are twice as likely to be angry as enthusiastic, and Republicans 10 times as likely.

Bottom Line

Passage of healthcare reform was a clear political victory for President Obama and his allies in Congress. While it also pleases most of his Democratic base nationwide, it is met with greater ambivalence among independents and with considerable antipathy among Republicans. Whether these groups' views on the issue harden or soften in the coming months could be crucial to how healthcare reform factors into this year's midterm elections. Given that initial public reaction to Sunday's vote is more positive than recent public opinion about passing a healthcare reform bill, it appears some softening has already occurred.

Post-Vote, Democrats Subjected To Threats & Violence

Wash Post:

The pitched battle over health care has unleashed a rash of vandalism and attacks directed at politicians, with at least 10 House Democrats reporting death threats or incidents of harassment or vandalism at their district offices over the past week.

More than 100 House Democrats met behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon with representatives of the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police. The lawmakers voiced what one senior aide who was present described as "serious concern" about their security in Washington and in their home districts when they return this weekend for the spring recess.

Usually only the congressional leadership has regular personal protection from the Capitol Police. But at least 10 lawmakers have been offered increased protection by law enforcement agencies, said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.).

Asked whether members are endangered, Hoyer said: "Yes. [There are] very serious incidents that have occurred."

Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer e-mailed senators and staffers Wednesday telling them to "remain vigilant." Gainer, a former Capitol Police chief, said in an interview that the warning was meant to "assuage people's fears."

But House Democrats say they are unnerved.

"Our democracy is about participation," Hoyer said. "Our democracy is about differing and debate and animated debate and passionate debate. But it is not about violence."

The vandalism began last weekend, when the House debated the health bill for final passage. In Wichita, someone broke the window of a county Democratic Party headquarters with a brick that had "No to Obama" and "No ObamyCare" written on it. Lyndsey Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party, said she went to work Saturday morning to clean up the shattered glass around her desk.

"It was surprising and alarming to know that people, when they have so many opportunities for expression in this country, that somebody would resort to a brick," Stauble said.

Over the next 24 hours, thrown bricks shattered the glass doors and windows of party headquarters from Rochester, N.Y., to Cincinnati. A propane gas line at the Charlottesville home of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother was severed Tuesday after a self-identified "tea party" activist posted what he believed to be the Virginia Democrat's address on a Web site and urged opponents to "drop by" to convey their opposition to his yes vote on the health bill.

A brick was thrown through the Niagara Falls district office of Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who also received a threatening voice-mail message referring to sniper attacks. The front door to the Tucson district office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shattered. And Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose last-minute negotiations to bar federal funding of abortion helped secure the bill's passage, received a fax with a drawing of a noose and an anonymous voice mail saying: "You're dead. We know where you live. We'll get you."

In Washington on Wednesday, the attacks were roundly condemned, with some congressional leaders wondering whether the long fight over health care had unleashed an ugly dimension to the modern political discourse.

Senator Grassley Touts Provisions In Health Bill He Voted Against

44 blog:

President Obama's senior advisers believe the new health-care law will be good politics for them.

Could they be right?

For all the unified, angry rhetoric from Republicans lately, there is some evidence of cracks in the GOP wall of opposition.

Take, for example, the following e-mail from the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who had mocked the health-care legislation, gave encouragement to the "death panel" accusation, and abandoned bipartisan negotiations.

"The health-care legislation signed into law yesterday includes provisions Grassley co-authored to impose standards for the tax exemption of charitable hospitals for the first time," he said. "The provisions enacted in the new health-care law are the result of Grassley's leadership on tax-exempt organizations' accountability and transparency, including hospitals."

Yes, that's Grassley taking credit for the health-care bill. The same bill that some of his Republican colleagues say they want to repeal. The same bill that 13 Republican attorneys general say is unconstitutional.

"That Senator Grassley, who infamously declared that health reform would 'kill Grand Ma' and walked away from the negotiating table, would take credit for anything in this legislation is the most extreme form of hypocrisy imaginable," said Brad Woodhouse, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

"To now take credit for a provision he says he 'co-authored' shows what a bind Republicans are in now that this law is proving popular with the American people," Woodhouse added.

Two Minor Matters Force Reconciliation Bill Back To House

While the main bill is a done, guaranteed deal, the GOP has been able to force another House vote according to the NY Times:

With the Senate working through an all-night session on a package of changes to the Democrats’ sweeping health care legislation, Republicans early Thursday morning identified parliamentary problems with at least two provisions that will require the measure to be sent back to the House for yet another vote, once the Senate adopts it.

Senate Democrats had been hoping to defeat all of the amendments proposed by Republicans and to prevail on parliamentary challenges so that they could approve the measure and send it to President Obama for his signature. But the bill must comply with complex budget reconciliation rules, and Republicans identified some flaws.

Under the reconciliation rules, provisions in the bill must directly affect government spending or revenues.

The successful parliamentary challenge did not appear to endanger the eventual adoption of the changes to the health care legislation. And Mr. Obama on Tuesday already signed the main health care bill into law.

Senate Democrats said that one of the provisions in question involved changes to the Pell grant program, which is part of an education section in the reconciliation bill. The bill would establish an automatic increase in Pell grant awards, tied to inflation, for students from low-income families. The disputed provision would prevent any reductions in the maximum award.

Before the discovery of the parliamentary issues, Democrats defeated more than two dozen Republican amendments or other proposals aimed at derailing the legislation or making changes that would delay it by forcing an additional vote in the House.

Shortly before 2:30 a.m., Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, put forward yet another amendment. Mr. Vitter’s proposal would have exempted mobile mammography units from paying a federal fuel tax.

In urging adoption of his amendment, Mr. Vitter declared, “This reconciliation bill is already going back to the House.” At the same time, Senate leaders from both parties were conferring animatedly on the floor.

At about 2:45 a.m., with the flaws in the bill identified, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, brought the late-night session to a close. The Senate was to resume work on the bill at 9:45 a.m. Thursday.

The House adopted the Senate-passed health care bill on Sunday by a vote of 219 to 212, and Mr. Obama signed it into law on Tuesday, meaning the main components of the Democrats’ overhaul were guaranteed to go forward. Also on Sunday night, the House approved a package of changes as part of a budget reconciliation bill, by a vote of 220 to 211. That bill was sent to the Senate for its consideration.

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said that one problem with the bill was the formula for determining the maximum Pell grant awards. The second issue was a technical matter that Mr. Conrad described as mostly insignificant.

Mr. Conrad said a third issue was under review by the Senate parliamentarian.

The risk for Democrats in a parliamentary challenge is that Republicans could knock out key provisions of the legislation, or win a decision that upends the mechanisms Democrats rely on to pay for the measure.

“We see no impact on the score and very insignificant impact on any policy,” Mr. Conrad said, referring to a cost estimate of the legislation. “This is not going to be a problem.”

I Agree With Joe Biden, "This is a big f..ing deal"

Listen to what he says while shaking Obama's hand at yesterday's signing ceremony:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The GOP's Waterloo

David Frum:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Today's Health Care Cartoons: The GOP & Tea Party Opposition

Today's Health Care Cartoons: Progressivism Wins

Would You Spend 4% To Get Close To 100%?

Ezra Klein provides a great service by putting what admittedly look like eye-popping cost numbers into perspective:

We should start by putting the health-care bill into proper perspective. Opponents and supports of the bill have both profited immensely from exploiting the average person's inability to put billions and trillions into context. So let's begin by breaking down the numbers. The $900 billion price tag is repeated with the regularity of a rooster's crow. That's a shame, as the number is, somewhat impressively, misleading in both directions.

On the one hand, that $900 billion -- or, more precisely, $940 billion in the final legislation -- is stretched over 10 years. But people don't think in 10-year increments. They don't pay taxes once a decade. Put more simply, the bill will cost an average of $94 billion a year over the first 10 years.

But that's not quite right either: The bill wouldn't really kick in until 2014. To get a more accurate annual figure, look at a year in which the bill is fully operational. In, say, 2016, the bill's spending will be about $160 billion (you can find these numbers on page 22 of the CBO report). According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, total health-care spending that year will be about $3.7 trillion. In other words, the bill's spending is equivalent to about 4 percent of what we'll spend in health care in a year, and it will be covering 30 million people.

So that's really what we're talking about here -- a large health-care expansion that's a slight fraction of overall spending. The graph on the right tells the tale (though the $175 billion refers to the Senate bill; the reconciliation fixes increase the 2018 spending to about $200 billion, which is no different for the purposes of the image).

Let's go even further: It's an expansion that most people won't notice in 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill will change the insurance of about 40 million people by 2019, about 30 million of whom would have been otherwise uninsured. The other 10 million will come from the employer or individual markets in search of more affordable options. About 23 million people will still be uninsured, many of them illegal immigrants. About 90 percent of Americans will be exactly where they'd be if this reform had never passed.

Why The Health Reform Law Is Here To Stay. Hear That Supreme Court?

Jeffrey Tobin:

I will leave the waxing eloquent on this historic day to my colleagues. I have three brief observations about the legal implications of the passage of health-care reform.

1. Abortion. The negotiations between Congressman Bart Stupak and the White House over the executive order on abortion funding may rank among the most consequential inconsequential disputes in American history. It was important because it now seems likely that health care reform would have failed if Stupak and his allies had not voted for it. But the executive order itself is nearly meaningless as a legal and practical matter. Federal funding of abortion has been illegal under the Hyde Amendment for almost two generations. The health-care reform bill did nothing to disturb that status quo. Anti-abortion forces mobilized against the legislation but without ever establishing that it would affect abortion at all. In short, nothing happened on abortion—and, apparently, that made all the difference.

2. Constitutionality. Various states have threatened to go to court to assert that Congress acted outside its authority in passing the health-care reform bill. Even with a conservative Supreme Court, these challenges seem bound to fail. For decades, the Court has upheld the extensive federal role in health care through such programs as Medicare and Medicaid. This new law is a change in degree, not in kind, and courts will likely stay out of the way.

However, it’s also worth noting that the courts, including the Supreme Court, will be interpreting the new health-care-reform law for many years to come. Any new law raises a multitude of questions for interpretation, and this one will raise many. What’s covered? Who pays? How does the transition to the new system work? ...

3. The future. Liberals in particular have noted with frustration that the Senate has become a tremendous roadblock to legislative progress. Now that filibusters are routine on almost all Senate business, it takes sixty votes to do almost anything. That sclerotic process may look pretty good to liberals now, because it means that this piece of legislation is almost repeal-proof. It would take sixty-plus Republicans and a Republican President to get the job done (or undone). That’s not happening soon (or maybe ever). This law may turn out to be popular or detested, prescient or misguided—but it is here to stay.

The Nation's Headlines

Notice how many have the word 'historic' in them. Click to view more:

 

Reactions To The New Health Law

Seth Masket:

[W]hile I don't think tonight will have an extraordinary effect on elections in the near or distant future, I do think this will have a profound impact on public policy.  Even if this bill seems watered-down to you, realize that from this point forward, the federal government is responsible for making sure people have health insurance.  The question is no longer whether government should do it; it's whether it's doing it well enough.  I heard somewhere that the two major votes tonight were symbolic ordered that way -- first they passed health reform, then they passed reconciliation to improve it.

Andrew Sullivan:

I watched Obama's rise from Hyde Park over the last 15 yrs. Two things stand out: his political rivals almost always, and fatally, underestimate the guy's abilities. I sense there's some racism there, and his opponents always try to smear him as a "radical black guy" but Obama has always positioned himself above racial street fighting. The fact is, Obama is not just smart, he's brilliant.

Second, the guy constantly fights a war of attrition, staying the course, keeping his cool, but applying constant steady pressure to the abutments of the opposition, and over time almost all of them crumble. 

I don't think conservatives have yet figured this out about a guy, who now, is their biggest danger to future political relevance. He's grinding them, slowly, into dust.

What determined the vote?

The length of Obama's coattails, according to Nate Silver (H/t the Daily Dish).

Robert Creamer:

I would argue, that by Election Day, there will be very few districts where a vote for health care reform is unpopular. But I would also argue, that this fall we will see clear evidence that courage itself is very popular.

Willingness to stand up for what you believe - and unwillingness to be swayed by political winds - is good politics. People love candidates who are not what they conceive as "typical politicians" that always have their fingers in the air or decide what they believe based on the latest poll.

The fact that many Members stood up tall - took on the insurance industry - and refused to be intimidated - is itself a great political narrative for Democratic candidates this fall.

And I predict that we will also learn the opposite is also true. The Democrats who decided to oppose health care reform because of political pressure - particularly those that voted yes the first time health care reform was considered by the House - will be in deep political trouble.

The flip-floppers will find that they will gain nothing with the hard core opponents of reform, their base will be demobilized, and the flip-flop charge itself will move independent voters to oppose them. Very dumb ...

Finally, this victory will invigorate the base of the Democratic Party and greatly improve the chances of victory for all Democrats this fall. Let's remember that Democrats lost control of the House in 1994 because Democrats didn't come out and vote after the failure of health care reform earlier that year. Last night's victory will have precisely the opposite effect.

Not only that, but voters like to support winners. Last night the Democrats in Congress, President Obama and the progressive forces in America won big. The Progressive band wagon has been freed from the mud and is moving once again. It will attract more and more followers as we get closer to the Election Day.

There was another big loser last night -- the "chattering class" of pundits. Turned out that health care, the Obama presidency, and the progressive movement weren't so dead after all.

"This time, fear struck out"

Paul Krugman:

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

I’d argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect — Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom — but always popular once enacted.

But that’s not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: on one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the Tea Party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.)

And that cynicism has been the hallmark of the whole campaign against reform.

"How Republicans Blew It"

Jonathan Chait:

From the standpoint of short-term political strategy, the Republicans have played their cards perfectly. Their slow withdrawal of any support excised the maximum political damage by forcing all Senate Democrats to agree, rendering the bill partisan and subjecting it to months of slow-bleed legislative wrangling. The Republicans will probably pick up more seats in November than they would have if they had pursued a bipartisan accord.

But the policy costs have been significant. As I wrote last December, "The Republicans may gain some more seats in 2010 by their total obstruction, but the substantive policy defeat they've been dealt will last for decades." David Frum chimes in, "Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now."

The funny thing is that this policy disaster was avoidable for Republicans. Many Senate Democrats started the debate believing that a bipartisan accord was the only morally legitimate path to major legislative change, and desperately hoping for bipartisan cover as they undertook wrenching change to the status quo. If they had put a compromise bill on the table, moderate Democrats would have leaped at the offer, and it would have taken just one Democrat to make such a deal and kill comprehensive reform.

The Republicans had another chance last month when President Obama convened a bipartisan health care summit. If some Republicans had come forward with a meet-you-halfway plan, or even meet-you-quarter-way plan, Democrats would have been in a bind. They let the opportunity pass. Why? Frum writes:

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

The Republican strategy of total opposition instead forced the Democrats into an all-or-nothing choice of passing a comprehensive bill or collapsing into catastrophic defeat. (Republicans tried desperately to convince them that letting the bill die was their best political strategy, but Democrats wisely rejected this awful advice.)  Let me be clear: I'm glad they did it. I'm willing to accept higher Democratic losses in exchange for a health care bill that really solves the pathologies of the health care market. The Republican strategy was an audacious gamble, and it could have worked, but it came up empty. Thank goodness.

"The Senate bill remains a careful contradiction ... comprehensive reform with an incremental soul ... routinely lambasted for being too big and comprehensive, but compared to the problems it faces, it is too small and too incrementalist"

Ezra Klein:

According to Rep. Henry Waxman, Barack Obama will sign the Senate bill within the next two days. At that point, the decades-long struggle to pass a universal health-care system into law will finish, and the decades-long work of building and improving our system will begin.

The politics of health-care reform have gotten enough attention in recent weeks, and I don't mean to give them much more. Minority leader John Boehner's closing scold was an angry, divisive capstone; his shouts of "hell no" on the floor of Congress were far more inappropriate, and far more embarrassing, than any yelp that ever escaped Howard Dean's mouth. The presiding officer's admonishment "to remember the dignity of the House" was a sad commentary on how much of it had already been lost. But he represented his members fairly: Earlier in the evening, Rep. Devin Nunes exhorted his colleagues to say "no to socialism, no to totalitarianism, and no to this bill."

It was a reminder of how far our politics have strayed, and how much more extreme our rhetoric has become, than the underlying legislation warrants. The deafening volume of the debate long ago drowned out its subject. Sadly, the Senate bill remains a careful contradiction that most people still don't understand. It is a comprehensive reform with an incremental soul, but neither side has done enough to explain it that way.

The legislation builds a near-universal health-care system, but it only uses the materials that our system has laying around. It leaves private insurers as the first line of coverage provision, but imposes a new set of rules so that we can live with -- and maybe even benefit from -- their competition. It spends $940 billion in the first 10 years and more than $2 trillion in the second decade, but its mixture of revenues, spending reductions, and cost-controlling reforms are projected to save even more than that. It is the most sweeping piece of legislation Congress has passed in recent memory, but it is much less ambitious than the solutions that past presidents have proposed. It is routinely lambasted for being too big and comprehensive, but compared to the problems it faces, it is too small and too incrementalist.

But it's a start.

Today's Health Care Cartoons

What's Next Politically?

NY Times:

The battle over health care is poised to move swiftly from Congress back to the country as Democrats, Republicans and a battery of interest groups race to define the legislation and dig in for long-term political and legal fights.

President Obama plans to open a new campaign this week to persuade skeptical Americans that the bill holds immediate benefits for them and addresses the nation’s shaky fiscal condition. Republicans said they would seek to repeal the measure, challenge its constitutionality and coordinate efforts in statehouses to block its implementation.

The politics of health care are fragile — and far from certain — in the eight-month midterm campaign that will determine which party will control Congress next year. But both sides steeled for a fight to extend well beyond November, involving state legislative battles, court challenges and, ultimately, the next presidential race.

Even before the final vote, Republicans began relentlessly assailing lawmakers who supported the legislation, suggesting Democrats are spendthrift and proponents of big government. Democrats said they would seek to capitalize on the momentum from their success and strive to move beyond the political arguments in hopes of demystifying the complicated legislation.

“We ought to focus on not the political stakes, but the stakes for the country,” David Plouffe, an adviser to Mr. Obama, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’re going to go out there and not just talk about what we’re for, but what the Republicans are voting against.”

The next chapter in the health care fight will play out not only in the midterm elections, but also in the courts. Attorneys general in three states — Virginia, Florida and South Carolina — have indicated they will file legal challenges to the measure, on the grounds that it violates the Constitution by requiring individuals to purchase insurance.

In an interview Sunday, the Virginia attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, said he intended to base his challenge on two grounds: that the federal bill conflicts with a newly passed state law that says no Virginian may be compelled to buy insurance and that Congress does not have authority to impose the mandate under its powers to regulate interstate commerce, as Democrats contend.

“This is such an incredible federal overreach,” Mr. Cuccinelli said, but added that he did not plan to ask the courts for an order that would prevent the bill from going into effect because the individual mandate does not take effect until 2013. “On our basis for a constitutional challenge, there’s no rush,” he said.

The White House and Democrats were preparing to counter the legal arguments and coordinate a state-by-state response to any prospective challenges. For his part, aides said, Mr. Obama will lead the effort to define the bill, but also will shift his focus to the economy and jobs. A campaign, featuring Mr. Obama and examples of people who benefited from health care, will take place in the coming months.

Democrats were also beginning to form a permanent campaign, of sorts, to follow the bill through its various stages. Party strategists studied the public’s reaction to Medicare — it was not immediately positive — and were trying to create a friendlier climate for Mr. Obama when he faces voters again.

What Benefits Take Effect When?

Wall St Journal:

After years of debate, a health overhaul is finally becoming a reality. Now what?

Many big provisions don't kick in until 2014, including the mandate for most folks to have health insurance and many new requirements for health-plan designs. Before then, you'll see a mishmash of other things go into effect at various times—and of course some of the changes depend on the Senate passing the House's so-called sidecar, or reconciliation, bill of changes.

Here are some ways you can start dealing with the new health-care landscape: <Continue reading.>

Read the NY Times' analysis.

Stupak Passionately Defends Health Bill

His passionate, partisan, Pro-Life defense really surprised me.

Obama Got It Passed The Old Fashioned Way: Vote-by-Vote

Wall St Journal:

For Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Chicago's West Side, it was an assurance from the White House to push an overhaul of immigration policy that won his backing for the health bill.

... lots of back and forth between Gutierrez and the White House ...

Mr. Obama asked for Rep. Gutierrez's health-care vote. "The president came by and he said, 'Can I have your support?' " Mr. Gutierrez recalls. "And I said, 'yes.' "

It's easy to forget that Democrats have substantial majorities in the House and Senate, and control the White House, given how the party has struggled during its yearlong march to pass the overhaul. Democrats spent months fighting over the measure's contents, and blamed the president for not settling their disputes.

But in recent days, that same control of the executive and legislative branches formed the backbone of the party's efforts. In addition to the pledge on immigration, the White House tapped officials from its transportation secretary to its top agricultural official. And after staying quiet during the bill's past disputes on abortion, White House officials over the weekend drafted an executive order reinforcing a federal funding ban, securing vital votes.

Republicans accused Democrats of dealing for votes. On Tuesday, the Department of Interior said it sped up an announcement to increase water supply to California's Central Valley, a hot issue for California Democratic Reps. Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza. Other wavering Democrats secured increased Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in rural states.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican, worked longstanding connections as a former member of Congress and penned an editorial in the Chicago Tribune on why Republicans should support the bill. Budget director Peter Orszag made the case to conservative Democrats worried about cost control, calling Rep. Brian Baird of Washington three days in a row. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also worked the phones with members of Congress.

At two points in the past year, the bill appeared doomed. After a swarm of criticism at August town hall meetings, some centrist Democrats began urging party leaders to scale back the proposal. Other Democrats wondered if they should retreat altogether.

For the White House, turning back wasn't an option because Mr. Obama's first year partly depended on passing the bill. "We were more than half pregnant at that point," said one White House official.

President Obama's Remarks After House Vote

I thought thanking all of his supporters who went door-to-door campaigning for 'change' was a very nice touch (at about the 2:00 mark).

Roosevelt, Johnson & Now Obama: House Passes Historic Health Insurance Reform Bill

Analysis from the NY Times (also see how House members voted):

The House’s passage of health care legislation late Sunday night assures that whatever the ultimate cost, President Obama will go down in history as one of the handful of presidents who found a way to reshape the nation’s social welfare system.

After the bitterest of debates, Mr. Obama proved that he was willing to fight for something that moved him to his core. Skeptics had begun to wonder. But he showed that when he was finally committed to throwing all his political capital onto the table, he could win, if by the narrowest of margins.

Whether it was a historic achievement or political suicide for his party — perhaps both — he succeeded where President Bill Clinton failed in trying to remake American health care. President George W. Bush also failed to enact a landmark change in a domestic program, his second-term effort to create private accounts in the Social Security system.

At the core of Mr. Obama’s strategy stands a bet that the Republicans, in trying to portray the bill as veering toward socialism, overplayed their hand. Fueled by the antigovernment anger of the Tea Party movement, Republicans have staked much on the idea that they can protect the country by acting as what the Democrats gleefully call the “Party of No.”

Now, armed with a specific piece of legislation that offers concrete benefits to millions of people — and that promises to guarantee insurance for many who found it unaffordable or unattainable — the White House and Democrats believe they may have gained the upper hand.

“This only worked well for the Republican Party if it failed to pass,” David Axelrod, one of the president’s closest political advisers, said at the White House as he watched the vote count for the final bill reach 219 in favor. “They wanted to run against a caricature of it rather than the real bill. Now let them tell a child with a pre-existing condition, ‘We don’t think you should be covered.’”

But there is no doubt that in the course of this debate, Mr. Obama has lost something — and lost it for good. Gone is the promise on which he rode to victory less than a year and a half ago — the promise of a “postpartisan” Washington in which rationality and calm discourse replaced partisan bickering.

Never in modern memory has a major piece of legislation passed without a single Republican vote. Even President Lyndon B. Johnson got just shy of half of Republicans in the House to vote for Medicare in 1965, a piece of legislation that was denounced with many of the same words used to oppose this one. That may be the true measure of how much has changed in Washington in the ensuing 45 years, and how Mr. Obama’s own strategy is changing with the discovery that the approach to governing he had in mind simply will not work.

House Also Passed Revolutionary Changes To Student Loan Program Last Night

Wash Post:

Legislation hailed by supporters as the most significant change to college student lending in a generation passed the House on Sunday night.

The student aid initiative, which House Democrats attached to their final amendments to the health-care bill, would overhaul the student loan industry, eliminating a $60 billion program that supports private student loans with federal subsidies and replacing it with government lending to students. The House amendments will now go to the Senate.

By ending the subsidies and effectively eliminating the middleman, the student loan bill would generate $61 billion in savings over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Most of those savings, $36 billion, would go to Pell grants, funding an era of steady and predictable increases in the massive but underfunded federal aid program for needy students. Smaller portions would go toward reducing the deficit and to various Democratic priorities, including community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and caps on loan payments.

The bill's greatest impact would fall on the more than 6 million students who rely on Pell grants to finance their education. Pell, launched in 1973, once covered more than two-thirds of total costs at a public university. It now covers about one-third.

The student aid measure was initially framed as a boost to the Pell program. Now it is seen as its salvation. Democratic leaders say that without a massive infusion of cash, the maximum grant could be scaled back by more than half to $2,150 and at least 500,000 students could be dropped from the program ...

The GOP Is Throwing Everything They Can--No Matter How Inane Or Damaging To Themselves--To Stop Health Reform

Check out Rep Steven King's claim that today's vote is an "affront to God" and Rep Paul Broun as her refers to the Civil War as the "Great War of Yankee Aggression" (apparently it wasn't just extremists within the Tea Party whose racism was on display yesterday):

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Poll: Americans Divided On A Health Reform Bill They Know Very Little Specifically About

Seems to me that it's a safe bet for the Dems to take that once they do understand what's in it (eg, once it goes into effect and starts to help folks), voters are going to like it. Kaiser Health (complete poll):

The March Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds the public still divided on health reform legislation, with 46 percent of Americans backing the reform proposals on Capitol Hill, 42 percent opposing them and 12 percent saying they aren't sure. Six in 10 Americans say they have heard little or nothing about budget reconciliation. And many people continue to struggle with health costs, with nearly one in five saying cost increases have caused them or their employer to switch to a less comprehensive health plan.

The poll finds that Americans are also divided about what should happen next. Forty-two percent say “Congress has debated health care reform long enough and it is time for them to take a vote.” Thirty-six percent would like lawmakers to “go back to the drawing board and start over again on a new proposal.” And 20 percent say Congress should “move on to other topics.” 

The public does not understand some important elements of the reform legislation, according to the poll. Only 15 percent of Americans, for instance, know that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the legislation will decrease the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. And 55 percent believe the CBO has said the legislation will increase the deficit over that period.

Will An Executive Order Be Enough For Enough Of The House's Pro-Life Dems?

Wash Post:

House Democrats are working with the White House to craft an executive order that would clarify President Obama's intention to maintain a long-standing ban on federal funding of abortion, congressional Democrats said.

The effort was part of a hurried campaign by House leaders on Saturday to persuade a pivotal bloc of antiabortion Democrats to support far-reaching health insurance reforms.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others huddled in a suite of offices just off the House floor, trying to come up with language that would satisfy six to 10 lawmakers, mostly Rust Belt Catholics, who voted for an earlier version of the health-care package but have threatened to vote against the $940 billion compromise expected to come before the House on Sunday. Those lawmakers have argued that the measure would open the door to federal funding for elective abortions. Democratic leaders counter that the measure would do no such thing.

"The intent is obviously to express what we said all along: that we believe the language that has been included in both bills seeks to accomplish . . . that there will be no use of public funds for abortion," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said upon emerging from the meeting. Asked whether the document could win over a significant number of the holdouts, Hoyer said: "I'm hopeful." ...

Earlier Saturday, Pelosi confirmed that an executive order on abortion "might be a possibility."

Those close to the talks said it is likely at the very least to restate Obama's commitment to upholding the Hyde Amendment, a 32-year-old provision that bars the use of public funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman. Rep. Dianna DeGette (Colo.), a leader among Democrats who support abortion rights, said she would support that option, so long as Stupak's provision is not given another vote. "That would be fine by me," she told reporters Saturday of the executive order.

Stupak's office issued a statement declaring he would like the talks to continue: "Congressman Stupak remains open to working with Speaker Pelosi and the President to reach an agreement that would maintain current law which prohibits federal funding of abortions and health plans that cover abortion."

Pelosi remained determined to ensure that, by the time the vote is held Sunday, she would prevail. "We'll have the votes when we bring the bill to the floor," she said.

The Cesspool From Whence The Tea Parties Draw Revealed: Democratic Reps Called Nigger & Fag

Assumption was replaced with proof yesterday as it's now indisputably clear where some of the Tea Party anger & vitriol has been coming from. From Prescriptions:

Thousands of opponents of the health care legislation circled the Capitol on Saturday waving signs and chanting slogans.

And while most of the invective was directed at the health care bill itself, several House members said there was an ugly tone to comments made by some demonstrators against three black lawmakers: Representatives André Carson of Indiana, Emanuel Cleaver II of Missouri and John Lewis of Georgia, all Democrats.

An aide to Mr. Lewis, a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, said that as he walked to the Capitol, Mr. Lewis was called racial slurs. A spokesman for Mr. Cleaver said that a protester spat on the congressman as he was walking to the Capitol for a vote.

Democratic aides said some demonstrators made anti-gay remarks to Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who is gay.

The No. 3 Democrat in the House, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, said, “I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus.”

Watch the beginning of this video as Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) not only won't denounce the racist & homophobic slurs, he actually eggs them on by using incredible hyperbole (insuring 32 million people is tyranny? Really?):

Alf Landon & The Party Of No

Dana Milbank understands that once health reform is enacted, it is going to become exceedingly popular. It's too bad for the GOP, that they're unlikely to take his advice:

"This is the largest tax bill in history," the Republican leader fumed. The reform "is unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."

And that wasn't all. This "cruel hoax," he said, this "folly" of "bungling and waste," compared poorly to the "much less expensive" and "practical measures" favored by the Republicans.

"We must repeal," the GOP leader argued. "The Republican Party is pledged to do this."

That was Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon in a September 1936 campaign speech. He based his bid for the White House on repealing Social Security.

Bad call, Alf. Republicans lost that presidential election in a landslide. By the time they finally regained the White House -- 16 years later -- their nominee, Dwight Eisenhower, had abandoned the party's repeal platform.

Circumstances are different now, as Republicans, assuming the Democrats' health legislation clears the House this weekend, prepare to campaign this year and in 2012 on the repeal of health-care reform. But the ghost of Landon should spook them as they do so: The health-care legislation, if passed, won't be repealed, and the politics of repeal may not work out as well as Republicans expect. You wouldn't think that based on the headlong rush to demand a repeal even before the health bill becomes law.

More than 20 Republican Senate hopefuls have tied their candidacies to repeal. Mark Kirk of Illinois promises to "lead the effort," while Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), head of the Senate GOP campaign effort, calls 2010 a referendum on repeal. Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the No. 3 Senate GOP leader, sees "an instant spontaneous campaign to repeal it all across the country."

In the House, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) vows to make the repeal of "H.R.1 and S.1" the No. 1 goal if Republicans take over Congress. The National Review has published a treatise called "The Case for Repeal," and the Club for Growth is already a couple of months into its "Repeal It" campaign.

"Fired-up Obama makes final health pitch"

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Watch the whole thing.

Details Of The Health Subsidies For The Lower Middle Class Become Clear

Wash Post:

The final health-care legislation that House Democrats are striving to pass this weekend would give about 19 million Americans subsidies averaging $6,000 to help pay premiums and other insurance charges, an unprecedented government investment in private health policies that leaves lingering questions about whether coverage would truly become affordable.

The details of the subsidies, which emerged in the past day, provide the clearest picture yet on a central question that has hovered over the health-care debate since it began a year ago: How much help would the government give people to cope with the expense of medical insurance?

In the final version Democrats produced, the subsidies would be part of a two-prong approach by the government to extend coverage to the vast majority of people who are uninsured. That effort is predicted to cost nearly $800 billion, more than $4 of every $5 of the legislation's total cost.

The private insurance subsidies would begin in 2014 and be intended for people eligible to buy coverage through insurance exchanges that would be created the same year.

The money the government spends to subsidize private policies would eclipse that devoted to a historic expansion of Medicaid, according to House aides and congressional budget analysts. And the subsidies are tilted more toward lower-income Americans than the measures in the Senate's version of health-care legislation.

The large infusion of federal money into insurance coverage would address one of the twin goals that have been at the heart of every attempt to redesign the nation's health-care system for decades: making health care more accessible and slowing medical costs. As Congress approaches what Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House are heralding as the finale of a year-long debate, policy experts across the ideological spectrum differ over how well the legislation would succeed at either goal.

Even some proponents of the subsidies say that, generous as they are, their buying power could erode over time in an era of rapid medical inflation. Some critics say the Democrats' approach of creating state insurance exchanges would help some Americans, those who now look for insurance policies individually or in small groups, but provide fewer new purchasing alternatives to most Americans, who rely on coverage through their jobs.

Still, liberal groups eager for the health-care legislation to pass are heaping praise on the final version of the subsidies, released Thursday among a set of changes to the Senate bill. "This is a huge step in the direction of making coverage and care affordable," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a left-leDaning consumer health lobby.

Specifically, the subsidies would come in two parts, both available on a sliding scale to Americans with incomes too high for Medicaid. That would span families of four with incomes from $29,000 to $88,000 and individuals with incomes from $14,000 to $43,000.

What Took The White House So Long? Finally, A Health Reform Pitch You Can Dance To!

White House blog:

Why We Cant Wait

Rectangular (630px by 303px) | Square (389px by 354px)

• 32,000,000 -- that’s the number of Americans who will get health insurance under the President’s plan. [Source: Congressional Budget Office]
• That’s also a little more than the populations of Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona --- COMBINED. [Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Over the course of our ‘Health Reform by the Numbers’ online series, we’ve highlighted many of the problems of our broken health care system to raise awareness about why we just can’t wait any longer for reform:

 

For the last number in the series – we wanted to showcase what you get from health insurance reform:

• It expands health insurance coverage to 32 million Americans, guaranteeing that 95% of Americans will be covered.
• It makes health insurance affordable for middle class and small businesses -- including the largest middle class tax cuts for health care in history -- reducing premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
• It strengthens consumer protections and reins in insurance company abuses.
• It gives millions of Americans the same types of private insurance choices that members of Congress will have -- through a new competitive health insurance market that keeps costs down.
• It holds insurance companies accountable to keep premiums down and prevent denials of care and coverage, including for pre-existing conditions.
• It improves Medicare benefits with lower prescription drug costs for those in the ‘donut hole,' better chronic care, free preventive care, and nearly a decade more of solvency for Medicare.
• It reduces the deficit by more than $100 billion over next ten years, and by more than one trillion dollars over the following decade; reining waste, fraud and abuse; overpayments to insurance companies and by paying for quality over quantity of care.

As President Obama says, “we must act now” and put American families and small businesses, not health insurance companies, in control of their own health care.  Help spread the word by sharing this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark' feature below.

32,000,000 is the last number in ‘Health Reform by the Numbers,' our online campaign to raise awareness about why the time is now for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Previous Numbers:

• 3
• 9
• 
  Download: 50-50
• 1
• 41
• 625
• 8
• 1115

Rift Between Catholics Who Favor Bill (Nuns) & Those Who Oppose (Bishops) Widens

NY Times:

In breaking publicly with Roman Catholic bishops over the health care bill, a group of nuns has once again exposed the long-running rift between liberal and conservative theology in the Catholic Church.

The issue dividing them is whether the Senate version of the legislation goes far enough in limiting the use of federal subsidies paid for insurance policies that cover abortion. Progressive Catholics, including the group of more than 50 nuns representing thousands more from various religious orders, said this week that they would support the Senate bill. The traditionalists, like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said they would oppose it.

Although both the nuns and the bishops firmly oppose abortion, they have reached different conclusions about the bill, a divide that is also playing out more broadly among other groups that oppose abortion.

These include Democrats in the Senate like Bob Casey of Pennsylvania who are comfortable with the restrictions in the Senate health care bill and Democrats in the House like Bart Stupak of Michigan who are fighting for tighter restrictions. That divide is proving central to the outcome of the health care debate — Mr. Stupak and his allies were continuing to fight Friday night — as Democratic leaders scrambled to come up with the votes to pass the legislation.

“It is an utter mystery to me” how religious groups that oppose abortion could read the same bill so differently, said Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobbying organization that supports the bill.

Sister Simone, who described herself as anti-abortion, said she did not believe that the Senate version of the bill would make abortion more widely available. She did not directly criticize the bishops, but said “some people could be motivated by a political loyalty that’s outside of caring for the people who live at the margins of health care in society.”

The Senate bill allows any state to ban the use of federal subsidies to buy insurance plans that cover abortion. In other states, insurers would be required to place subsidy money in separate accounts from dollars for private premiums and use only the private money to pay for abortions.

The bishops argue that the Senate legislation, which the House is expected to adopt, could nonetheless result in federal money being used for abortions.

“In so doing, it forces all of us to become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many, the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still waiting to be born,” said Cardinal Francis George, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a written statement this week.

The nuns who have endorsed the health care bill and their supporters say that is not so, suggesting that they see no need for the more restrictive language on abortion in the bill passed by the House last year.

“The bishops’ view is extremely purist,” said Morna Murray, president of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. “They are among the only ones who have read the language in this way.”

The Health Care Bills Side by Side

Want to really understand the differences between the Dec 24, 2009 Senate bill and the changes the House is making to it (eg, the Mar 18, 2010 Reconciliation bill)? ProPublica makes it easy.

Why Obama Believes "health care reform is a 2010 win for Democrats"

Time:

Barack Obama's top pollster, Joel Benenson ... Since August, he's had to deal with "death panels," the "cornhusker kickback" and daily proclamations of a "government takeover" of health care. He has watched Obama's approval rating fall from the high 60s to the high 40s, while opposition to Democratic health care reforms have inched above 50% in many polls. Recently, he's even had Republican leaders declare that Democratic hopes for the November elections will collapse if health care reform becomes law. "Do you really think the Republicans are out there trying to save Democrats from themselves?" he asks. 

Through the worst days, Benenson's message has remained the same. Push forward. Get it done. Three years ago, Benenson, a former New York Daily News reporter from Queens, went head to head with one of the best in the business, Hillary Clinton's pollster Mark Penn, challenging a candidate of "experience" with a candidate of "change." His team toppled conventional wisdom. Now he tells wavering Democrats in Congress to take their own leap of faith: Look past the numbers that show widespread dismay at the health care debate and a nation deeply divided over the Democratic bill. Believe that health care reform is a 2010 win for Democrats.

His argument flows in several directions at once. First of all, he says, the details of reform, as Democrats hope to frame it, are far more popular than the package as a whole. Americans overwhelmingly want to end the insurance industry's practice of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. They want to be able to afford coverage when they are between jobs. They want seniors to have more help with prescription-drug costs.

Second, he says, the worst fears of Americans will never be realized. "Is somebody's elderly parent or relative going to be put to death by a death panel?" he asks. "No. It doesn't exist." Third, a sizable chunk of those who oppose the current bill — roughly 1 in 6 in a January CNN poll — want the bill to be even more liberal.

But perhaps most important of all, Benenson believes the current polls confuse a skepticism about health care reform with broad discontent over the political process in Washington. "This is what people don't understand," he says. "People are frustrated that Congress doesn't seem able to work together to do the job that people think they sent them there to do." A solution to this problem is action.

This view is widely held within Obama's inner circle, and it is the reason that the White House has done the unthinkable in the first three months of an election year. After extended agony in 2009, with the gritty legislative ticktock undercutting the new President's glistening promise of change, Obama decided to double down in February, forcing more weeks of painful process discussions and bewildering ruminations on parliamentary procedures like "reconciliation" and "self-executing" rules.

"As passage of health reform nears, a historic chance to help fix Washington, too"

Steven Pearlstein:

It's shaping up to be a great weekend here in Washington.

I'm not just talking about the spectacular weather or another upset-filled NCAA basketball tournament. I'm talking about the prospect of a quasi-climactic vote in the House that would finally have the United States join the rest of the industrialized world in offering health insurance to all its citizens.

Sometimes, those of us who live here and participate in political life can get a bit cynical. We tend to focus on the process or the gamesmanship or the unsavory compromises. Which is why it is important at moments such as this to get your head out of the weeds, look at the Capitol dome in the distance and remember how lucky you are to have a front-row seat to one of the world's longest-running historical dramas.

What strikes me about the lead-up to this weekend's health-care vote in the House is how quiet things actually are.

If, as Republicans would have us believe, Americans are so up in arms about the prospect of "Obamacare," why aren't there angry hordes marching on the Mall or jamming the halls of the Rayburn Building?

If the plan really represents a wholesale government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, why are so many associations representing private doctors, hospitals and drugmakers either supporting the legislation or staying relatively neutral?

And if this Democratic version of health reform is such a threat to economic prosperity, why are stocks, bonds and the dollar all rising this week as odds of passage increase?

One of the silliest Republican talking points is that Democrats are "ramming health-care reform down the throats of the American people." In fact, we've been talking about it, on and off, for decades, ultimately winding up with a solution that is not only remarkably centrist but also not all that different from the compromise nearly reached between Ted Kennedy and the Nixon White House in the early 1970s.

Indeed, although you'd never know it from the overheated rhetoric, the remarkable thing about the final proposal is how little it would change things, at least initially, for most Americans. That's no accident -- in fact, it's by political design. This plan is more like a time-release tablet meant to reform the system slowly from the inside out rather than surgically from the outside in.

Health Reform Legislative Roundup

• "House Democrats initiated a 72-hour countdown Thursday on their yearlong effort to overhaul the health care system, unveiling a nearly final version of the legislation that promptly won additional support with a promise that the bill would more than pay for itself over the next decade.

Armed with detailed legislative language and a report on the bill’s costs from the Congressional Budget Office, Democratic leaders and White House officials kicked off a new round of arm-twisting to line up the votes they will need to pass the legislation when it comes to the House floor in the face of intense Republican opposition on Sunday." Read this NY Times story.

• Wondering how the final bill's estimated cost so closely matched the targets President Obama set out? Here's how.

• Curious to see how Pelosi decides which House Dems to put the screws to and which she will allow to vote no? Read about her approach.

• "Raising the bar on Republican opposition maneuvers in the Senate, Mr. Coburn on Thursday threatened to put future holds on any Democratic House members who switch their vote in favor of the health care bill, lose their election as a result next November, and then are rewarded with a high-ranking job in the Obama administration.

“If you voted no and you vote yes and you lose your election and you think any nomination to a federal position isn’t going to be held in the Senate, I’ve got news for you, it’s going to be held,” said Mr. Coburn" Read this The Caucus post

• "President Obama moved closer to achieving one of his top policy goals Thursday as congressional Democrats joined forces behind legislation that would cut funding to private student lenders and redirect billions of dollars in expected savings into grants to needy students.

  The proposal, in a bill released Thursday afternoon, has been overshadowed by the health-care debate. But it is moving swiftly now and could benefit from a maneuver that packages it with Obama's health-care plan. The two initiatives central to the president's domestic agenda could pass simultaneously in what are expected to be largely party-line votes. The House could act by Sunday, lawmakers said, and the Senate soon after, under rules that require only a simple majority vote for passage. But obstacles remain in both chambers. Read this Wash Post story.

DNC Targets Senator McConnell In New Ad

Ma Rep Steven Lynch To Vote Against Health Reform; Capuano Still Unsure

Do you live in these districts? If so, please call them today. And while Lynch might think this is going to help him with a potential run against Scott Brown in 2012, he's going to lose any potential help I might have given him if he in fact votes no.  From the Boston Globe:

Despite pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, Representative Stephen F. Lynch of South Boston said today that he will vote against President Obama’s health care overhaul when it comes to the House floor, contending that it doesn’t put enough pressure on insurance companies to reduce costs.

The move is a switch for Lynch, who voted in favor of the House health care bill in November. But he said the current version, which was approved by the Senate, is not as strong as that measure. Lynch’s decision makes passing health care more difficult for House leaders, who are trying to get commitments to vote yes from 216 representatives.

“We’ve paid the ransom, but at the end of the day the insurance companies are still holding the hostages,” Lynch said in an interview with the Globe early this afternoon. “This is a very good bill for insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. It might be good for Nebraska, I don’t know. Or Florida residents…But it’s not good for the average American, and it’s not good for my district. Or for Massachusetts.”

He said he opposes the so-called Cadillac tax the Senate adopted that would put a surcharge on expensive health insurance plans, and he is also disappointed that the final bill doesn’t include proposals to allow states to adopt a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

“The insurers still rule,” he said. “Were just pumping subsidies into the current system, but that won’t drive down costs.”

Pressure on him is coming from the White House, House leadership, and members of the Massachusetts delegation, but Lynch said he didn’t see a scenario where he could support the bill.

Lynch is going to the White House this afternoon to hear a plea from President Obama. Vicki Kennedy has also spoken to him.

Lynch downplayed any notion that Obama’s presidency could be irreparably damaged if his signature health care reform package is defeated.

“This will not sink his presidency,” he said. “That fear is overstated.”

He also deflected questions about his political future and whether he is seeking to appease angry voters as a way of setting himself up for a run in 2012 against Republican Senator Scott Brown, who won his office with a steady assault on the Democrats’ health care plans. “These are questions for another day,” he said. “We have a lot of road to travel.”

A second Massachusetts lawmaker, Representative Michael Capuano of Somerville, said he remains undecided. “I want to vote YES, but I am still not certain that this SPECIFIC bill deserves my support,” Capuano said yesterday in an email to supporters.

Lynch had counted himself earlier this week as undecided. He said he decided to vote no within the last several days. He said he is also opposed to the parliamentary procedures Democrats plan to use. Because their numbers in the Senate have diminished, they are planning to pass changes through a budget reconciliation process, which restricts the types of changes that can be made to ones that have a budgetary impact.

"I agree with Congressman Lynch, and I was pleased to hear that he will vote against this health care bill that is bad for Massachusetts," US Senator Scott Brown said in a statement.

“There doesn’t appear to be any way to put reform into this bill,” Lynch said. “It’s a very poor bill.”

Lynch also criticized the procedure Democrats are considering using to pass the legislation – by “deeming” the Senate bill approved, instead of voting directly on the Senate bill itself. Repeating a comment reported by the Boston Herald today, he called the procedure “disingenuous.” Echoing Republican complaints, he also said it “may be unconstitutional” because it wouldn’t involve an up-or-down vote on legislation.

“It’s a stretch,” he said. “I think it hurts our credibility to try to pull a prank like that. We should stand up and tell voters where we stand.”

Nonetheless, Lynch predicted it would pass.

“I think the president and speaker Pelosi are fairly persuasive,” he said. “They wouldn’t call on a vote unless they had the votes.”

The Electoral Logic Behind The Right's Constant Harping About Process

It heats up their base. Jonathan Chait:

The controversy over the "deem-and-pass" strategy will probably end very quickly. (I expect Democrats to conclude it's not worth the hassle.) But it's another telling episode in the health care saga. Conservatives have spent the last day in a fit of outrage at the prospect that House Democrats might enact the Senate health care bill and changes to it in one vote rather than two. ("We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are," huffs the Wall Street Journal.

Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein has a sharp riposte:

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?

As I said, this latest procedural outrage is likely to die down soon. Before that, though, conservatives were apoplectic that Democrats might approve health care despite opposition. Here's a disgusted reaction from Redstate:

ObamaCare is not popular.  The people don’t want it.  The people have rejected it.  Yet President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are going to ram it down the throats of the American people using a special Congressional procedure that avoids a filibuster in the Senate - The Health Care Nuclear Option.  The Obama Administration and Leaders in Congress have shown contempt for the opinions and views of the American people.  They just don’t get it and they don’t care what people think about this plan.

.... Recently, though, the polls have swung back in favor of health care reform. Last night's NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows 46 % in favor of Obama's plan and 45% opposed. The public is now split on passing Obama's bill. So what about those intense arguments about public opinion and democratic consent?

The striking thing about this debate is the degree to which Republicans have devoted the bulk of their energies to putting forth disingenuous arguments. The have deep-seated reasons to oppose health care reform, but they spend an enormous amount of time on arguments that they would never were the situation reversed. I don't doubt that there's some political benefit to this -- the GOP base already opposes health care reform on the merits, so the way to keep them whipped into a state of outrage is to produce a stream of new process arguments about how the Democrats are doing violence to the beloved system of the Founding Fathers. Swing voters, meanwhile, do favor both the general proposition of health care reform and most of the provisions of the plan, but have recoiled at the process. So there's a logic behind the constant stream of process complaints from the right. It's just created a stupid debate.

And to illustrate Chait's point, and show how Fox News' role is to whip up the right (not report news) watch Brett Baier repeatedly interrupt President Obama with the Right's process obsessed talking points:

Read the Wash Post's report on the Fox News interview.

"In Effort to Win Lawmaker Health Votes, President Listens Rather than Arm-Twists"

Wall St Journal:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich boarded Air Force One opposed to President Barack Obama's health bill. He landed moving toward yes, still not impressed with the substance of the bill, but persuaded the president had heard him out.

"He knew my position to a fine degree of definition," said Mr. Kucinich, who ultimately came full circle, announcing Wednesday he was switching to a "yes" vote.

It was a moment typical of Mr. Obama's lobbying style—hard-core listening more than Lyndon Johnson-style arm-twisting.

Lawmakers say the president knows their positions in detail and they leave with their egos stroked. But, for better or worse, he doesn't strike fear into their hearts about the consequences of opposing him.

The strength of Mr. Obama's personal lobbying is being put to a severe test this week in a string of closed-door sessions with House Democrats as the president tries to find the final votes needed to secure passage of his top priority. His arguments range from sweeping points about the state of the nation to a nitty-gritty understanding of legislative details.

One of Mr. Obama's most intense personal appeals on health care failed last year when Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) opposed the Senate bill despite protracted presidential attention, including an extraordinary 90-minute Oval Office session.

This time, the president is lavishing unusual attention even on low-profile lawmakers—a measure of the stakes he has placed on the bill and the importance of every vote.

Mr. Obama's lobbying push on Mr. Kucinich, a liberal Democrat, intensified early this month in a larger group meeting. The president spoke about a provision in the bill that allows states to experiment with single-payer systems where the government funds most health-care costs.

Mr. Kucinich has long campaigned for a national single-payer plan, but he said it was something more amorphous that planted the seed for a change. "I was very moved by the exceeding difficulty of his presidency right now," he said in an interview Wednesday.

Even then, it took another two weeks, a long conversation with Mr. Obama on Air Force One on Monday, a presidential rally in his Cleveland-area district and a prayerful moment in the Capitol Rotunda alone on Tuesday, where Mr. Kucinich said he ultimately relented.

Dozens of other Democrats who are being wooed by Democratic leaders remain uncommitted, or opposed to the legislation. The president isn't lobbying Republicans, who are united in opposition to the bill.

Republicans say the president may listen well but ultimately doesn't take their views into account. They criticized last month's seven-hour health summit led by Mr. Obama as a public-relations exercise.

Ms. Snowe said she didn't see the changes needed to win her support. "They did not materialize," she said this week. "That was the problem."

In the past week, Mr. Obama has met one-on-one with Scott Murphy, a freshman New York Democrat, as well as Reps. Suzanne Kosmos (D., Fla.) and Brian Baird (D., Wash.). All three voted no on the House's version of the health overhaul last November but are reconsidering.

In a one-on-one session with Mr. Murphy, the president went into depth on the bill's pilot programs to change how Medicare reimburses doctors and hospitals, an appeal to the lawmaker's concerns that the bill doesn't do enough to curb health costs ...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) said Mr. Obama used to take criticism more personally, appearing somewhat defensive, he said. More recently, he said, Mr. Obama has come off as more confident. "I left that meeting feeling that we're important," said Mr. Gutierrez. "Sometimes that's enough." He is considering opposing the health bill because it bars illegal immigrants from buying insurance on new exchanges, but he said he left the meeting more hopeful that his concerns could be addressed.

The president seems aware of his own style. He jokingly admonished himself after interrupting a Congressman with a little quip, recalled Rep. Mike Honda (D., Calif.). "He said, 'I'm sorry, I'm supposed to listen.' "

Listen To The Nuns

EJ Dione:

One of the tragedies of the viciously politicized battle over health-care reform is the defection of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops from a cause they have championed for decades.

Indifferent to political fashions, the bishops were the strongest voices in support of universal health coverage, a position rooted in Catholic social thought that calls for a special solicitude toward the poor.

Yet on the make-or-break roll call that will determine the fate of health-care reform, bishops are urging that the bill be voted down. They are doing so on the basis of a highly tendentious reading of the abortion provisions in the Senate measure. If health reform is defeated, the bishops will have played a major role in its demise.

The provisions they dislike were written by two Democratic senators strongly opposed to abortion, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. Pro-choice groups condemned the Nelson-Casey language from the start.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called their amendment "anti-choice," "outrageous" and "inexplicable." Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women were equally critical.

But the Nelson-Casey language still didn't go far enough for the bishops. This week, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, claimed the flaws and loopholes in the bill's abortion section are "so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote." As a result, he said, "the Catholic bishops regretfully hold that it must be opposed."

Fortunately, major Catholic leaders -- most of them women in religious orders -- have picked up the flag of social justice discarded by a bishops' conference under increasing right-wing influence.

On Wednesday, a group representing 59,000 Catholic nuns plus more than 50 heads of religious congregations issued a strong statement urging "a life-affirming 'yes' vote" in support of the Senate bill. "While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all," the statement said, adding that the bill's support for pregnant women represented "the real pro-life stance."

"We as sisters focus on the needs of people," said Sister Simone Campbell, a spokeswoman for the group. "When people are suffering, we respond."

Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, loyally refuses to criticize the bishops but argues that their interpretation of the abortion language is simply wrong. She, too, released a forceful statement in support of the Senate bill.

"We looked at the bill. We spent a lot of time with Sens. Casey and Nelson," she said in an interview. "We agreed to support it because we believe it meets the test of no federal funding for abortion. Perhaps the language is not the way I would write it, but it meets the test. . . . I was not going to take a little bit of abortion [in the bill] to get federal funding."

She added: "I can't walk away from extending coverage to more than 30 million people."

"Catholic nuns urge passage of Obama's health bill"

Karen Tumulty:

Okay, fellow Catholic school alums, which side would you put your money on to prevail in this one?:

Catholic nuns are urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama's health care plan, in an unusual public break with bishops who say it would subsidize abortion.

Some 60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns Wednesday sent lawmakers a letter urging them to pass the Senate health care bill. It contains restrictions on abortion funding that the bishops say don't go far enough.

The letter says that "despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions." The letter says the legislation also will help support pregnant women and "this is the real pro-life stance."

EJ Dione's reaction is worth reading.

In Rare Bipartisan Vote, Senate Approves Jobs Bill

Dow Jones:

The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to give final approval to $17.5 billion legislation creating a payroll tax credit for employers who hire unemployed Americans in what Democrats say will be several election-year job-creation bills.

The Senate vote was 68-29, with a handful of Republicans joining the Democratic majority to support the measure.

The legislation has bounced back and forth between the House and Senate, but with the Senate vote will now be sent to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature.

The centerpiece of the bill would excuse business owners from having to pay their 6.2% of federal payroll taxes for the rest of 2010 on new employees they hire that have been out of work for at least two months.

If the worker is still on an employer's books in a year, the business owner would receive a further $1,000 tax credit.

Democrats hope the measure will convince private-sector employers to begin hiring again. Despite firm indications that an economic recovery is gradually gaining steam in the U.S., the jobs market has continued to lag behind.

The unemployment rate stands at 9.7%, more than two percentage points higher than January 2009 when President Barack Obama was sworn into office.

Heading toward what most expect to be a tough mid-term election season for the incumbent Democrats, the party's leaders are aware of the need to be seen tackling the jobs crisis.

Senate Democrats said the bill is the first of at least four pieces of legislation aimed at stimulating growth in the moribund jobs market they will pass in the coming months.

The new employee tax credit has already come under criticism from some economists who doubt whether it will make much difference in employers' hiring plans. They argue a 6% tax break won't make much difference to business owners uncertain about the direction of the economy.

The legislation also contains an extension of federal subsidies towards state government costs incurred through road and bridge construction and repairs.

It extends an expense write-off provision for small businesses, and modestly expands so-called "Build America Bonds" used by local governments to fund public works projects.

Democrats said the full $17.5 billion cost of the bill is fully offset by savings elsewhere in the federal budget, primarily by delaying the implementation of a measure that would allow U.S. multinational companies to deduct more of their worldwide interest income from their U.S. income.

Poll: Passing Health Reform Key To Dems Chances In November

Wall St Journal (poll details):

The pending health-care overhaul remains unpopular with a broad swath of the public, but core Democrats the party needs to show up and vote in November are strong backers, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

The survey found that opinions have solidified around the health-care legislation, with 48% calling it a "bad idea" and 36% viewing it as a "good idea" when presented with a choice between those two. That gap is consistent with surveys dating to the fall.

At the same time, Democratic voters strongly favor the legislation being pushed by President Barack Obama, particularly constituencies such as blacks, Latinos and self-described liberals. Those groups mobilized in 2008 to help elect Mr. Obama, but are far less enthusiastic than core Republicans about voting in this year's midterm elections.

The survey found a 21-point enthusiasm gap between the parties, with 67% of Republicans saying they are very interested in the November elections, compared with 46% of Democrats. "If the Democrats are going to close that gap, they've got to get their people excited. And I don't see how you get those people if you vote no" on the party's health-care legislation, said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican Bill McInturff.

"I don't think it's about winning the middle. It's really about alienating the base," Mr. Hart said of Democratic lawmakers' calculations about the upcoming health-care vote.

The survey found that Mr. Obama's job-approval rating of 48%—as opposed to the 47% who disapprove—has remained steady since its precipitous drop last summer, which coincided with rising public opposition to the health-care initiative.

Where the health-care debate has been a drag for Mr. Obama's numbers, it also has been an anchor for Congress, which now has an anemic 17% approval rating. Half of Americans, if they had the choice, would vote to replace every member of Congress, including their own representative, the survey found.

On health care, the results underscore the argument from liberal activists that the bill's demise would dissuade the Democratic base from voting in November. The Journal/NBC survey shows that majorities of African-Americans and liberal Democrats, as well as a plurality of Latinos, would be less likely to vote for their representative in Congress if he or she voted against the health-care plan.

Further complicating the calculation for all lawmakers is that a clear plurality of Americans wants the issue addressed in some form. Forty-seven percent of poll respondents said they wanted Congress to consider significant health-care legislation "immediately" if the Obama plan fails, while another 23% wanted that done at least within the next couple of years ...

No matter what happens on the vote this week, the survey points to political challenges facing both parties as they weigh how to talk about health care on the campaign trail this fall.

Thirty-six percent of voters said they would be less likely to support their member of Congress if he or she voted for the bill, but 34% said they would be less likely to support their representative if he or she voted against it. While Republican leaders have said they would encourage GOP candidates to campaign for repeal of the legislation should it pass, the survey showed voters split on that possibility: 37% were more likely to back a candidate who embraced repeal and 33% less likely.

More broadly, the survey showed continued gloominess among all voters about the country's direction, with nearly six in 10 saying it is on the wrong track. Adding to Democrats' election-year concerns: Voters are souring on the party's ability to deal with the country's economic troubles.

As an issue, handling of the economy has favored the Democrats in the past four election cycles. But now, by a 10-point margin, registered voters with the highest interest in the November elections said they believe the GOP is better at dealing with the economy.

Some of Mr. Obama's highest ratings relate to his work on foreign policy, an area that had been a weakness when he was a presidential candidate. Clear majorities said they approve of Mr. Obama's handling of the war in Afghanistan and the situation in Iraq. In both cases, 53% of respondents said they approved of his work.

The high numbers reflect the support by many Republicans and independents for the president's decision to boost troop levels in Afghanistan. Liberal activists have blamed that stance for adding to the decline in enthusiasm among core Democratic voters.

On another foreign-policy matter confronting the White House, a 51%-38% majority in the survey supported initiating military action to destroy Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons if Tehran continues its nuclear program and is close to developing a weapon. Thirty-nine percent said they strongly supported military action.

Kucinich to Announce His Position On Health Reform

NY Times:

Representative Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, voted against the House health care bill in November because he prefers a fully government-run, Medicare-for-all approach. He felt the Democrats’ bill simply did not go far enough to eliminate the mostly private, employer-sponsored health insurance system.

But on Monday, President Obama paid a personal visit to a senior citizens’ center in Mr. Kucinich’s district and gave Mr. Kucinich a lift on Air Force One to a health care rally in Strongsville, Ohio. At the rally, someone in the crowd shouted, “Vote yes!”

Mr. Obama turned and asked Mr. Kucinich if he had heard the shout.

Mr. Kucinich has now scheduled a news conference for Wednesday morning at the Capitol to announce how he will vote on the legislation.

The Democrats are working to muster the 216 votes that they need to pass the bill along with a package of revisions in an expedited budget measure. Conventional wisdom suggests that Mr. Kucinich would not draw so much attention to himself simply to say that he remains opposed to the bill.

But Mr. Kucinich is not a conventional politician, and Democratic leaders are unlikely to count him in the “yes” column until he says so out loud.

House May Pass Senate Bill Without Voting On It. Really.

Wash Post:

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

"It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill."

Republicans quickly condemned the strategy, framing it as an effort to avoid responsibility for passing the legislation, and some suggested that Pelosi's plan would be unconstitutional.

"It's very painful and troubling to see the gymnastics through which they are going to avoid accountability," Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), the senior Republican on the House Rules Committee, told reporters. "And I hope very much that, at the end of the day, that if we are going to have a vote, we will have a clean up-or-down vote that will allow the American people to see who is supporting this Senate bill and who is not supporting this Senate bill."

House leaders have worked for days to round up support for the legislation, but the Senate measure has drawn fierce opposition from a broad spectrum of members. Antiabortion Democrats say it would permit federal funding for abortion, liberals oppose its tax on high-cost insurance plans, and Republicans say the measure overreaches and is too expensive.

Some senior lawmakers have acknowledged in recent days that Democrats lack the votes for passage. Pelosi, however, predicted Monday that she would deliver.

"When we have a bill, then we will let you know about the votes. But when we bring the bill to the floor, we will have the votes," she told reporters.

Pelosi said Monday that House Democrats have yet to decide how to approach the vote. But she added that any strategy involving a separate vote on the Senate bill "isn't too popular," and aides said the leadership is likely to bow to the wishes of its rank and file.

Today's Health Care Cartoons

Wondering Were Your Rep Stands On Health Reform?

If every House member votes and all GOP lawmakers vote no, the maximum amount of Democratic defections to pass a bill is 37, which would lead to a 216-215 tally. As of 3/15/10 at 12:19 a.m., the Hill's often updated Whip Count currently has 35 Democratic No's (either Firm, Leaning or Likely) with 72 undecided.