All Life Is Problem Solving

ralphbon asks:

”In the days and weeks following 9/11 did any legislator insist that we bring the perpetrators of that slaughter to justice, but only if we do it in a deficit-neutral fashion?”

I thought this was a great question and merited creating lots of variations and also some statements about “deficit neutrality.” So, here they are.

After 9/11, did any legislator insist that we remove the Taliban in Afghanistan, but only if we do it in a deficit neutral fashion?

Did any legislator insist that we depose Saddam Hussein, but only if we do it in a deficit neutral fashion?

Did any legislator insist that we save the banks from destruction by bailing them out, with TARP funds, but only if we do it in deficit neutral fashion? [Read more →]

When the Democrats, at the start of the present session, organized the Senate without changing the procedural rule allowing for the filibuster, and requiring a cloture vote of 60 members to end one, they took on responsibility for giving Republicans and blue dogs inordinate influence over the legislative process. The filibuster is a long-standing tradition in the Senate, but the constitution doesn’t require it. It requires only majority rule in the Senate. [Read more →]

Olympia Snowe, our modern-day Hamlet, decided to vote in favor of getting the Baucus bill out of committee. This insignificant action in itself (if she had voted against the bill it still would have passed in committee 13-10), was celebrated by the MSM all day long today, as the coming of at least a bit of bipartisanship, and also as providing “cover” for Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and other “blue dogs” to vote for any health care reform travesty that also gets her vote, and still be in good shape with voters in their States. (Though why they ought to or do a care a bit about what one Republican Senator from Maine thinks is never elucidated by these commentators.)

Even more importantly, this vote of Snowe’s created a blizzard of commentary about the Democrats now having some hope of getting “the 60 votes necessary” to get health care reform passed, and that therefore they should resist using such “under-handed” procedural tricks as “reconciliation” (requiring only a majority), to get health insurance reform passed. However, as a number of people have written lately, including Jane Hamsher, Chris Bowers, and myself, 60 votes are not necessary to pass health care reform. 60 votes are only necessary to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. However, the practice of the filibuster can itself be ended with only 51 votes, or more precisely, 50 votes from Senators, plus one vote from the Vice President of the United States. So 60 votes are not even necessary to end filibusters. All that is necessary for that is a willingness and determination to end the filibuster once and for all. [Read more →]

How many times do they have to prove it? These health insurance companies are just no good. You can’t negotiate with them. They have to get everything they want, or they’ll take their marbles and go home. After all, they’re the princes of the earth. They’re entitled!

Today, the health insurance companies, through AHIP, released a study by Price Waterhouse Coopers that they had commissioned. The study asserted that if the Baucus bill passed in its current form, insurance prices would rise by 40% between now and 2013, 73% between now and 2016, and 111% between now and 2019. In contrast, if no bill at all were passed, prices would increase by “only” 26%, 50% and 79% during these three periods. The report tries to place the blame for the variance in these estimates on the provisions of the bill that specify a mandate with weak penalties that young, healthy people will be more easily able to ignore than they would a stronger mandate. [Read more →]

Cenk Uygur writes about the importance of questions, rather than answers, in changing the conversation in a way that is favorable to Democratic ideas, and also praises Alan Grayson and Michael Moore for bringing up two questions that have changed the political conversation in ways that put the Republicans on the defensive. In saying that the Republican health care plan is “If you do get sick, die quickly,” Alan raised the question:

”Do Republicans Want People To Die Quickly”? [Read more →]

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Alan Grayson’s been making waves lately. His calling out members of the Republican Party as “foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging neanderthals,” was good for a laugh. And then, when they howled and demanded an apology, he refused to apologize to them, but, instead, said that he would only apologize to the 44,000 (actually closer to 45,000) annual dead and their families for Congress’s inaction failing to fix the health insurance mess.

On Friday’s installment of Countdown, Lawrence O’Donnell, substituting for Keith, played a clip of Grayson’s recent speech on the floor of the House (above), and then also had him on the program for a softball interview (below). In both performances Grayson exuded confidence, comfort, and humor. In the interview he was just “basking,” a really “happy warrior” in the tradition of Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

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Based on these, and his other recent performances, we can certainly wonder whether Alan Grayson can be “the tip of the spear” the Democratic Party has been looking for to speak to the public in the emotional common sense language needed to push Democratic ideas. The President is not that leader. He’s trying to be the leader of all the people, and he avoids partisan messaging, opening the way for the Republicans to attack the Democrats, their outlook and their programmatic ideas, while Obama defends his own agenda, but not the Party’s or the progressives’. Also, our leadership in both Houses of Congress has little mass appeal to say the least. Nancy Pelosi has many good qualities, when it comes to effectively herding the cats in the Party, but she certainly doesn’t project purpose, strength, or commitment to Democratic Party ideals on the national stage. Harry Reid has all the emotional appeal of the proverbial “wet noodle,” and only insiders are aware of his redeeming qualities.

In short, we have few Democratic or progressive spokespersons with “charisma” in the Congress, who can both communicate and command media attention. If Alan Grayson can play that role, without resorting to language whose factual claims go off the deep end, he can be that tip of the Democratic spear the Party needs to once again convincingly carry its historic message: that it is, truly, the Party of the People.

(Also posted at firedoglake.com where there may be more comments)

Over the past few days, there’s been a great deal of moral protest, outrage, and even fury expressed at Firedog Lake and The Seminal about the “opt-out” compromise. The basis of the outrage is the idea that we all ought to stand together in health care reform, and insist on the idea of “everybody in, nobody out.” I’m all for that principle. It’s one of my mantras in health care reform. And I’m also all for moral outrage and even fury in the service of a good cause. But if we really all ought to stand together on the opt-out, and advocate for “everybody in, nobody out,” then: [Read more →]

The Federal Government has three independent and theoretically co-equal branches. But presently it is unbalanced, and the chief source of the imbalance is the US Congress.

Congress is either a very weak, or a very strong institution, depending on one’s perspective. If you’re opposed to the status quo, and interested in blocking legislation changing things, then Congress is very strong in its ability to block legislation, even for generations, that the majority of people and various Presidents want. On the other hand, if you’re interested in passing legislation and using the Government to help solve critical societal problems, then Congress is way too weak, and, in fact, makes the rest of our Government dysfunctional in coping with problems facing the United States.

I won’t go through the litany of serious problems that face the United States right now. Anyone reading this knows what they are. What is significant is that most of them are not new. Some of them are a generation or more old, and none of them have been seriously addressed by the Government, because Congress can’t unify to pass legislation, when the stakes are high and many interests are involved. [Read more →]

When I listen to various learned men talk about what we ought to do in Afghanistan, I get really bugged. Everybody takes a position about what we ought to do and bases it on their expectations about what will happen if we do what they want us to, versus what will happen if we do what someone else proposes. However, the truth is that no one can predict what will happen in Afghanistan with any certainty, short of our deciding to put an overwhelming force of, say, five million soldiers in there to occupy the country. Short of that, things are up for grabs, and the predictions we get from the various advocates are so much BS. Certainly General McChrystal can’t guarantee that his recommendation for an increase of 40,000 troops for an anti-terrorism/counter-insurgency/nation-building effort will work. Why not? Because he really can’t predict the response to that kind of surge by the Afghans. [Read more →]

Hi Bill, Thanks for your kind words, your support of my post, and your help in calling Jason’s attention to it. It’s great to be writing in a community where people support one another even when they disagree.

I take your point that the presidency should be less powerful than it is, and I generally agree with it. I too, have been very concerned at the abuse of power by the Executive Branch, and about the dangers of concentrating power in a unitary executive, and I have thought quite a bit about how to put a stop to it. However, I don’t think it’s useful to either appeal to the viewpoint of the founders to solve the problem, or to think about the solution in terms of simply reducing the President’s power.

The reason for this is the question of the President’s power within our present system is a very complex one, and I think we have to think about that power in four of its aspects and also in terms of the distinction between the domestic and foreign policy/national security domains. The four aspects I have in mind are the power of the President to: 1) get legislation that he or she wants through Congress in more or less the form that he or she wants to see it; 2) avoid enforcing legislation passed by the Congress, and engaging in behavior that breaks duly enacted laws; 3) block legislation that he or she is against; and 4) get his or her appointees considered and confirmed or rejected within a reasonable time frame. [Read more →]