Rumors Of A Stupak Deal

dmataconis — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:39:37 -0500

Late last night rumors began to surface of a deal between House Democrats and the pro-life group of Democrats led by Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made a deal with Rep. Bart Stupak in order to secure his vote and that of other anti-choice Democrats for the health care bill, which is scheduled to be voted on this Sunday. According to a member of Congress who was briefed on the matter, Pelosi has agreed to let Stupak have a vote on his amendment, which instructs the Senate to substitute his language for the Senate language on abortion.

FDL has obtained a copy of the concurrent resolution (PDF1, PDF2, PDF3, PDF4), which includes cosponsors Marion Berry, Sanford Bishop, Joseph Cao, Kathy Dahlkemper, Steve Driehaus, Marcy Kaptur, Dan Lipinski, Alan Mollohan, and Nick Rahall. A second source confirms that with the exception of Cao, these are the members of Congress who are still on the fence. Cao is still considered a firm “no” vote.

The deal calls for Stupak to have a vote on his amendment either before or after the House votes to confirm the Senate bill on Sunday. Stupak is confident that he has the votes to pass the measure, and is happy to have the vote after the House passes the Senate bill. He believes that by using a “tie bar” approach, his amendment would be “tied” to the health care bill — which would require just 51 votes in the Senate.

None of this is making the pro-choice crowd happy, though:

Pro-choice members of the House, however, are demanding that the vote on the Concurrent Resolution happen before the House confirms the Senate bill. If in fact it passes, they plan to vote against confirming the Senate bill. They want Rep. Diana Degette to release the names of the 41 cosigners to her letter who pledged to vote against any bill that restricts a woman’s right to choose, and they are angry that the White House has been whipping to push through the Stupak deal.

“It is outrageous that a Democratic Speaker, a Democratic Majority Leader and a Democratic President should support rolling back women’s reproductive rights,” says one member of the group.

We’ll find out more about this deal, and any fallout from it, later this morning. Stupak has a press conference scheduled for 11 at which he’ll presumably announce that the deal.

If this is the real thing though, and assuming that Pelosi and quell any rebellion among the pro-choice ranks, then that pretty much means that the Democrats will have the votes they need on Sunday afternoon.

Signs Of An ObamaCare Backlash In November

dmataconis — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:01:56 -0500

From the latest Rasmussen Reports poll:

Fifty percent (50%) of U.S. voters say they are less likely to vote for their representative in Congress this November if he or she votes for the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken Wednesday night finds that 34% are more likely to vote for their Congress member’s reelection if he or she supports the president’s health care plan. Eight percent (8%) say the health care vote will have no impact on how they vote this November, and another seven percent (7%) are not sure.

Thirty-three percent (33%) of all voters favor the creation of a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone. Fifty-four percent (54%) oppose such a system. These findings are unchanged from the end of last year. Support for a single-payer system plays a huge role in whether someone will support a Representative who votes for the health care plan.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of those who favor a single-payer system are more likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes for the health care plan. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of those who oppose a single-payer system are less likely to vote for a health care plan supporter.

With every Republican in Congress opposed to the health care plan, it’s not surprising to find that 79% of GOP voters are less likely to vote for someone who supports it. Fifty-five percent (55%) of Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes for the plan.

But perhaps more significantly, 51% of voters not affiliated with either major party are less likely to support someone who votes for the legislation. Just 32% of unaffiliateds are more likely to vote for someone who supports the bill.

Congressmen, vote at your own risk.

Don’t Trust Those CBO Numbers

dmataconis — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:07:02 -0500

The Washington Post, of all places, explains today why the CBO numbers released yesterday should not be trusted:

The latest estimate of what health-care reform would mean for the government’s finances was such a hot document Thursday that at times the Congressional Budget Office’s Web site couldn’t handle the traffic.
But as much as the 25-page “score” of the legislation was treated as holy writ in Washington — Democrats eagerly flagged its conclusion that the package they aim to pass this weekend would cut the deficit by $138 billion over the coming decade — the reality is considerably messier.
Budget experts generally have high praise for the work of CBO analysts, the non-ideological technocrats who crunch the numbers to estimate the fiscal impact of legislation. But their work is often more art than science, and although the forecasts that accompany legislation are always filled with uncertainty, this one contains more than most.
One major reason is the sheer complexity of the legislation. If Congress were considering, say, a 20-cent increase in the gasoline tax, the CBO could easily analyze how that would affect gas consumption and do some simple math to calculate how much money it would raise. The same goes for figuring out the cost of legislation that offers a new benefit, such as an expansion of food stamps.
But the proposal on the table contains sweeping changes that would touch almost all corners of the health-care system, and the changes interrelate in hard-to-predict ways. For example, the legislation contains subsidies for those who would not be able to afford health coverage on their own — but the cost of those subsidies could vary a lot depending on how much other elements of the legislation change the price of health insurance, such as through provisions requiring minimum coverage levels.
Although some data can help budget analysts estimate the fiscal impact of those policies, such as when similar policies were enacted in Massachusetts, the range of possible outcomes is especially wide because of the complexity involved.
“The health-care sector is incredibly complicated, with patients and doctors and insurers and hospitals and so on,” said William Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There are a lot of layers and interacting agents, so it’s very difficult to predict the outcome of policy changes that affect everyone’s incentives.”

And the one factor that makes the numbers hard to rely on, in the end, is the one thing that is at the same time unpredictable and entirely predictable, politics:

[T]he biggest risk that could cause the budget impact to diverge from the CBO estimates comes from Congress. The estimates assume that the legislation plays out as written over the coming decade, which would mean reining in the growth of payments to doctors and hospitals and implementing a tax on high-cost health insurance plans.
Those two policies are responsible for bringing in the revenue and cost savings that allow the plan to expand coverage to 32 million more Americans yet, according to the projections, bring down the deficit.
But that falls apart if a future Congress finds the cuts or taxes too painful to handle and overturns them.
There is precedent for that. The alternative minimum tax, for example, is a policy that under law would increasingly affect more middle- and upper-middle-income people and bring the government tens of billions of dollars. But Congress invariably adjusts the tax every year, preventing it from ensnaring those additional American families.
“The risk is that you’ve put in these things to create higher savings over time, but then when you get there, people say, ‘We can’t do that,’ ” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “The huge risk is that the constituencies that didn’t win their lobbying effort to stop the bill will be there every single day between now and when these things hit, trying to reduce their impact.”

We are starting down the road where health care will become even more of a political issue than it is already. If you don’t think that future Congresses will be tempted to intervene for political advantage, you’re expecting something that has never been and will never be.

Congressman Admits: “If You Don’t Tie Our Hands, We Will Keep Stealing”

dmataconis — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:07:51 -0500

Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello was more candid than most of his collegues during a recent meeting with constituents:

Truer words were never spoken.

Rand Paul Must Be Doing Something Right

dmataconis — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:11:30 -0500

The Cheneyites are nervous:

Senior Republicans in Kentucky and Washington D.C. are deeply concerned about Senate candidate Trey Grayson’s campaign as he struggles to narrow the gap against GOP primary rival Rand Paul.

Two months before the election, the libertarian-leaning Paul, son of the Texas congressman and quixotic presidential contender, has tapped into anti-Washington grass-roots fervor on the right and staked out an advantage over Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state and establishment favorite.

There have been few polls in the race, but an automated survey earlier this month showed Paul leading by double digits. Even Grayson backers acknowledge that their candidate is lagging, if not as badly as the public polls indicate.

A win by Paul, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist, would represent the first true electoral success of the tea party movement. Equally important, it would embarrass Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose political organization is running Grayson’s campaign, thrust onto the national stage a Republican with foreign policy views out of the conservative mainstream and, strategists in both parties believe, imperil the GOP’s hold on the seat now held by retiring Sen. Jim Bunning.

Recognizing the threat, a well-connected former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convened a conference call last week between Grayson and a group of leading national security conservatives to sound the alarm about Paul.

“On foreign policy, [global war on terror], Gitmo, Afghanistan, Rand Paul is NOT one of us,” Cesar Conda wrote in an e-mail to figures such as Liz Cheney, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Dan Senor and Marc Thiessen

Rand Paul: Not A Neo-Con Warmonger.

The commercials write themselves.

UPDATED: CBO Estimates New Health Care Bill Will Cost $940 Billion Over Ten Years

dmataconis — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:32:39 -0500

The Congressional Budget Office has released it’s estimate for the latest version of ObamaCare:

The Democratic health care bill would cost $940 billion over 10 years and cut the federal deficit over the next two decades – figures that should help ease the worries of fiscal hawks who have been reluctant about supporting the sweeping measure.

The bill would reduce the deficit by about $130 billion in the first 10 years, and by $1.2 trillion over the second 10 years. It will expand coverage to 95 percent of Americans, according to Congressional Budget Office figures released Thursday by House Democrats.

The numbers allow Democrats to push ahead with a vote Sunday, even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) continues to search for the 216 votes needed for passage.

“We’re on track for a Sunday vote,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters.

Of course, if you believe that these numbers are even close to what the actual cost of this program is going to be, or that the deficit savings are anything but mythical, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

But, this means the process moves forward. The next step will be to see what the House Rules Committee decides to do.

UPDATE: Below is a copy of the actual analysis from the CBO.

CBO Estimate Of Senate Health Care Plan With House “Fixes”

Why The Slaughter Solution Will Probably Be Allowed To Stand

dmataconis — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:35:38 -0500

Despite what seem to be some fairly clear Constitutional objections, there’s is a very good chance that the House of Representatives will be able to get away with the strategy of deeming the Senate bill as having been passed without actually voting on it.

Here’s why.

Ed Morrissey points to Public Citizen v US District Court for DC, a 2005 case from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In that case, Public Citizen was challenging a similar “deeming” rule adopted by the Republican House on a bill to increase the debt limit.

Here’s what the Court said:

The District Court held that Public Citizen’s bicameralism claim is foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Marshall Field & Co. v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649 (1892). See Public Citizen v. Clerk, U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., 451 F. Supp. 2d 109 (D.D.C. 2006). In that case, the Court held that the judiciary must treat the attestations of “the two houses, through their presiding officers” as “conclusive evidence that [a bill] was passed by Congress.” Marshall Field, 143 U.S. 672-73. Under Marshall Field, a bill signed by the leaders of the House and Senate – an attested “enrolled bill” – establishes that Congress passed the text included therein “according to the forms of the Constitution,” and it “should be deemed complete and unimpeachable.” Id. at 672-73. Recognizing that Marshall Field’s “enrolled bill rule” prohibited it from questioning the congressional pedigree of the bill signed by the Speaker and President pro tempore, the District Court dismissed Public Citizen’s complaint and denied its motion for summary judgment. Public Citizen, 451 F. Supp. 2d 109. …

We agree with the District Court that the enrolled bill rule of Marshall Field controls the disposition of this case. We therefore affirm the judgment of the District Court. We find it unnecessary to determine whether Public Citizen has standing to bring suit, because we conclude that the Marshall Field rule of dismissal “represents the sort of ‘threshold question’ [that] … may be resolved before addressing jurisdiction.” Tenet v.Doe, 544 U.S. 1, 6 n.4 (2005).

In Marshall Field, the Supreme Court said:

The signing by the speaker of the house of representatives, and by the president of the senate, in open session, of an enrolled bill, is an official attestation by the two houses of such bill as one that has passed congress. It is a declaration by the two houses, through their presiding officers, to the president, that a bill, thus attested, has received, in due form, the sanction of the legislative branch of the government, and that it is delivered to him in obedience to the constitutional requirement that all bills which pass congress shall be presented to him. And when a bill, thus attested, receives his approval, and is deposited in the public archives, its authentication as a bill that has passed congress should be deemed complete and unimpeachable.

(…)

It is admitted that an enrolled act, thus authenticated, is sufficient evidence of itself—nothing to the contrary appearing upon its face—that it passed congress

So, once Nancy Pelosi and either Vice President Biden, as President of the Senate, or Senator Byrd, as President pro tempore attest that the bill has passed their respective houses, that is the end of the matter unless the Supreme Court ends up over-ruling a 118 year old precedent and creating a Constitutional crisis.

I wouldn’t count on that happening.

Justice John Paul Stevens Says He Will Retire Within Three Years

dmataconis — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:02:59 -0500

Justice John Paul Stevens, who will turn 90 next month and has been on the Supreme Court since 1975, discussed his retirement plans, sort of, in the latest issue of The New Yorker:

How long will Stevens remain on the Court? Good genes (one of his older brothers practiced law until he was ninety-one), a happy home, plenty of exercise, and even more luck could allow Stevens to keep up the fight into his tenth decade. Last December, he had lunch with Peter Isakoff, a Washington lawyer who was one of his early Supreme Court law clerks. “He had just played tennis that morning—singles!—and I was just kind of amazed,” Isakoff recalled. “And so I asked him, ‘Do you still run?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Well, how else are you going to get to the ball?’ ”

With the election of Barack Obama, the question of Stevens’s retirement has become more pressing. Even though Stevens was appointed by a Republican President, many assume that he would never willingly have turned his seat over to George W. Bush. I asked Stevens about his plans.

“Well, I still have my options open,” he said. “When I decided to just hire one clerk, three of my four clerks last year said they’d work for me next year if I wanted them to. So I have my options still. And then I’ll have to decide soon.” On March 8th, he told me that he would make up his mind in about a month.

(…)

“You can say I will retire within the next three years. I’m sure of that.”

My guess is that it will happen sooner rather than later, possibly this year.

Interestingly, Stevens also weighs in, sort of, on the continuing war of words between the White House and Chief Justice Roberts over the State of the Union:

He will not be seen again, under any circumstances, at a State of the Union address. “I went to a few of them when I was first on the Court, but I stopped,” Stevens told me. “First, they are political occasions, where I don’t think our attendance is required. But also it comes when I am on a break in Florida. To be honest with you, I’d rather be in Florida than in Washington.”

Sounds like an idea the whole Court should adopt.

Another Failure For “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

dmataconis — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:06:54 -0500

The Air Force didn’t ask, she didn’t tell, but a 28 year-old Air Force Sergent was discharged anyway because she’s gay:

Jene Newsome played by the rules as an Air Force sergeant: She never told anyone in the military she was a lesbian. The 28-year-old’s honorable discharge under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy came only after police officers in Rapid City, S.D., saw an Iowa marriage certificate in her home and told the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.

Newsome and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint against the western South Dakota police department, claiming the officers violated her privacy when they informed the military about her sexual orientation. The case also highlights concerns over the ability of third parties to “out” service members, especially as the Pentagon has started reviewing the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” law.

“I played by ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Newsome told The Associated Press by telephone.

“I just don’t agree with what the Rapid City police department did. … They violated a lot of internal policies on their end, and I feel like my privacy was violated.”

(…)

The Rapid City Police Department says Newsome, an aircraft armament system craftsman who spent nine years in the Air Force, was not cooperative when they showed up at her home in November with an arrest warrant for her partner, who was wanted on theft charges in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Newsome was at work at the base at the time and refused to immediately come home and assist the officers in finding her partner, whom she married in Iowa — where gay marriage is legal — in October.

Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome’s home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.

“It’s an emotional issue and it’s unfortunate that Newsome lost her job, but I disagree with the notion that our department might be expected to ignore the license, or not document the license, or withhold it from the Air Force once we did know about it,” Allender said Saturday. “It was a part of the case, part of the report and the Air Force was privileged to the information.”

He said his department does not seek to expose gay military personnel or investigate the sexuality of Rapid City residents.

And yet that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?

Right Now, ObamaCare Is Losing In The House

dmataconis — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:38:17 -0600

That’s according to a Whip Count from the liberal Firedoglake:

Definite YES:
191 Democrats.

Definite NO:
177 Republicans.

Definite NO:
25 Democrats.

19 Democrats who voted No in November:
Bobby Bright, Mike McIntyre, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Walt Minnick, Artur Davis, Chet Edwards, Frank Kratovil, Mike Ross, Dan Boren, Gene Taylor, Larry Kissell, Dennis Kucinich, Collin Peterson, Ike Skelton, Jim Marshall, Mike McMahon, Charlie Melancon, Tim Holden, Ben Chandler.

6 Democrats & Republicans who voted Yes in November (confirmed Stupak bloc):
Bart Stupak, Marion Berry, Dan Lipinski, Kathy Dahlkemper, Joe Donnelly, Joseph Cao (R).

18 potential Democratic No-Yes flip votes:

15 possible:
Jason Altmire, Bart Gordon, Glenn Nye, Brian Baird, John Tanner, Rick Boucher, Allen Boyd, John Boccieri, Suzanne Kosmas, Betsy Markey, John Adler, Scott Murphy, Lincoln Davis, Jim Matheson, Harry Teague.

3 less possible:
Travis Childers, Heath Shuler (severe lean no), John Barrow.

20 potential Yes-No flip votes:

4 additional Stupak bloc (Stupak-curious):
Steve Driehaus, Brad Ellsworth, Marcy Kaptur, Jerry Costello.

16 other wary Democrats:
Mike Arcuri, Zack Space, Chris Carney, Mike Doyle, Paul Kanjorski, Ann Kirkpatrick, Alan Mollohan, Nick Rahall, Dan Maffei, Bill Owens, Dennis Cardoza, Baron Hill, Solomon Ortiz, Gabrielle Giffords, Earl Pomeroy, Tim Bishop.

Democrats need 25 of a combination of the 18 potential No-Yes flip votes and the 20 potential Yes-No flip votes. So they need 25 out of the remaining uncommitted 38.

And Republicans need just 14 votes out of that 38 to get to the 216 votes needed to defeat ObamaCare.

If your Representative is part of that group of 38, call now.

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