At least he must be happy she specifically wanted to talk to him. A 90-year-old C-SPAN viewer requested specifically to ask the “colored man” anchoring Washington Journal why it is “coloreds” are still angry about this whole “slavery” thing. When told the conversation topic on the program today was actually Wall Street, she felt it was important to clarify: “I’m not a racist.”
The caller, a well-meaning enough lady, we guess, just wanted to point out all the wonderful things white people have done for “coloreds” since slavery, including “free everything.” It appears that her only shot at letting black people know all the wonderful things white people have done for them since slavery was calling into C-SPAN, where, thank heavens, a “colored man” was anchoring the program. How else would she be expected to find one? Anyway, this is what she said:
“I am 90 years old and I just wanted to ask the colored man, why don’t colored people, instead of saying what we did to them, why dont they say what we did for them? They talk about the slavery, but since then they have given them welfare, free medicine, free everything.”
The anchor very deftly deflected the criticism while managing to keep a straight face (almost): “Ma’am, I think this is more of a conversation about the relationship between the administration and people on Wall Street, and not one that is necessarily based on race.” She responds, “Okay. I’m not a racist. That was my comment, thank you.”
Given the demographic these daytime C-SPAN talk shows seem to attract, and the fact that is feels like every four months one of these confused non-racists manages to get through to phone lines (remember “Black-SPAN“?), one has to wonder how many years of “dealing with old racist callers” workshops the anchors have to go through before being put on air.
The top uniformed leaders of the United States Air Force, Army and Marine Corps warned Congress on Friday that repealing "don't ask, don't tell" now would hurt the military's ability to fight the war in Afghanistan.
The service chiefs put themselves squarely opposed to their civilian bosses on one of President Barack Obama's top legislative priorities. The testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee was likely to bolster congressional opposition to the change.
"I cannot reconcile, nor turn my back, on the negative perceptions held by our Marines who are most engaged in the hard work of day-to-day operations in Afghanistan," Marine commandant Gen. James Amos said, citing a Pentagon survey that found 58 percent of Marines and 48 percent of Army respondents think lifting the ban would have negative consequences.
"Successfully integrating gays and lesbians into small Marine combat units has strong potential for disruption and will no doubt divert leadership attention away from an almost singular focus of preparing units for combat," Amos said.
Gen. George Casey, chief of staff of the Army, and Gen. Norman Schwarz, Air Force chief of staff, agreed.
"Implementation of the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' would be a major cultural and policy change in the middle of a war," Casey said. "It would be implemented by a force and leaders that are already stretched by the cumulative impacts of almost a decade at war."
Republican opponents of repeal said the Joint Chiefs' testimony confirmed their argument that lifting the ban would have negative consequences for the military.
"I will not agree to have this bill go forward, and neither will, I believe, 41 of my colleagues, either, because our economy is in the tank," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. "Our economy is in the tank, and the American people want that issue addressed."
Even the heads of the Navy and Coast Guard, who said they favor repealing the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, warned that the change must be undertaken cautiously.
In Thursday night's hotly anticipated Nevada Senate debate, incumbent Sen. Harry Reid and his opponent Sharron Angle faced off for the first and last time in front of the cameras. They opposed each other on nearly every issue and traded personal barbs about the other's ethical credibility, "extreme" views, and - in one case - a candidate's masculinity.
"Man up, Harry Reid!" cried Angle in one of many impassioned efforts to distance herself from the man she has called a "career politician."
In an hour-long forum, hosted by the Nevada Broadcasters Association and moderated by Mitch Fox, candidates sparred over issues including illegal immigration, health care reform, abortion and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Both Reid and Angle appeared at times uncomfortable and ill-prepared against the venue's brightly-lit green backdrop.
Angle was quick to attack the longtime Democratic Senator, accusing him of political careerism and emphasizing the differences represented by the two candidates.
"Tonight you will see the difference between Harry Reid and big government and Sharron Angle and limited, constitutional government," Angle stated in her opening remarks, adding, "I'm not a career politician... I was a teacher for 25 years... I live in a middle class neighborhood in Reno. Senator Reid lives in the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C."
Health care was a primary point of discussion throughout the debate and Reid accused Angle - who conceded she does not believe there are any medical conditions for which there should be any government-mandated health coverage - of holding "very extreme" views.
"My opponent doesn't like any insurance companies to have to do anything," Reid said, emphasizing the candidate's opposition to funding for mammograms and colonoscopies.
"America is a country of choices, not forcing people to buy things that they don't need," Angle said of so-called "Obamacare," invoking a theme she cited frequently throughout the night. "The solution is simple: We need to get the government out."
"Insurance companies ... don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it out of a profit motive and they have almost destroyed our economy," Reid fired back.
The candidates also differed on immigration, with Reid calling for "comprehensive reform" and Angle condemning his opposition to Arizona's controversial immigration legislation that was passed earlier this year.
"What we have here is an illegal alien problem and the solution is simple: secure the borders, enforce the laws," Angle said. "We should be supporting Arizona."
On economic issues, Angle reiterated her belief that job creation does not fall under the job description of a U.S. Senator: "Harry Reid: It's not your job to create jobs," she argued. "It's your job to create policies that create the confidence for the private sector to create those jobs."
Angle also pushed for extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, arguing that if they were not made permanent "we will experience the largest tax increase in the history of America."
"I personally am not in favor of giving billionaires tax cuts," Reid responded, before guaranteeing that he would not support an increase in taxes for middle class Americans.
Nevada currently suffers from the nation's highest unemployment rate, 14.4 percent, up nearly five percent from the national number. Thirteen-thousand Nevada homeowners received foreclosure notices in August alone, according to the Boston Globe.
Polls show the candidates locked in a dead heat: A recent study by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Nevada's 8NewsNow show Angle two points ahead of Reid, with 47 percent to his 45. Alternately, a Suffolk University poll released Wednesday shows Reid leading by three points, at 46 percent to 43 percent.
The two candidates have traded negligible leads in recent weeks, most of which fall within the respective polls' margins of sampling error. CBS currently rates the race a toss up.
Senate Democrats hit a minor snafu Wednesday afternoon when they failed to kill a Republican procedural motion on a short-term unemployment benefits package.
The vote was 58-40, two votes shy of setting aside a GOP “point of order” against the $9.2 billion bill, leaving the legislation in limbo as Democrats scrambled to schedule a re-vote later Wednesday.
With Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) at home for a funeral and George Voinovich of Ohio the the only Republican to break with his party on the motion, it became clear the Dems would fall just short of 60.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he expects to hold a second procedural vote later Wednesday to kill the GOP point of order.
The Republicans' motion—which contends that the unemployment benefits bill violates the Senate's "pay as you go rules"—strips the legislation of its emergency designation, an action that requires the bill to be offset with spending cuts.
Even though the issue should be cleared up in favor of Democrats later Wednesday, it was still a setback because Democrats thought they had the 60 votes to waive the “paygo” rules on the first roll call on this issue.
Minutes before the 12:30 vote, a Democratic aide said he believed the party had enough votes, that the point of order would be waived and that final passage of the legislation would come "in short order.”
The aide believed Voinovich and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would vote against the point of order. But Democrats miscalculated. Snowe, who had told reporters Tuesday she was still on the fence about how she would vote, voted with Republicans.
The pending short-term package—which includes extensions of emergency flood insurance, COBRA benefits and the Medicare "doc fix"—has become a thorn in the side of the majority party, which has faced filibusters in each of its last two attempts to move it through the Senate.
As a result of this most recent impasse, unemployment benefits expired April 5. The legislation on the floor, however, would cover the gap in coverage and retroactively grant benefits to those who lost them.
Like it or not, the 2012 presidential race is already underway.
Thousands of Republicans are gathering in New Orleans for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, a three-day event that's the GOP presidential nomination's equivalent of the annual NFL Scouting Combine for aspiring draft picks.
The lineup includes prominent Republican VIPs who might run for president, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. And political observers will be looking for clues about the nascent battle for the Republican presidential nomination.
Four years ago in Memphis, Tenn., Mitt Romney made a splash at the event, coming out of nowhere to finish a surprising second at the conference’s straw poll. The strong showing was an early indication that the Massachusetts governor would be a player in the 2008 presidential contest.
(The conference, however, isn't always a reliable predictor of the eventual GOP presidential nominee. The winner of the 2006 straw poll was former Republican Senate leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who never ran for president. Another closely watched Republican who spoke at the event — former Virginia Sen. George Allen — ended up losing his seat later that year.)
But even if its top performers don't always go on to the GOP nomination, the SRLC serves as the first real opportunity for party leaders, prominent donors and the political press corps to size up the early field.
“It's a chance to see the candidates in front of a group of key party leaders from a big chunk of the country,” said political analyst Charlie Cook, publisher of the nonpartisan "Cook Political Report."
“Who is stiff? Who seems to strike a responsive chord?”
The speaking line-up and straw poll
The three-day conference kicked off Thursday night with speeches by Gingrich, GOP commentator Mary Matalin and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s increasingly outspoken daughter, Liz.
On Friday afternoon, Palin speaks — followed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Perry of Texas and former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts.
And on Saturday, speakers include Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Texas Rep. (and 2008 presidential candidate) Ron Paul, and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.
Presidential hopefuls Romney — who made that splash at the 2006 Southern Republican Leadership Conference — and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty won’t be in attendance.
Romney is still on tour to promote his new book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.”
Pawlenty pulled out of the event to attend a welcome-home ceremony for members of the Minnesota National Guard who are returning from Iraq, but he will address the GOP conference via video.
On Saturday night, conference organizers will release the results of its presidential-preference straw poll, which is open to any of the 3,500 Republicans — from 38 different states — who have paid to be in attendance.
In 2006, some of the fledgling campaigns paid to transport their supporters to help their would-be presidential candidates in the straw poll.
“Presidential campaigns are organizational exercises,” said Republican strategist Alex Vogel, who worked for Frist in 2006. If you can’t organize to get your supporters to vote in the straw poll, he added, then it raises questions about your organizational skills.
Palin, Steele in the spotlight
The big draw at this week's conference will be Palin, the GOP's vice presidential nominee in 2008. And if her past appearances — like her February speech at the Tea Party convention in Nashville — are an indication, the Republican audience in New Orleans will eat up every word she delivers.
“How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for you?” she asked at the Tea Party convention, ridiculing President Barack Obama's trademark campaign message.
Still, many Republican political operatives aren't convinced that Palin will end up making a run for the White House in 2012.
“My own belief is that she is not running for president,” Vogel said. But he added that her status as a political icon fires up Republicans and conservatives.
“A little celebrity spicing things up doesn't hurt,” he said.
Another speaker who probably isn't running for president but who will receive plenty of attention at the conference is Steele, the embattled RNC chairman.
His Saturday speech will come after two weeks of tremendous scrutiny about the committee's $2,000 expenditure at a sex-themed club in Los Angeles, as well as other criticism of his tenure as chairman.
“I think it will be interesting to see how he is received,” noted one Republican political operative.
Perhaps the biggest difference between this week's conference and the one in Memphis four years ago is the attitude among Republicans.
In 2006, the Iraq war, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and George W. Bush's growing unpopularity were dragging down the Republican Party. Months later in the November midterms, the GOP lost its control of Congress. (It also isn't lost on some that this week's conference is taking place in the city that Katrina devastated in 2005.)
“2006 was about as bleak as it could get,” Vogel explained about the political mood among Republicans that year.
But now that the GOP is poised to make big gains in the upcoming midterms, he said, the party's mood is “borderline euphoric.”
Republican political consultant Phil Musser, who is advising Pawlenty, believes the conference's biggest takeaway will be the Republican enthusiasm about November.
“What is the gut intensity level? And what does that mean for the upcoming midterms?”
The government’s foreclosure relief program just isn’t working.
That was the assessment Thursday of two reports from government watchdogs and a panel of witnesses at a congressional hearing trying to find out why the Obama administration is falling far short of its goal of preventing millions of Americans from losing their homes.
Treasury officials at the hearing acknowledged problems in the year-old mortgage-modification program and announced changes designed to address issues that have limited its effectiveness. Only 170,000 homeowners have completed the process to get their monthly payments reduced out of 1.1 million who began it over the past year.
A failure of the government's latest effort to stem the tide of foreclosures would threaten more than the roughly 8 million homeowners at risk of losing their homes in the next two years, according to John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
"If we have another 8 million homes to go into foreclosure it will have a devastating effect on our economy, and job losses will continue to rise," Taylor told the House Committee of Government Oversight and Reform.
Three years after the housing bubble burst, the number of homeowners falling behind on their mortgages continues to rise. A separate report Thursday from U.S. banking regulators showed that the number of seriously delinquent mortgages jumped in the fourth quarter, led by a sharp increase among the most creditworthy borrowers. Some 13.6 percent of all homeowners with mortgages — more than one in seven — are behind in their payments, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It was the seventh consecutive quarterly rise.
A Treasury official at Thursday's hearing acknowledged that the government's Home Affordable Modification Program had encountered a series of unforeseen roadblocks. But he also announced changes designed to speed the modification of loans to more affordable terms.
“We've been learning as we went along,” said Assistant Treasury Secretary Herbert Allison Jr. “We want to continue to improve this program."
The HAMP program is designed to head off foreclosures by lowering borrowers' monthly payments through a series of voluntary concessions from lenders. Guidelines call for cutting mortgage rates to as little as 2 percent for five years, with the difference subsidized by the government, and extending the loan’s term to 40 years. More than 100 lenders have agreed to follow the guidelines, but the decision to modify an individual loan is entirely up to the lender or investors holding the mortgage.
The program has been riddled with problems from the beginning, drawing fire from homeowners, housing counselors, consumer advocates and attorneys working with borrowers. Many report long wait times getting through to lenders, multiple requests for paperwork, lost documents and little or no explanation when applications are denied.
The Treasury also said it will make changes in response to one of the most frustrating complaints. In many cases, lenders are moving to foreclose on a property — even after homeowners get approved for loan modification.
"The new guidelines will make clear that if the homeowner enters into a fully verified modification plan, all pending foreclosure actions must be stopped," Allison told the congressional panel.
But such changes have been a major source of "confusion and delay," according to a report from Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, who testified Thursday. He criticized the Treasury for not setting clear targets for how many homeowners are expected to get help under the $75 billion program.
"We believe it is unacceptable that one year into the program Treasury has yet to identify its goals," he said.
The program also has yet to tackle the issue of millions of homeowners who have second mortgages that must also be modified to make their first mortgage affordable. A year into the program, those guidelines still have not been established, according to Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, which issued a report Thursday critical of HAMP.
"A lot of program details aren’t very clear yet,” Dodaro told the panel. “Until the details are established (mortgage) servicers are going to be reluctant, understandably, to sign up for the program.”
Housing counselors and attorneys say those servicers — companies that handle mortgage payments on behalf of lenders — have been slow to add enough staff to cope with the flood of calls and mail from distressed homeowners. Allison acknowledged the bottleneck.
“I’m not cutting them any slack but they’ve had to get up to speed and they’ve had teething problems along the way,” he said. “All of us know we have more to do, and they have more to do.”
Members of the panel told of constituents who have faced numerous hurdles trying to get their mortgages modified. Reps. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., and Diane Watson, D-Calif., expressed concerns about what they said was a disproportionately higher foreclosure rate for African-Americans than for whites.
“We have a dual system of mortgage finance in this country — one for whites and one for blacks,” Taylor said. “Black and brown communities were targeted by subprime lenders after banks had closed their branches in those.”
Allison said the current disparity in foreclosure rates between blacks and whites is a reflection of “widespread predatory lending practices during the the mid-part of the decade.”
“The damage already exists," he said. "And we want to make sure that in our program there is no discrimination as people are considered for modifications."
Pressed for details about what measures are being taken, Allison said the Treasury is collecting data on the modification program and will “confront servicers" if they are discriminating against homeowners.
Despite the changes, Dodaro told the panel Congress should “explore some other alternatives.” But it will also have to consider how to continue to work with families who have already signed up with the HAMP program.
“You have 800,000 people in trial modifications that have to be dealt with equitably," Dodaro said.
But members of the the panel also noted the risk of continuing to promote a program that is falling short of its goals.
“We are ourselves setting up for failure,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. “The program doesn’t work.”
For almost a year now, every time budget reconciliation has been in the headline, Republicans have been there to warn that they'll clog up the process by offering dozens--perhaps hundreds--of amendments on the floor, eating up valuable floor time, and forcing Democrats to take tough votes on controversial issues.
Most recently, Politico quoted a Republican aide laying out the threat: "While debate time is limited, the number and content of amendments are not. This approach to moving health care has a lot of problems, but one Democrats haven't yet focused on is the number of bad votes they'd have to take to get there. Amendments don't have to be germane (well, they do, and if they're not, Dems can move to set them aside, but we can move to waive that; either way, there's a vote)."
Conversations with Reconciliation experts suggest that the minority can in fact flood the zone with amendments--but it also shows that Democrats can circumvent them if they want to.
Let's say the Republicans offer 100 politically charged amendments to the reconciliation bill, none of which are germane. Democrats can move to waive all of them, and, as the Republican aide said, the minority can force a vote on the motion to waive.
But it's important to remember: Reconciliation is intended to be an expedited process. It allows for 20 hours of debate, after which all amendments must be disposed of in a so-called "vote-arama." So all of those amendments (or motions to waive the amendments) must be voted on in rapid succession.
The grey area lies in exactly how Democrats can force an end to the charade once its clear that the Republican tactics are dilatory. That's uncharted territory--but, as one expert points out, the chair in the Senate--a.k.a. Vice President Joe Biden--has almost unlimited power to make rulings so long as 50 members are willing to go along with them. And if Republican tactics were to go over the line, Democrats would theoretically be able to put a stop to them.
As former Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove has pointed out, both the Republican strategy, and the Democrats' way around it, are far outside the traditional uses of the reconciliation process. But, hey, if both sides are exploring the limits of the rules anyway, who knows what will happen.
Immediately after President Barack Obama announced a bipartisan health reform summit, Democrats and Republicans made clear they have almost no expectation the half-day meeting can break a bitter yearlong standoff.
The two parties are staking out positions that leave them completely at odds even before they sit down.
Republicans say they’re open to compromise — as long as Obama tears up the House and Senate bills, restarts the legislative process and drops several key parts of his wish list.
Democrats say, not a chance.
And in fact, Obama hopes to walk into the Feb. 25 summit with an agreement in hand between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a final Democratic bill, so they can move ahead with a reform package after the sit-down.
House Republican leaders delivered a letter to the White House Monday that included a list of pointed questions that they would like answered before the meeting at Blair House, such as whether Obama would give up on using reconciliation, a way to pass health reform in the Senate with just 51 votes.
“If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate,” the letter read.
So what’s the point? A jaded Washington wondered how a single meeting — in front of live TV cameras, no less — could change the fundamentals of the debate.
Many concluded it won’t.
“Good luck with that,” said New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, playing the role of Democratic skeptic to the president’s proposal. “The GOP has been the ‘party of no’ all year. Republicans have made a tactical decision not to cooperate, and they’ve even called health care reform Obama’s Waterloo.”
Republicans and Democrats said it was too soon to lay out their plans for the meeting. But already, their respective strategies seemed to be taking shape, with both sides gearing up to use the summit as yet another forum for political point-scoring.
For Obama, it fits neatly into his post-Massachusetts strategy of painting the GOP as do-nothing obstructionists. The Republicans have spent the year almost uniformly opposing Obama’s agenda — and being rewarded by voters for doing it.
Now Obama wants to use the meeting to call them out in public, to question whether they have any plans to fix the nation’s health care system and any willingness to help him do it. The White House is eager to draw a sharper contrast with Republicans in the months leading up to the 2010 election, and clearly sees the meeting as a good start.
The summit also gives Democratic congressional leaders a new deadline to reach an agreement on their bill, which has been stalled since the Massachusetts Senate special election.
But more than that, Democrats hope the summit could provide them political cover to go it alone on a party-line vote if Republicans say they won’t provide any votes for an Obama-style health fix.
“The president wants to show his openness one last time before Congress completes their work on the bill,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA and a veteran health care reform advocate.
And for Republicans, who learned of the summit only an hour before Obama announced it during a pre-Super Bowl interview on CBS Sunday, they plan to call on the president to scrap a politically unpopular bill and break it into parts, arguing that Americans have rejected the go-big approach to health care reform.
Congressional Republicans moved quickly Monday to frame their next debate with Obama after their last back and forth with the president — a seemingly impromptu, nationally televised town hall at the House Republicans’ retreat late last month in Baltimore from which Obama came away with some much-needed momentum.
In the letter Monday to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said that Republicans have been asking the president for a meeting to talk health care since May, with no success.
The two GOP leaders questioned whether Obama would open up the meeting to dissenting views and state officials who are resisting national reform. They also want to include discussion of a government report that shows the Democrats' current plan wouldn't lower costs for most Americans - and may make health care more expensive.
In response, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement that made clear Obama isn’t abandoning the current legislation.
“He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills,” Gibbs said. “The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny.”
Still, it’s hard to see where the parties can find common ground, if the Democratic bills are the starting point.
Republicans have fundamental objections to the main pillars of Democratic health reform, including cuts to Medicare, tax increases on wealthy individuals and the health care industry and a mandate on individuals to buy insurance.
Even Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate who was the only Republican to vote for the bill in the Finance Committee, has said Democrats need to start over.
But Stuart Butler, vice president of domestic and economic policy research at the Heritage Foundation, said Republicans need to do more than that — and put Obama on the defensive.
“It is politically dangerous for Republicans,” Butler said. “They have got to come forward with a very clear vision of what they want to do and why what the president is doing now is not acceptable to the American people.”
Republicans should commit to working with Democrats on incremental reform if Obama agrees to start over, he said.
“That puts the hot potato back in the president’s lap,” Butler said.
Butler sees potential for agreement in several areas. The Democratic bills include ideas championed for years by Republicans, but often not to the degree that the GOP would like.
Obama supports lifting the tax exemption on employer health benefits, as do Republicans, who would return the money to uninsured Americans through tax credits to purchase insurance.
Republicans also want to empower states to do more on health care, which is a provision included in the Senate bill.
And Obama last year said he was open to looking at ideas to curb medical malpractice lawsuits – a key Republican goal. But Republicans aides say that even if Obama endorsed a tort reform component, that alone wouldn’t be enough to win GOP support for the Democratic plan.
“The only constructive discussions will start with a blank sheet of paper,” said Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a doctor and the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee who sparred with Obama in Baltimore. “Enacting positive health care reform still remains possible, but it will require the president to accept that his plan is a nonstarter with the American people.”
Republicans would like Obama to embrace the House leadership plan, which would lower premiums for people who already have insurance, but does little to expand coverage for those who don't.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a moderate who was one of the last holdouts on the bill, said she welcomed the president’s bipartisan gesture, but warned that Democrats should go only so far in accommodating Republicans.
“This meeting should not be an excuse to start over,” Landrieu said. “It should help us pave a road to the finish line.”
Republicans gave a chilly reception Monday to President Barack Obama's invitation to discuss health care in a bipartisan, televised setting later this month, part of the White House effort to revive the stalled legislation.
The House and Senate GOP leaders said Obama and his fellow Democrats must shelve their long-debated health care bill, which was on the verge of becoming law until Republican Scott Brown won a special Senate election in Massachusetts last month. The White House says Obama has no plans to do so but is willing to hear Republicans' ideas.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Monday that the first question for Obama should be: "Did you lie about moving forward on malpractice reform?" He was alluding to the president's earlier remarks about possibly curbing malpractice lawsuits, which is not included in the health bills passed separately by House and Senate Democrats in December.
In the first major move to jump-start his health care agenda after his party's loss of a filibuster-proof Senate majority, Obama on Sunday invited GOP and Democratic leaders to discuss possible compromises in a half-day, televised gathering on Feb. 25.
It comes amid widespread complaints that Democrats' efforts so far have been too partisan and secretive.
The meeting's prospects for success are far from clear. GOP leaders insisted on starting from scratch. But many Democrats want to use their party's remaining parliamentary muscle to enact their plans with as few changes as possible.
"If we are to reach a bipartisan consensus, the White House can start by shelving the current health spending bill," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said his earlier efforts to reach out to Republicans "did not result in any serious follow through to work together in a bipartisan fashion."
Obama told CBS's Katie Couric that he and the leaders of both parties will "go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."
Asked if he was willing to start from square one, the president said he wants "to look at the Republican ideas that are out there."
"If we can go step by step through a series of these issues and arrive at some agreements," Obama said, "then procedurally, there's no reason why we can't do it a lot faster than the process took last year."
Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress have differed sharply on most major questions in the long-running health care debate. Only one Republican voted for the health care bill that the House approved in November, and no Republicans voted for a similar Senate version.
Many liberal groups want congressional Democrats to enact the health care bill that the Senate passed on Christmas Eve, employing rules that could bypass GOP filibusters to make changes demanded by House Democrats.
The White House has not ruled out such a strategy. But Obama's recent talk of inviting Republican input and extending the debate for several weeks has caused uncertainty about his plans.
A White House statement Sunday said Obama repeatedly has made it clear "that he's adamant about passing comprehensive reform similar to the bills passed by the House and the Senate."
Polls show that many Americans feel Obama and his congressional allies have not sought enough GOP input, although Democrats say Republicans have shown virtually no interest in seeking a realistic agreement.
Obama also is trying to address criticism of Democrats' closed-door negotiations that led to special accommodations for Nebraska and Louisiana senators when their votes on health care were in question. Some Republicans taunted Obama for suggesting earlier that health care negotiations should be aired on C-SPAN, and one GOP senator said health care would be the president's Waterloo.
Obama said the closed-door deal-cutting was not helpful to the process.
"They did not help. They frustrate me. But, you know, this is a democracy," Obama said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, "we have promoted the pursuit of a bipartisan approach to health reform from day one."
Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.
Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.
Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it.
Mr. Obama’s campaign mantra was “change” and most of his supporters took that to mean that he would change the way business was done in Washington and that he would reverse the disastrous economic policies that favored mega-corporations and the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor.
“Tonight, more Americans are out of work, and more are working harder for less,” said Mr. Obama in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008. “More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit card bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach.”
Voters watching the straight-arrow candidate delivering that speech, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, would not logically have thought that an obsessive focus on health insurance would trump job creation as the top domestic priority of an Obama administration.
But that’s what happened. Moreover, questions were raised about Mr. Obama’s candor when he spoke about health care. In his acceptance speech, for example, candidate Obama took a verbal shot at John McCain, sharply criticizing him for offering “a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits.”
Now Mr. Obama favors a plan that would tax at least some people’s benefits. Mr. Obama also repeatedly said that policyholders who were pleased with their plans and happy with their doctors would be able to keep both under his reform proposals.
Well, that wasn’t necessarily so, as the president eventually acknowledged. There would undoubtedly be changes in some people’s coverage as a result of “reform,” and some of those changes would be substantial. At a forum sponsored by ABC News last summer, Mr. Obama backed off of his frequent promise that no changes would occur, saying only that “if you are happy with your plan, and if you are happy with your doctor, we don’t want you to have to change.”
These less-than-candid instances are emblematic of much bigger problems. Mr. Obama promised during the campaign that he would be a different kind of president, one who would preside over a more open, more high-minded administration that would be far more in touch with the economic needs of ordinary working Americans. But no sooner was he elected than he put together an economic team that would protect, above all, the interests of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance companies, and so on.
How can you look out for the interests of working people with Tim Geithner whispering in one ear and Larry Summers in the other?
Now with his poll numbers down and the Democrats’ filibuster-proof margin in the Senate about to vanish, Mr. Obama is trying again to position himself as a champion of the middle class. Suddenly, with the public appalled at the scandalous way the health care legislation was put together, and with Democrats facing a possible debacle in the fall, Mr. Obama is back in campaign mode. Every other utterance is about “fighting” for the middle class, “fighting” for jobs, “fighting” against the big bad banks.
The president who has been aloof and remote and a pushover for the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, who has been locked in the troubling embrace of the Geithners and Summers and Ben Bernankes of the world, all of a sudden is a man of the people. But even as he is promising to fight for jobs, a very expensive proposition, he’s proposing a spending freeze that can only hurt job-creating efforts.
Mr. Obama will deliver his State of the Union address Wednesday night. The word is that he will offer some small bore assistance to the middle class. But more important than the content of this speech will be whether the president really means what he says. Americans want to know what he stands for, where his line in the sand is, what he’ll really fight for, and where he wants to lead this nation.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is telling her caucus not to believe stories that the U.S. House will simply roll over and accept the Senate’s hard-fought health care bill.
“That’s not true for one second,” Pelosi told her agitated rank-and-file in a call this week.
The public option is out. Employer mandates could prove too tough to change. And the president has already taken the Senate’s side in the fight over a tax on high-end health care plans.
“Each of the provisions at issue has already been negotiated ad nauseam in the Senate,” said a Senate Democratic aide. “The physics of this are unlikely to change much.”
Pelosi even seemed to concede one of her top priorities during the call – suggesting she could live with pushing the start date for reforms from 2013 to 2014, the date in the Senate bill. That alone would save $100 billion in the House bill, according to several congressional aides, money the speaker told her caucus could be plowed into making insurance more affordable.
So the ever-practical Pelosi is setting her sights on achievable goals: boosting insurance subsidies, strengthening oversight of insurers and setting up a national exchange to make sure the federal government sets minimum standards for coverage under the reforms.
Even those could prove to be a tall order.
Two key moderates – Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) – have favored the state-based exchanges over national exchanges. The question now is whether it will prove make-or-break for either.
It’s not just the Senate. Pelosi, who relishes a good fight, finds herself locked a duel with President Barack Obama over the so-called Cadillac tax included in the Senate bill – a 40 percent levy on insurance plans that exceed $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for families.
To win this skirmish – or any other – she needs to convince Obama her math is tougher than Harry Reid’s.
In other words, that it’s harder to corral 218 “yes” votes in the House than it is for Reid to get 60. And the House does not like the Cadillac tax, which hits the Democrats’ labor allies hard, because many unions have bargained for the high-end insurance policies over the years.
Pelosi wades into the fight with the overwhelming support of her caucus; 190 Democrats have signed a letter opposing the tax, and organized labor is making a fevered last-minute push to shield its members, including a meeting with Obama Monday.
“Two-hundred eighteen is a pretty big number to get to,” said Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), a lead critic of the so-called Cadillac tax who authored the letter. “I’m not claiming that the 190 people on my letter are monolithic in their opposition…but it doesn’t take much to go from 220 to 217.”
Pres. Obama argues that the tax would force people to re-think whether they need such expensive coverage – and in turn, help hold down cost increases in the health care industry, one of his top goals.
Democrats in the House favor a tax on the wealthiest Americans, but there’s little appetite in the Senate for their “millionaire’s tax” on individuals who make more than $500,000 and couples who make more than $1 million.
But the House won’t go quietly.
On a Thursday afternoon conference call, numerous Democrats expressed their concerns with the Cadillac tax, according to people on the call. Only one – Colorado Rep. Jared Polis – spoke up in support of the tax, telling colleagues that it would help lower health care costs across the market.
Others, like New Hampshire Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, warned the speaker that it could impose new burdens on middle-class Americans. Critics worry the tax would force employers to scale back coverage and could ensnare people in high-premium states or people with serious health concerns. Some even wonder whether the tax would raise the $149 billion over the next 10 years that the Congressional Budget Office predicts because businesses would quickly shift away from these plans.
“The fact that premiums are higher does not mean that benefits are better,” said New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler.
With organized labor up in arms, Democrats also worry that it’s unwise to undercut hard-fought collectively bargained health benefits to foot the bill for subsidies to the poor.
“It’s a political disaster,” Nadler said. “It drives a wedge between Democratic constituencies.”
Of course, institutional envy also plays a role in the skirmish because House Democrats are tired of watching holdouts force Reid to make any more major concessions.
“The [Senate] Finance Committee came up with this idea when they were still negotiating with Republicans,” Courtney said. “Somehow it took on a life of its own.”
There are plenty of signs that both sides are working toward a compromise. Publicly, labor is pushing lawmakers to back off entirely from the excise tax. But labor has signaled privately that it would back down if lawmakers raise the threshold at which the tax kicks in to around $25,000 for a family policy, according to Democratic officials. The speaker and her caucus might want to push that number even higher.
Also, they want to make sure the tax would increase at the pace of rapidly rising health insurance premiums to ensure more people aren't ensnared by the tax each year, as has happened with the Alternative Minimum Tax.
But raising the cut-off reduces the amount of tax revenue collected, so Democrats would have to fill that hole in the tax package. That could force Senate Democrats to accept a further expansion of the Medicare payroll tax, perhaps on capital gains. The Senate bill already boosts the tax rate by 0.9 percent on couples that earn more than $250,000 a year.
As party leaders lurch toward a compromise, House Democrats are unifying around a few core priorities, and affordability tops that list.
On the conference call, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) said insurance needs to be affordable if Congress requires almost every American to secure coverage through the so-called individual mandate.
And Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) explained that the subsidy levels differ drastically in the area of caps for out-of-pocket expenses. The House sets a cap of $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families at the lower end of the income scale. In the Senate bill, those caps are $2,050 and $4,100 respectively. The president has suggested he is leaning in the House’s direction on this one.
But these changes all cost money, and raising the final price tag from $871 billion runs the risk of alienating senators, including Nelson.
“Every dollar above $900 billion is pushing people’s tolerance level,” the Senate aide said. “It can be something rounded down and called $900 billion, but it can’t be something that when rounded up is called $1 trillion.”
Most Democrats seem to accept the predictable loss of the public option. In the absence of government-sponsored health coverage, liberals now want negotiators to waive the anti-trust exemptions for insurance companies –another sticking point for Nelson.
Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio told his fellow Democrats on Thursday that it needs to be in the final package to keep insurance companies accountable. The speaker agreed wholeheartedly, telling her members that any bill that lacks a public option must also include a national insurance exchange and require companies to spend a higher proportion of premiums on actual health care costs for their customers.
And a push to change the Medicaid funding formula – a flashpoint for Nelson – seems to be gaining momentum and is likely to change during the conference negotiations, according to Democratic aides.
Nelson’s spokesman confirmed this week that the senator was engaged in “serious discussions” with Reid to extend the special deal he secured for Nebraska – that the federal government forever picks up the state’s share of the Medicaid expansion – to all 50 states. A commitment of that size would cost tens of billions of dollars, making it unlikely. Nelson is also pushing an alternative, allowing states to opt-out of the Medicaid expansion in 2017, when the federal government stops picking up the full cost.
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the discussions were still in their earliest phase.
"We are just starting to work with the house and the administration to reconcile the differences between the two bills," Manley said.
With the White House pushing for a speedy resolution, the speaker isn’t giving her members any more insights on the deadline than she gives the members of the media who hound her in the hallways. Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey asked Pelosi on Thursday what her timeline is for a vote, and the speaker replied, “When we’re ready” – a refrain familiar to every reporter covering the issue.
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