Obama Open to Change on Excise Tax

post from Daily Kos on 12 January 2010 04:36:03 PM. © Daily Kos

After yesterday's meeting between Obama and labor leaders, the White House says Obama remains committed to the excise tax, but is open to changing it.

President Obama told union leaders at a private White House meeting on Monday that he remained committed to taxing high-cost insurance policies as a way to drive down health costs. But he also signaled that he was willing to amend the proposal to "make this work for working families," a senior administration official said....

Mr. Obama’s remarks, at an hourlong session with a dozen labor leaders in the White House Roosevelt Room, came just hours after the new president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Richard L. Trumka, delivered a speech at the National Press Club in which he criticized the tax as a "policy that benefits elites" and warned that Democrats would pay a price at the polls if it was enacted.

Privately, Mr. Obama and the union officials used Monday’s session to search for a sort of compromise, said a union leader who was briefed on the discussion. This official, who said the tone of the meeting was friendly, said it was clear that there would be some sort of excise tax in the final bill, but that the president "threw out some new concepts" in how it might be designed.

Obama's concession that the tax as written will hurt working families is critical to the House's efforts to alter the plant. Labor has made no bones about its opposition to the excise tax, with with one union blasting Obama for breaking campaign promises on the tax.

"If candidates make a promise to us, we hold them accountable. We held President Bush accountable when he made decisions that had a negative impact on our members' jobs and lives. We will do the same with President Obama," reads a statement from IAFF President Harold Schaitberger. "In 2008, then-candidate Obama promised three things: he said he would not raise taxes on folks making less than $250,000 a year; he vowed not to tax health insurance benefits; and he promised that under his health reform plan, people would be able to keep their existing coverage."

Obama's other problem is the House Democratic caucus. Two senior House aides familiar with the negotiations have told me that the excise tax as is cannot pass the House. Rep. Joe Courtney has the signature of 190 Dem House members who are opposed to the bill--all of whom understand precisely the political dangers of this tax because they all have to run for re-election this year.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/KmY8DfdgfmM/-Obama-Open-to-Change-
on-Excise-Tax

Digg this

The Last Big Question: Will Health Care Reform Be
Paid For By The Rich or the Middle Class

post from TPMCafe on 12 January 2010 04:27:00 PM. © TPMCafe

There's only one big remaining issue on health care reform: how to pay for it. The House wants a 5.4 percent surtax on couples earning at least $1 million in annual income. The Senate wants a 40 percent excise tax on employer-provided "Cadillac plans." The Senate will win on this unless the public discovers that a large portion of the so-called Cadillacs are really middle-class Chevys, expensive not because they deliver more benefits but because they have higher costs.

The dirty little secret under the hood is that less than 4 percent of the variation in the cost of current health-care plans has to do with how many benefits they provide. Most plans that cost more do so because (1) a particular set of employees is older and tends to get sicker than the average set of employees (that's true for a lot of old rust-belt firms), (2) the plan is offered by a small business that lacks bargaining clout with insurers (small businesses pay, on average, 16 percent more for the health insurance they provide, per capita), (3) the work that employees do subjects them to greater risk of medical problems (health-care workers, for example), or (4) most employees are women (who tend to have higher health-care costs than men because women are the ones who bear children). Plans could also cost more but deliver average benefits because (5) insurers in the area don't face much competition (one main reason for the public option).

So by taxing so-called Cadillac plans, the Senate bill would actually end up taxing the Chevy plans of a large portion of the middle class. And as time goes by, a still larger portion, since the Senate plan is geared to the overall rate of inflation rather than to the (much higher) rate of increases in health-care costs.

Defenders of the Senate plan say not to worry. Employers who bear the tax and therefore have an incentive to cut back on health care for their employees will make it up to employees in higher wages. But anyone taking even a passing glance at today's labor market knows this is wishful thinking. Employers have no incentive to raise wages when almost everyone is worried about keeping their jobs. (Besides, a dollar's worth of tax-free health benefit is worth more than a taxable dollar of wages.)

In any event, I thought a major purpose of health-care reform was to get more care to more people, not to cut it back. Even employees who get extra dollars of wages to make up for the cutbacks won't necessarily plow those wages back into health care.

Some say the Senate's excise tax is the only way to control long-term health care costs. Baloney. If a portion of the middle class loses their health care, they won't get the preventive care that's so crucial to containing long-term costs. If Congress wanted to do more cost containment it would allow Medicare and Medicaid to use their huge bargaining power to get lower costs from pharmaceutical makers and medical suppliers. And it would have a public option to compete with private insurers.

Of course, we're playing with probabilities here. No one knows exactly what will happen when the Senate excise tax hits -- how many employers will cut back coverage without raising wages to compensate, how many middle class people will be hit hard by this, how many who do get higher wages will use them to buy health care, including preventive care.

But why even take these chances when the House bill simply and cleanly goes after the top 1 percent? It's not as if couples earning over a million can't afford to pay the tax. When I last looked, the top 1 percent was taking home a record 23 percent of total income. If anything, the Great Recession is widening the gap. It's bonus time on Wall Street again. But the middle class is taking a beating.

This is the last big fight on health care reform. It's being fought right now. Make your voice heard.

Health care - Senate - Excise - United States Senate - Health

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tpmcafe-main/~3/eCkHPKBSmHc/

Digg this

Fox Thinks Winter Chill Disproves Global Warming;
Experts Disagree

post from Think Progress on 12 January 2010 04:20:00 PM. © Think Progress

In recent days, conservatives have seized on the cold snap gripping the southeast region of the country to cast doubt on global warming. “Hey Al Gore: we want our global warming, and we want it now,” said Newsbusters’ Mark Finkelstein. In his newsletter today, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wondered about “Al Gore?s explanation for this miserable, persistent chill,” and the National Review’s Mona Charen claimed that the “cold snap has spurred the ‘warmists’ to spin control.”

For the past week, Fox News host Neil Cavuto has been giving a daily “Fox News global warming alert,” which consists of him telling viewers how cold it is. “It is still cold,” Cavuto said yesterday, adding that it’s “not your recent garden variety global warming.” “It’s freezing across the entire globe,” Cavuto shouted on Saturday. Former Nixon speechwriter and actor Ben Stein responded, “Maybe somebody in the government will wake up and say, ‘Hey, it’s colder. It’s not hotter.’ Maybe all this talk about global warming needs to be rethought.” Watch a compilation:

video details and more

Of course, a short-term cold snap in a few isolated regions does not disprove global climate change. In fact, the cold snap appears unrelated to climate change. As the AP reported, “experts interviewed…did not connect the current frigid blast to climate change,” instead pointing to “arctic oscillation?:

In the atmosphere, large rivers of air travel roughly west to east around the globe between the Arctic and the tropics. This air flow acts like a fence to keep Arctic air confined. But recently, this air flow has become bent into a pronounced zigzag pattern, meandering north and south. If you live in a place where it brings air up from the south, you get warm weather. In fact, record highs were reported this week in Washington state and Alaska. But in the eastern United States, like some other unlucky parts of the globe, Arctic air is swooping down from the north.

Temperatures in “most places” are actually “above average for this time of year.” Record high and low temperatures are set every year, but there have been consistently more highs than lows in recent decades, as the National Center for Atmospheric Research demonstrates:
Temps US

The last decade was the hottest decade on record by far, and 2009 was also one of the hottest years on record. Climate Progress’ Joe Romm notes that this decade will likely have even higher temperatures.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/12/cold-snap-global-warming/

Digg this

Sestak Goads Specter Into Supporting Dawn Johnsen

post from MyDD on 12 January 2010 04:15:59 PM. © MyDD

Competitive primaries can have positive effects.Nominees for the U.S. Department of Justice are rarely high-profile enough to warrant attention in an election. Not so in this year's Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania.Rep. Joe Sestak, who is[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mydd/~3/TYMTj6Z5sTI/sestak-goads-specter-into-supp
orting-dawn-johnsen

Digg this

Who Will Succeed Tim Geithner as Next Treasury
Secretary

post from The Washington Note on 12 January 2010 04:14:00 PM. © The Washington Note

geithner obama.jpg Opinions are mixed on whether Timothy Geithner will hold his position as Secretary of the Treasury much longer. While I have always liked Geithner personally (he's an old Asia hand), his leadership in the eyes of many is uncompelling.

The recent revelations that staff members of his at the New York Fed advised AIG to hide material matters from regulators may be the final trigger leading to his departure.

Obama needs to change up his economic team anyway. The President took the advice and counsel of Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Ben Bernanke and resuscitated Wall Street by pumping hundreds of billions of tax dollars as guarantees and bailouts into the financial sector.

We now have a high stock market but disturbingly job openings today are 50% lower than in 2007. Obama has said that 2010 is going to be a year of focusing on job creation and more serious infrastructure investment.

In my view, jobs and national infrastructure should have been the President's priorities in 2009 -- when he actually had the mandate and financial resources to make deep job-creating infrastructure investments that recurring returns to the American economy and workers over the next generation. But Obama is late to the cause, and future results are in doubt.

To convince American voters and working families he is serious about job creation and more sensible economic policies than he has thus far pursued, he can't keep Lawrence Summers, Romer, Geithner, and the overwhelmingly neoliberal members of his White House econ team.

Obama can't expect us to believe that the same team members that he has had working out global macroeconomic deals are the same who can focus on microeconomic issues in specific industries and on the nation's pathetic jobs portfolio. Leo Hindery throws out some ideas on Huffington Post today on how to get the jobs machine going again, but I can't imagine Obama's current team seriously pursuing the Hindery action plan.

Jared Bernstein, chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, is practically the only one with any serious background in infrastructure and jobs-focused economic policy.

So Obama needs to change the team.

I've been asking people to give some thought to who should run the Department of Treasury if and after Timothy Geithner departs. I've asked a wide variety of people privately -- from the heavy labor to financial to high tech sectors -- to share with me (off the record) who should take the helm of America's economic policy shop.

The suggestions are quite varied, but I wanted to open up the discussion more publicly at The Washington Note and at Huffington Post.

Knee jerk, silly answers can always be fun -- but they aren't serious.

We need someone who can think carefully about changing the economic policy course of the country, who is as economist James K. Galbraith just shared with me "incorruptible", and who can run a big government operation, and instill national and global confidence in his or her leadership.

I have some good and interesting names -- but I'd like to hear from all of you.

Who should be America's next Treasury Secretary?

-- Steve Clemons

Read The Full Article:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2010/01/who_will_succee/

Digg this

Afternoon Edition

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 12 January 2010 04:07:35 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Afternoon Edition is an Open ThreadFrom Yahoo News Top Stories1 Aide to ex-British PM denies 'sexing up' Iraq dossierby Katherine Haddon2 hrs 4 mins agoLONDON (AFP) - Tony Blair's former chief spin doctor Alastair Campbell fiercely denied Tuesday "sexing[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/N4D0Up6ng8I/afternoon-edition

Digg this

The many lies of Harold Ford Jr

post from Crooks and Liars on 12 January 2010 04:00:10 PM. © Crooks and Liars

DOWNLOADS: (67)
PLAYS: (411)

When Harold Ford Jr's name began cropping up as someone who may run for the U.S. Senate seat from New York, challenging Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary, many of us knew it was only a matter of time before this DLC snake would set about re-inventing himself as somehow palatable to a more liberal audience. Though Ford has not formally announced his intentions seem clear.

The Albany Project has the details:

Well, that didn't take long: per the NY Post's Fred Dicker, Harold Ford Jr. now supports marriage equality.

"He supports gay marriage, in the interest of fairness and equality," Ford spokesman Davidson Goldin told The Post.

Ford backed up that statement himself this morning on the "Today Show."
Host Matt Lauer asked, "So you're now in favor of same sex marriage?"

"Civil unions and same-sex marriage, yes," Ford said.
The dexterity of this switch in positions would make any garden snake proud.

Empire State Pride Agenda sums it up:
Ford supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In fact, he voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment both times it reached the House floor. He has also gone out of his way to condemn court rulings (New Jersey's, for example) that called for equal treatment under the law for same-sex couples. During his last year in the House, Ford received a 25 (out of 100) rating on HRC's Congressional Scorecard.

But not so fast, lest bad people be tempted to note the flip-flop: Junior has always been on the equality team deep in his little heart. The Post, again:
Saying he supported civil unions when he ran for Congress in Tennessee in 1996, Ford said, "My support for fairness and equality existed long before I moved to New York."

Asked by host Matt Lauer if it was a "change" in position, he invoked Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton, saying:

"Maybe in the language. But I'm a believer that benefits should flow to same sex partners and if indeed the fiction of the language, the title, should be changed, much like Chuck Schumer who changed his mind on it and Bill Clinton's evolved, I'm of the opinion now that nothing is wrong with that."
Which would presumably explain why Junior came out in 2006 with a completely unprompted and irrelevant statement on the NJ Supreme Court's 2006 decision denouncing it, even if he was at the time pursuing a Senate seat in Tennessee.
So you can pick the Junior you want, I guess.

Read The Full Article:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/many-lies-harold-ford-jr

Digg this

Why is Joe Trippi singing the praises of the DLC
Chair

So Joe Trippi published a post, amazingly, defending Harold Ford's record, couching it in terms of[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/E6oqHUaGCBk/why-is-joe-tripp
i-signing-the-praises-of-the-dlc-chair

Digg this

Why is Joe Trippi signing the praises of the DLC
Chair

Digg this

Tuesday Afternoon Open Thread

Conan O'Brien writes a letter to the public and says no dice to NBC's plan to move The Tonight Show to 12:05 a.m. to accommodate shifting Jay Leno from prime time where his ratings have been dismal to 11:30 pm. It's a problem because they can't both follow the local news and that seems to be what's at stake. Conan writes:

For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.