Via Arkansas Times:
On March 9, 2010, In 2010 arkansas senate race, Arkansas, Government, Local News, Politics, By Blake
In a smart political move, Chad Causey has called for a series of debates in the first congressional district Democratic primary. He’s called for three debates on the economy, agriculture and health care.
“Now that the field is set, we need to have an open and honest discussion about the important issues facing Arkansans,” Causey said. “I am campaigning for this office the same way I will work in it: as someone willing to sit down at the table, listen and engage in debate, so that we can find common-sense solutions to the problems facing the First District.”
Patrick Kennedy, David Boling or John Adams should have thought of this in the 2nd congressional district Democratic primary.
For Arkansawyers connected to Washington, D.C., The Washington Post profiles the ultimate D.C. insider, Robert Barnett, a Williams & Connelly lawyer, book broker, and transition expert.
On February 5, 2010, In Government, By Blake
Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby has put a “blanket hold” all of President Barack Obama judicial nominees (currently 70) until two Alabama earmarks – a $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers and a $45 million explosive device testing center – are put back on track.
It personifies the hypocrisy of the GOP in Washington. They cannot argue for more fiscal responsibility while imposing extraordinary procedural tactics to get more pork spending sent their way. This is how congressional Republicans govern and Democrats should sound the alarms.
For starters, Sen. Harry Reid ought to call his bluff. Put a motion into play and force all 41 Republicans to go on the record. In order to break the stalemate the Democrats would need 60 votes.
Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post notes a trend we’ve been discussing for weeks: the inability for Arkansas GOP to candidates to raise money. He notes winners and losers after the recent fundraising cycle. Among the losers: Arkansas Republicans.
Arkansas Republicans: There’s no question that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) is among the most vulnerable incumbents in the country. But you wouldn’t know it from the fundraising of her potential GOP opponents. State Sen. Gilbert Baker raised a measly $295,000 in the final three months of last year, and Rep. John Boozman, who is expected to announce his candidacy this week, closed the year with $292,000 in the bank. Lincoln, for her part, ended 2009 with more than $5 million tucked away.
Rasmussen has a new poll out for the Arkansas Senate race. It still shows poor numbers for Blanche Lincoln. She still maintains a low approval (38% – 39%) and trails leading GOP challenger, Gilbert Baker, by 12 points.
For me, I don’t believe that when given the choice voters will honestly approve of Kim Hendren, Curtis Coleman or Tom Cox by a ten-point margin, which is what this poll indicates.
Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic has given up on Rasmussen polls because vary by wide margins with other polling outfits. Rasmussen polls lean heavily Republican, at least at the national level.
UPDATE: A reader points me to this piece by Alex Idenstadt in Politico. Several political scientists and polling analysts raise questions about Rasmussen’s methods and results. Not to mention that Scott Rasmussen has never been a campaign pollster or adviser to a political candidate.
It looks like Democrats are going to bypass the conference committee process, according to Ezra Klein. The fear among Democrats is that Republicans will take an obstructionist approach to motions that are needed to begin the conference process. (I can’t imagine where that fear would come from?)
I’m not showing you anything new, but in case you missed earlier discussions about the relationship between health care spending and life expectancy, here’s a chart for you (Thumbs Up: Andrew Gelman, FiveThirtyEight.com).
If you want understand what happened with the financial crisis of 2008 I urge you to read Paul Krugman’s Nobel lecture on currency crises and their relationship to financial crises in general. Also, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book, “Too Big To Fail,” is a terrific moment-by-moment account of what happened.
Today, Ross Douthat of The New York Times notes the relationship between the economic actions undertaken during the George W. Bush administration and today.
In the unhappy aughts, we witnessed the exhaustion of Reaganomics. A quarter-century after Ronald Reagan’s mix of tax cuts and deregulation revived American competitiveness, George W. Bush’s attempt to imitate the Gipper produced only wage stagnation and skyrocketing debt.
The good news is that the Bush tax cuts expire next year.
The second to last update of the year, although there’s not much to report. The bill has entered the conference phase and, as expected, a lot of that work is taking place behind closed doors.
In Arkansas, the esteemed editorial board of the Democrat-Gazette jumps on the pork bandwagon, harpooning Sen. Blanche Lincoln for not delivering more pork (aka needless federal spending for which the GOP regularly cries foul) for Arkansas. I’ve already argued how silly this argument is, and how hypocritical.
Today, The Arkansas Leader fires back noting that Ms. Lincoln, along with Sen. Mark Pryor, can trumpet a very important benefit to our state: Medicaid expansion. It will result in millions of dollars flowing through our medical institutions. That’s helps everybody.
On December 30, 2009, In Government, Politics, By Blake
Courtesy of FactCheck.org. As you can predict, health care-related topics dominate the list of falsehoods, including:
- Death panels
- Socialized medicine
- Government dictating to doctors as to how to do their job.
This week on my radio program, Arkansas Sunday Edition, we recounted the top ten moments in national news, Arkansas news, and pop culture. Later this week I’ll recap the year – the things that really caught my attention, political blunders, missed opportunities and cool moments. Until then, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman reviews the past decade.
. . . from an economic point of view, I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.
He notes there was basically zero job creation (only a slightly higher employment number in Dec. 2009 vs. Dec. 99); median household income lower now than in 1999; home prices are quite similar to what they were in 1999, although more home owners owe more than their houses are worth; and zero stock growth (Dow: 11.497.12 on 12.31.99, 10,527.28 on 12.28.99).
It’s a good thing we instituted those tax cuts early the decade.
It didn’t take long for Republicans to launch an attack on Senate Democrats for NOT securing a bunch of unnecessary pork spending for their states. One of their targets, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, has come under scrutiny from conservatives, including local talking heads Jason Tolbert of The Tolbert Report and Jeff Hankins of Arkansas Business.
If you recall the GOP’s opposition to health insurance reform was rooted in two broad principles: (1) It would lead to government run health insurance and (2) Additional spending would explode the deficit.
The Senate bill does neither of those things. It reduces the national debt by $132 billion over ten years, and it does not contain a government-run health insurance plan commonly referred to as the public option.
So why in the world would conservatives whose principles are represented in this bill now object on the grounds that it didn’t contain more unnecessary spending? Its contradictory at its core, not to mention galactically stupid.
One can argue that Ms. Lincoln’s bargaining resulted in (a) elimination of the public option; (b) access for small businesses to competitive plans via exchanges; (c) greater tax relief for self-employed workers and small businesses to procure health insurance; (d) reduction in costs for seniors; and (e) federal deficit reduction.
Ms. Lincoln stated many times that these points were non-negotiable. She stated regularly, to the frustration of many, that she would oppose the bill if the bill did not meet her demands. The final product meets all of them. Knowing that, how can anyone, especially Republicans, declare that her efforts were ineffective?
Simply put, the cost of doing nothing was too high. Thousands of Arkansans will benefit from this bill, especially the 260,000 people currently working for small businesses. Once the dialogue begins, voters, to say nothing of history, will view this positively.
The Senate cleared another procedural hurdle fending off another GOP filibuster 60-39. There will be one more vote today, one tomorrow and then the final vote on Christmas Eve. With all signs pointing towards passage, Democrats in the House have begun to think about ways to reconcile the House bill with the Senate bill.
There are indications that abortion will be the critical issue, although Talking Points Memo reports that the Senate language should satisfy more Democrats in the House because of the deficit reductions and the omission of the public option. Those measures are expected to be hashed out early next month. Following will be a swift conference committee process and approval by both houses before presenting the bill for President Barack Obama’s signature on Feb. 1.
From conservative Ross Douthat in The New York Times:
In the end, when the history of the health care debate is written, I don’t think any of the choices that G.O.P. lawmakers made this year will loom particularly large. The choices that they made, or didn’t make, across the last fifteen years are what made all the difference. Between the defeat of Clintoncare and the election of Barack Obama, the Republicans had plenty of chances to take ownership of the health care issue and pass a significant reform along more free-market, cost-effective lines. They didn’t. The system deteriorated on their watch instead. And now they’re suffering the consequences.
On December 21, 2009, In Government, Politics, By Blake
It’s a shame that GOP tactics have amounted to this.
The Senate took its first step towards passing its version of the health insurance reform bill. A 60-40 procedural vote held very early this morning cut off a Republican filibuster, with both Arkansas senators voting in favor of it. There are several more votes scheduled this week, with the final up or down vote to be held at 7:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve. If the bill passes, Paul Krugman of The New York Times notes that it will be “an awesome achievement.”
Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post lists the winners and losers of the Senate process. Among the winners he lauds the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee because they’ll have ammunition to challenge Blanche Lincoln in 2010. The reason: she didn’t get anything in return for her vote (compared to Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, for example).
We’ll see. Pork aside, voting for the bill gives her to the opportunity to talk about all of the good things the bill does – and there are many. It also makes a primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter more difficult. Assuming Gilbert Baker gets out of the GOP primary (with Stanley Reed out, it’s an assumption only because Jim Holt may get in), Mr. Baker’s still going to have to articulate why a strategy of Just Say No was the best course of action here. (I interviewed him several weeks back on my radio program, Arkansas Sunday Edition, and he struggled to state a rationale for his position.)
I think that’s a very tough sell to four core constituencies: lower income Arkansans who work, but who cannot afford insurance; seniors; anyone – young or old – who has been denied coverage for a pre-existing condition; and small business owners who are exempt from mandates to provide coverage (thanks to Ms. Lincoln), but who have access to subsidies and health insurance exchanges should they decide to do so.
At a minimum there are 400,000 potential voters in Arkansas who currently are without health insurance that should feel good about having Ms. Lincoln in the Senate today.
I’m of the opinion that this vote also presents a unique political opportunity. If I’m the Lincoln campaign I’d start pounding Republicans on obstructionism. For example,
In the 1960s . . . “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.
This research was conducted by Barbara Sinclair, a political scientist at UCLA, and appears in a chapter of the book Congress Reconsidered from CQ Press.
In defining Mr. Baker’s candidacy the Lincoln campaign could note that a vote for him amounts to nothing more than a “No” vote . . . on everything: financial reform, deficit reduction, jobs, etc. Put another way, he’d be an elected puppet with no real ability or opportunity to do anything to help Arkansans.
With national unemployment greater than ten percent and a budget deficit that exploded on President George W. Bush’s watch, Congress is going to have to address this issues head-on. They have real consequences on the lives of everyday Arkansans. Why, now more than ever, is taking a Just Say No approach to governing the reasonable or sensible thing to do?
The facts don’t lie: obstructionism is what the GOP is all about these days.
Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, once considered to be a pivotal – if not the pivotal – vote on health insurance reform confirmed today that she will be voting for the Senate bill. In a conference call with reporters and bloggers Ms. Lincoln stated,
After months of intense work and a full and transparent debate on the Senate floor, I will vote for the revised Senate health care plan because it will lower heath care costs, expand access to more than 400,000 uninsured Arkansans, and reduce the deficit by $132 billion in the next 10 years—all without a new government plan that places taxpayers at risk.
It may not be the bill that I would have written, but through my hard work and the hard work of other members, the Senate bill has changed substantially and I believe this final product is a significant improvement from what we started with.
On December 20, 2009, In Government, Politics, By Blake
Health care reform enters a critical week if there’s going to be a final Senate vote before Christmas. With 60 votes allegedly in hand, Senate majority leader Harry Reid has set six votes over six days that will culminate on 12.24 with a final up or down vote.
• 1 a.m. MONDAY – To end debate on “a manager’s package” that includes all the latest changes to the bill. 60 votes required.
• 7 a.m. TUESDAY – To approve the manager’s package. Simple majority required.
• Also TUESDAY – To end debate on Mr. Reid’s original health care proposal, as amended by the manager’s package. 60 votes required.
• 1 p.m. WEDNESDAY – To approve Mr. Reid’s original proposal. Simple majority required.
• Also WEDNESDAY – To end debate on the finalized health care legislation. 60 votes required.
• 7 p.m. THURSDAY, Christmas Eve (or anytime after the prior vote if all senators agree) – To approve the final bill. Simple majority required.
It was a tough morning for President Barack Obama on “Meet the Press.” DailyKos.com publisher Markos Moulitsas, “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarbrough, PRI’s Tavis Smiley and GOP consultant Ed Gillespie (who spoke at the Clinton School of Public Service recently) all said negative things about the bill.
Here’s a summary of what happened on the other shows.