Tag Archives: Obama

Fighting Fire with Fire—What is the Point of a Limited Attack on Syria?

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I can’t help but wonder what President Obama hopes to accomplish.

Are we taking military action simply to “send a message”?   If so why not use words rather than weapons?

Obama can be a powerful orator. Why not take to the bully pulpit and explain, to the world, the horrors of what is happening in Syria? .

A few days ago, New York Times columnist Charles M . Blow asked a provocative question: “Is America’s moral leadership in the world carved out by the tip of its sword?”

Wouldn’t it be better to demonstrate our “moral leadership” in some other, wiser way?  Can anyone point to an instance where a limited military action brought an end to violence?

Over at the Guardian Michael Cohen insists that we must attack in order to “enforce global norms”—in this case, the rule that the use of chemical weapons is simply beyond the pale. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/29/liberal-case-for-striking-syria  Cohen claims the taboo dates back to World War I.

Has he forgotten about our use of Napalm in Vietnam?  Is he simply too young to remember the photo of a 9-year-old girl, wailing “too hot, too hot,” as she runs down the road, “naked after blobs of sticky napalm melted through her clothes and layers of skin like jellied lava.” http://news.yahoo.com/ap-napalm-girl-photo-vietnam-war-turns-40-210339788.html

Writing for the Atlantic, James Fallows quotes budget-policy expert, Mike Lofgren: “The US has in the recent past violated international norms on aggressive war, torture, rendition of POWs, assassination, use of chemical weapons (phosphorous, napalm, etc.), land mines, ad infinitum.” http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/your-labor-day-syria-reader-part-1-stevenson-and-lofgren/279254/
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Obama to Boehner: “John, I’m Getting Tired of Hearing You Say That”

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This was President Obama’s reply, during fiscal cliff negotiations, when House Speaker John Boehner declared, for the umpteenth time, that “ The U.S. has a spending problem.” 

I can understand the president’s irritation. How could anyone believe that we have a “spending problem?’

Look around. Consider the state of our bridges, our roads and our crumbling inner city public schools. Are we spending too much on the nation’s infrastructure?

Next, think about unemployment. During this recovery we have lost 750,000 public sector jobs.  Republicans are intent on “starving the beast” (of government) and as a result Washington has not given states the financial support they need continue delivering public services. Across the nation, public school teachers have been laid off in droves, while class sizes increase at unprecedented rates.  Does this sound like government spending run amuck?

One in five American children now lives in poverty. Seventeen million children find themselves in homes where they can’t be sure of getting enough to eat.  (a.k.a. “food-insecure households.”)  At the end of the month, many kids go to bed hungry because the government Food Stamps program (now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP)  gives families less than $1.50 per person per meal. Are we being overly generous?

During the past two wars, we sent millions of American men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan –many went back for repeated tours. In some cases, their bodies were not  broken–but their minds were.  Now 1.3 million Vets seeking mental health services are told they must wait of 50 days before getting treatment.   A recent government report suggests that 22 Vets die by suicide every day – about 20 percent of all Americans who kill themselves. Are we spending too much on healthcare for Veterans?

Let me suggest that we don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem. Current federal revenue levels are at their lowest levels since the 1950s. 

                      How Anti-Tax Pledges Have Weakened the Nation

In a recent post, Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, nailed it: “The tax system doesn’t raise enough revenue.  And that’s not just the recession; it’s also tax policy and anti-tax pledges  . . . The system has become less progressive, with the largest declines in effective tax rates at the top of the income scale.

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How to Rein in Medicare Spending Without Hurting Seniors

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In his Inaugural speech, President Obama renewed his commitment to safety nets:  “Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security–these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us.

Yet last week, he signaled that he is “open to making modest adjustments to programs like Medicare.” Should seniors brace for bad news?

No. There are many ways to cut Medicare spending without drawing blood. It’s a matter of using a scalpel, not an axe, to trim the fat.

Not long ago, the Center for American Progress (CAP) unveiled a Senior Protection Plan that would do just that, revealing how we could reduce Medicare spending by $385 billion without harming beneficiaries.”

The administration pays attention to CAP. Recently Bloomberg News described CAP as “the intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the Obama administration.” This suggests that the report’s proposals may offer a preview of “adjustments to Medicare spending” that the president would consider.

How would CAP save $358 billion without rationing benefits or shifting costs to middle-class seniors? The report focuses on squeezing waste out of the system. Waste doesn’t help beneficiaries.

During recent fiscal cliff negotiations, Democrats and Republicans agreed to adopt four of CAP’s proposals, and I suspect that, over time, we will see more of its recommendations become part of the reality of health care reform.

Recently, I interviewed CAP president NeeraTanden and Topher Spiro, CAP’s managing director for health policy. I was impressed by how their practical approach differs from conservative strategies for slicing “entitlements.”
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Pelosi Says “There’s Still a Chance”

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Last night House Majority Leader John Boehner withdrew his “Plan B” proposal for the budget. He had no choice:  conservative Republicans in the House made it clear that would not vote for a plan that raises taxes for ANYONE—even millionaires.

Many in Washington believe this makes a bungee-jump over the “fiscal cliff” inevitable. As I have explained, that is not as scary as it sounds. The precipice is an imaginary line drawn in the sand and dated “January 1.”  Any damage done if we miss the deadline can easily be reversed.  Early in January Congress would, no doubt, extend tax cuts for 98% of all Americans while voting down Draconian across- the- board spending cuts scheduled to kick in the first of the year.

But today, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said “there is still a chance for a deal” before year-end. In fact, Pelosi probably knows that House Democrats and Republicans have more than enough votes  to extend tax cuts for the 98% now. The Senate has already passed a bill that would do just that. And in the House few  Republicans are eager to stand up and vote to hike taxes  for the vast majority of Americans. Conservatives just want to give the same break to the wealthiest 2%. But by now, most Republicans recognize that some tax increases are inevitable.

Pelosi’s optimism makes me hopeful. She’s a superb vote-counter, and she knows what’s happening on the other side of the aisle.

                    CEOs Urge Republicans to Compromise 

As Bloomberg reported yesterday, corporate chieftains have begun to lobby Republicans to give way on tax increases: CEOs such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Robert Iger of Walt Disney Co. and Randall Stephenson of AT&T Inc. have been meeting with White House officials and their “support for Obama’s tax stance has split the Republican business alliance, driving a wedge between CEOs urging compromise and the nation’s most prominent small-business group.

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Gun Control: No Room For Compromise

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When it comes to guns, the United States is exceptional. We have the highest civilian gun ownership rate in the world, with 89 guns per 100 people, according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. 

The U.S. gun lobby sometimes cites Switzerland as an example of a country that has many privately owned guns and little violent crime. (Their  argument seems to be guns don’t kill people; only lunatic Americans kill people.)

In fact, ammunition kills people. It is true that  Switzerland, like the United States, has a strong gun culture with many shooting clubs — but it also has a mass citizen militia. Members of the part-time militia, in which most men serve, are allowed to keep their weapons at home, and the country of less than 8 million people owns at least 2.3 million weapons, many stashed under beds and in cupboards. But while Swiss homes contain guns, ammunition is largely kept under lock and key at local military depots.

                                       American “Exceptionalism”

 Someone once described Canada as “a country in North America where everyone has health insurance.” The same pundit defined the U.S. as “a country in North America where everyone has a gun.”

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Health Care Reform: Stage Two

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Last week, my editorsat  the Health Insurance Resource Center (Healthinsurance.org) challenged me to write a letter to President Obama and suggest what he should do next to advance reform. They were looking for a “new, big idea.”

After thinking about it, I concluded that we don’t need another big idea.  The Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains a great many ideas. Now we need to implement them.

Critics of Obamacare have suggested that as we approach 2014, Washington needs to turn its attention to containing healthcare costs. In particular, they suggest that Medicare is too expensive.

But the fact is that if you read the legislation (and I have, more than once) , you’ll find that it already cuts Medicare spending by some $716 billion. And it does this without cutting medical benefits and without slashing Medicare’s reimbursements to doctors.

In addition, the ACA includes many carrots and sticks designed to encourage hospitals and doctors to provide more efficient, less costly, safer care. In the future they won’t be paid for doing More;  they’ll be paid for doing it Better–for Less. Only health care providers have the power to truly reform our wasteful health care system. Already we’ve seen some evidence that they are responding to the incentives: Medicare spending has slowed.

Finally, and most importantly, President Obama should reject any attempts to re-negotiate the ACA during budget talks. The ACA is not on the table. It is now the law of the land. The American people do not want to listen to politicians continue to debate healthcare. (They want their elected leaders to focus their attention on just one Big Idea: Jobs)

The election gave the president the green light to go ahead with reform.. Now, the administration needs to implement the legislation to so that we can see what works and what doesn’t. This will take time–but only then will we be in a position to revise, refine and improve on reform legislation. .

I hope you’ll read the entire post--and come back here to comment.

 

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The Democratic National Convention, 1980 and 2012: Turning Points in American History

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I originally published this post on HealthInsurance.org (www.null.com) Check there for other posts on the election–just click on “Blog” at the top of the page.

Ted Kennedy’s speech at the 1980 Democratic convention still echoes in my mind. It remains the finest, most inspiring political oration that I have ever heard. Kennedy was speaking from a position of defeat. He had just lost the Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter.

And yet this was a full-hearted, rousing speech delivered by a man who realized that in the battle ahead, the issues at stake were far, far more important than his own loss. Intuitively, he knew that the country had reached a turning point. (You can listen to the speech at The  History Place.

At that moment, Conservatives were ready to launch a revolution, and they would succeed. In November, Ronald Reagan won the White House, and his administration would set the tone for much of the next 30 years. Tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, a campaign to privatize both Social Security and Medicare. Health care reform would be off the table for many years.

Kennedy saw the danger ahead and addressed it: “My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight, not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause. I’m asking you–to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice.

“I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.” Then, as now, unemployment was a pressing issue. In April of 1980, the unemployment rate jumped to 6.9%; in May it hit 7.5%.  “Let us pledge that employment will be the first priority of our economic policy,” Kennedy declared. “We will not compromise on the issue of jobs.”

Universal Coverage “The Passion of My Life”

Kennedy understood that “we cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So,” he declared, “I will continue to stand for a national health insurance.”

“We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real control over what doctors and hospitals can charge, and let us resolve that the state of a family’s health shall never depend on the size of a family’s wealth.”

Kennedy had witnessed what economic inequality can mean when a child is sick.  Many years later he recalled “One of the searing memories in my life was being in a children’s hospital in Boston, where my son had lost his leg to cancer. He was under a regime that was going to take three days of treatment, every three weeks, for two years …
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Medicare, Medicaid, Global Warming and Gun Control– Can Liberals and Conservatives Find Middle Ground? Should They? Part 1

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 In a nation divided, “compromise” has become an extraordinarily appealing idea. Weary of the acrimony and endless wrangling, more and more Americans are asking: Why can’t conservative and liberal politicians come together and forge bipartisan solutions to the problems this nation faces?

Keep in mind that it is not only our elected representatives who are having trouble finding common ground. The Pew Research Center’s latest survey of “American Values” reveals that as voters head to the polls this November, their basic beliefs are more polarized than at any point in the past 25 years. In particular, when it comes to the question of government regulation and involvement in our lives, the average Republican has gravitated to the right. In 1987, 62% of Republicans agreed that “the government should take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.” Now just 40% support this proposition. Democrats haven’t changed their views on this issue: most continue to believe “there, but for fortune . . .”

In Congress, where polarization has led to paralysis, some argue that Republican leaders are responsible for creating gridlock by insisting on “party discipline.” But liberals in Washington also are accused of “dividing the nation.” Even President Obama, who set out to unite the country, has been described as “the most polarizing president ever.” During his third year in office, Gallup reports, “an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing, as compared to 12 percent of Republicans who felt the same way. That’s a 68-point partisan gap, the highest for any president’s third year”–though this may say more about the temper of the times than the man himself. Nevertheless, many commentators believe that progressives, like conservatives, need to cede ground. The debate has become too contentious, too “political,” they say. I disagree. There are times when we cannot “split the difference.” Too much is at stake. We must weigh what would be won against what would be lost.

But reporters who have been taught that they must be “fair” and “balanced” often write as if all points of view are equally true. After all, they don’t want to be accused of “bias.” Thus they fall into the trap of what veteran Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse calls “he said, she said” journalism. To them, the “middle ground” seems a safe place– a fair place– to position a story.

This may help explain why so many bloggers and newspaper reporters are calling for “bi-partisan consensus” as they comment on some of the most important issues of the day.

Global Warming

Writing about global warming, Huffington Post senior writer Tom Zeller Jr. recently declared: “Compromise is the necessary first step to tackling the problem. What ordinary Americans really want is for honest brokers on all sides to detoxify and depoliticize the global warming conversation, and then get on with the business of addressing it. That business will necessarily recognize that we all bring different values and interests to the table; that we perceive risks and rewards, costs and benefits differently; and it will identify solutions through thoughtful discussion and that crazy thing called compromise.” [ my emphasis] (Hat tip to David Roberts (Twitter’s “Dr. Grist”) for calling my attention to this post.)

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What Will the Supreme Court’s Decision Mean for the November Election?

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Thursday, when Chief Justice Roberts explained that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is constitutional because the “penalty” that some Americans will have to pay is, for all practical purposes, a “tax,” you could hear tea cups shattering from Billings to Boca Raton. In conservative and libertarian circles, the initial reaction was shock, but it didn’t take long for President Obama’s opponents to rally.

The word “tax” might as well have been a pistol shot at a horse race. In the blink of an eye, Obama’s opponents were off and running, megaphones in hand, blasting the president for lying to the American people while hiking taxes under the guise of healthcare reform. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign then began providing regular Twitter updates on the campaign contributions it was raking in following the decision. Friday, it announced that it had collected $5.5 million.

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Why Free Birth Control Will Not Hike the Cost of Your Insurance

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The following post originally appeared on the TIME Moneyland blog.

Initially, the controversy over President Obama’s proposal that all insurers cover contraception focused on religious liberty. After polls revealed that 98% of sexually active Catholic women have used birth control, though, some who oppose Obamacare tried to shift the argument from religion to money: “If insurers are forced to offer contraception without co-pays,” they warn, “they’ll hike our insurance premiums.” But will that actually happen?

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