In his forthcoming book, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge reveals being pressured by Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to raise the terror alert right before the 2004 presidential election. Ridge wrote:
I wondered, “Is this about security or politics?” Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president’s approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level. … I consider the episode to be not only a dramatic moment in Washington’s recent history, but another illustration of the intersection of politics, fear, credibility and security.
The New York Times’ Peter Baker notes that Ridge’s new claim is a reversal from his previous statements:
Until now, he has denied politics played a role in threat levels. Asked by Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times if politics ever influenced decisions on threat warnings, he volunteered to take a lie-detector test. “Wire me up,” Mr. Ridge said, according to Mr. Lichtblau’s book, “Bush’s Law.” “Not a chance. Politics played no part.”
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is dumping Bonner & Associates, the Astroturf firm that forged letters to Congress attacking clean energy legislation on its behalf. Bonner, an organization with a long record of deceptive practices, sent letters this June purporting to be from black, Hispanic, women’s and senior citizen’s groups to several members of Congress telling them to vote against the American Clean Energy and Security Act. ACCCE spokesman Joe Lucas told National Journal that his organization “did nothing wrong”:
We will not be working with Mr. Bonner again. ACCCE did nothing wrong. Looking back, there would be many things we would do differently.
In fact, ACCCE covered up the fraud and is now throwing Bonner under the bus. The coal coalition had been informed by the Hawthorn Group, its primary contractor, days before the pivotal House vote on the energy legislation. But ACCCE kept silent, failing to notify lawmakers or the defrauded organizations. ACCCE continues to employ the Hawthorn Group and the notorious voter-fraud company Lincoln Strategy Group.
Speaking at an Organizing for America event yesterday, President Obama reassured his supporters about his efforts to pass health reform. “We’ve been through this before,” Obama said, recalling that around this time last year, the media was claiming, “Obama’s lost his mojo.” “There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up,” Obama said.
In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 49 percent of respondents expressed confidence that President Obama “will make the right decisions for the country, down from 60 percent at the 100-day mark in his presidency.” Additionally, 55 percent “see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared that there’s “no way” she can pass a health reform bill through Congress “without a public option.” She added that a watered-down compromise was unacceptable because “I don’t know when we’d do it [comprehensive reform] if we don’t take that giant step now.”
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and his top challenger Abdullah Abdullah are each positioning themselves as the winner of Afghanistan’s presidential election. Preliminary results are expected tomorrow. Dozens of rocket attacks from the Taliban did suppress turnout, but “enough voters had cast ballots that Afghan officials could declare they had thwarted efforts by the insurgents to derail the vote.”
Economists say that after a 30-year rise, “the rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon.” “Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million dropped 24 percent, according to CapGemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.”
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show today to continue his near daily rants against President Obama. DeMint, who has repeatedly boasted that he will “break” Obama by defeating health care reform, has made a habit of comparing government under Obama to fascism. This time, DeMint told Hewitt that immigrants from Iran tell him that America is going “down the road” to the type of government they had fled from:
DEMINT: And we’ve seen a lot of countries over the years collapse when they’ve gone down the road that we’re going down. Probably the most heart-wrenching experiences I’ve had over the last several days is when naturalized American citizens who have immigrated here from Germany, Iran and other countries, they come up to me and they say why are we doing what so many have fled from? Why don’t Americans see what we’re doing? And I’ve realized that these people who’ve lived under socialist type economies, and totalitarianism, they know where we’re headed if we don’t turn things around.
Listen here:
Rather than making his usual Nazi references, DeMint appeared to slam contemporary Germany as a country lacking freedom and suffering under “totalitarianism.” However, according to research by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Germany actually ranks far above the United States in upward economic mobility.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) has been one of the Recovery Act’s most vocal critics. Despite evidence that that the stimulus is helping to turn around the economy, Cantor repeatedly says that it is “failing” to “create jobs.” On Monday, Cantor hosted a job fair in Midlothian, VA, to demonstrate how he — and not the Obama administration — is working on “long-term solutions that will put Virginia businesses and Virginia workers back on the path to financial stability.”
ThinkProgress attended the event, which attracted more than 2,000 people. Watch a video report on Cantor’s stimulus-fueled job fair:
The Recovery Act created and saved jobs by injecting funds into local governments, while also fueling demand in the private sector by spurring improvements to infrastructure and other critical projects. ThinkProgress found in Chesterfield County that many jobs represented by employers at the job fair were a direct result of those funds:
–Commercial building contractor Colonial Webb credits the stimulus package with helping to create 20 new jobs. Colonial Webb, a firm that deals directly with helping to increase energy efficiency and LEED certification, is directly benefiting from Virginia’s $164 million in stimulus grants for weatherization and energy-efficiency programs.
–The Chesterfield County Police Department, which has received $505,822 through the stimulus, created 10 jobs.
–Chesterfield County Public Schools received over $4.4 million in funds from the stimulus. The money help plug budget gaps while aiding in 61 new hires.
–The Henrico County Police Department received over $63,069 from the stimulus and created 1 new job. The department also received $458,132 in stimulus money, helping to save other jobs.
It’s worth noting that among the job fair participants, more than half were from the public sector, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the CIA, FBI, Army and the Department of Motor Vehicles –- even though Cantor previously has criticized the stimulus plan for placing too great an emphasis on “preserving jobs in the public sector.”
Over the next two years, Chesterfield County will receive more than $38 million in stimulus funding. Fliers were also displayed at the job fair advertising stimulus-enabled unemployment aid. Sixty two million dollars in stimulus funding is headed to Virginia that will extend unemployment benefits, providing many at the job fair with a lifeline.
At a “grassroots” rally organized by the American Petroleum Institute in Houston on Tuesday, activists bearing American flags were turned away. Oil company employees were bused in to the “Energy Citizens” gathering to hear billionaire Drayton McLane Jr. attack President Barack Obama’s clean energy agenda as an economy-destroying energy tax. However, grassroots tea-party activists told Public Citizen Texas that they and their American flags were refused entry to the company picnic:
They said, “We won’t let you have an American flag either.” They said they won’t let you have this, and then the guy touched this, the American flag.
Watch it:
The activists were invited by Dick Armey’s Astroturf organization Freedomworks, one of the participating organizations in the new Energy Citizens coalition. While the tea party patriots were locked out, employees of the oil giants Chevron, Anadarko Energy, Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, and others were “invited to participate” and bused to the event on company time.
In recent weeks, the fate of the public option in new health care legislation has been uncertain. Yet, while the issue continues to be hotly debated in the halls of Congress, a new poll by Survey USA finds that the idea is as popular as ever amongst the American public:
More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.
A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.
The SurveyUSA poll finds similar results to several other polls that also show that the public option is very popular, a fact that some members of Congress consider to be a detriment.
Earlier this month, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), whose dedication to finding a health care reform compromise is increasingly being doubted by progressives, fearmongered about supposed rationing that could result from reform by invoking Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) battle with brain cancer. “In countries that have government-run health care, just to give you an example,” said Grassley. “He would not get the care he gets here because of his age.” In an interview with NPR today, Grassley said he regretted using Kennedy’s name:
But in recent days, Grassley’s comments suggest that he’s doing some of the pushing. During town hall meetings in Iowa, he alluded to government programs that would “pull the plug on Grandma.” He recently engaged in a tit-for-tat Twitter argument over health care “death boards” with Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Democrat. And he invoked gravely ill Sen. Edward Kennedy when inaccurately suggesting that under a British-style, state-run health plan, the Massachusetts Democrat would have been denied treatment for cancer because of his advanced age.
“I regret using Sen. Kennedy’s name,” Grassley told NPR. But he said he has no regrets about comments he made about British-style health systems, or addressing concerns — real or imagined — about end-of-life issues under a government plan.
In the same interview, Grassley also appeared to shift his “make-or-break issues” for a compromise. Yesterday, he told National Review that he needed “no public option, no rationing, no government bureaucrats getting between doctors and patients, and tort reform.” Today, he added one more item to the list, making it “No public option, no pay-or-play, no things that are going to lead to any rationing of health care, no interference with doctor-patient relationships, and tort reform.” Pay-or-play refers to a mandate requiring employers to either provide employee health coverage or pay a tax.
The Wonk Room has launched “GrassleyWatch” — an effort to track Grassley’s health care misrepresentations and obstructions. Check it out HERE.
As it becomes increasingly clear that Senate Republicans are more interested in scuttling President Obama’s agenda for political gain than they are in actually negotiating on health care, the White House and Senate leadership are looking at a process known as “reconciliation,” which would allow some health care reforms to pass the Senate by a simple majority vote. Cable news, however, has raced to draw a false comparison between this well-established reconciliation process and a strongarm tactic known as “nuclear option” which progressives opposed in 2005.
As Media Matters reports, two CNN anchors described reconciliation as a “nuclear option” being invoked by Democrats. Fox News’ Bill Sammon claimed that “Democrats are headed for, not the public option but the nuclear option.” Sean Hannity claimed that Senate Democrats are “talking about a nuclear option if they can’t get their 60-vote filibuster number in the Senate,” and Fox commentator Dick Morris labeled reconciliation “the so-called nuclear option.” Watch this video compilation:
This comparison, however, merely proves that CNN and Fox do not understand how the Senate works.
The most important difference between budget reconciliation and the so-called nuclear option is that the reconciliation process was created by federal law, while the “nuclear option” was dreamed up by an article published in the right-wing Federalist Society’s official journal. Under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Senate may pass a law bringing federal tax and spending levels in line with a previously enacted budget resolution by a simple majority vote. This process allows senators to bypass the filibuster when enacting health reform provisions that impact the federal budget. President Clinton used it to enact his budget in 1993, and President Bush used it to enact trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the rich in 2001 and 2003.
Conversely, the nuclear option was an unprecedented proposal to simply eliminate the filibuster altogether if 50 Senators agreed. Although there is a very strong constitutional argument that a bare majority of the Senate can eliminate the filibuster immediately after a new Senate is seated, nothing in federal law provides for the nuclear option.
The distinction here is very clear. Reconciliation is authorized by an Act of Congress; the nuclear option is a power play dreamed up by a right-wing policy shop. As former Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist said of reconciliation, “It’s legal, it’s ethical, you can do it.” Simply put, there’s nothing “nuclear” about progressives believing that they can pass health reform by a majority vote; that’s simply known as “democracy.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette pours through Tom Ridge’s new book and offers the relevant passages where the former Homeland Security chief discusses the Bush administration’s desire to increase the terror threat level for political reasons. Ridge reveals that Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued in favor of raising the threat level by noting the correlation it had with Bush’s approval rating:
Osama bin Laden had released a videotape with one more ominous sounding but unspecific threat against the United States. Neither Mr. Ridge nor any of the department’s security experts thought the message warranted any change in the nation’s alert status.
“…at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm,” he writes.
But that view met resistance in a tense conference call with members of the intelligence community and several other Cabinet officers including Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
“A vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion ensured. Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Rumsfeld.”
Noting the correlation found between increases in the threat level and the president’s approval rating, Mr. Ridge writes, “I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?’”
(HT: Marc Ambinder)
One of the right wing’s favorite petty complaints about the Obama administration is over its dress code. Former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card has said that President Obama has brought a “kind of locker room experience” to the White House. The Washington Times yesterday published an account from an “observant source” who complained that “[f]lip-flops, tennis shoes, unbuttoned dress shirts with ties, and casual wear are now in style at the White House. Razors are out for men. Many male staffers seem to shave every couple of days.” Today, Andy McCarthy at the Corner takes another shot and in the same breath, invokes a comparison to the Iranian regime:
Derb, I’ve noticed that President Obama frequently forgoes the necktie — lately, even in public appearances. That reminded me — I have no idea why — that the Iranian regime has shunned the necktie ever since Khomeini pronounced it a symbol of Western decadence.
ThinkProgress has not yet found any correlation between how well a man does as President and how often he wears a necktie. And not surprisingly, the American public doesn’t think it’s a big deal either. But for the record, while President, Bush also occasionally ditched his tie:
Earlier this year, White House adviser David Axelrod responded to Card’s criticisms, saying, “We’re wearing short sleeves because we have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess that we inherited.”
Earlier this week, Democrat Rick Boucher (VA) held a health care town hall in Dublin, VA. To his credit, Boucher informed the crowd that “the public option is not socialized medicine,” a statement that elicited boos and jeers from the audience. Boucher said he is a skeptic of the public option because he’s concerned it will be too popular:
“I have a problem with this government option plan,” Boucher said. “I’m troubled that the government option plan could become very popular and if it became sufficiently popular it could begin to crowd out the other” private insurance companies.
But, Boucher “voiced support” for Sen. Kent Conrad’s (D-ND) proposal to create health care co-ops. He said “having co-ops competing in the market would offer a check on the insurance companies, similar to the purpose behind the government option.” So, Boucher is supportive of a check on insurance companies, as long as it’s not a powerful one.
Speaking on Fox News last night, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) claimed that health care reform should not happen because it doesn’t enjoy “bipartisan” support, adding that a bill cannot be bipartisan unless it garners “somewhere between 75 and 80 votes.” Watch it:
Hatch is hardly the only conservative senator to float a 75-80 vote supermajority requirement for health reform. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is currently blocking attempts to fix the health care system, told the Washington Post that “[w]e ought to be focusing on getting 80 votes.” Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) demanded “a bill that 75 or 80 senators can support.”
Hatch, Grassley, and Enzi all sang a very different tune when they were in the majority, however:
– Tax Cuts For The Rich: In May 2001, the Senate passed President Bush’s budget-breaking $1.35 trillion tax cuts with only 58 votes. Nevertheless, Hatch announced that he was “extremely proud of this bipartisan bill.” Grassley praised the tax cuts as “built upon bipartisanship,” and Enzi praised the Senate for passing the bill in a “bipartisan fashion.”
– Subsidies For Drug Companies: In November 2003, the Senate passed a prescription drug plan for seniors that was strongly backed by lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry with only 54 votes. Nevertheless, Grassley released a statement praising himself as the “lead Senate architect of the bipartisan legislation” creating this plan.
– Nuclear Option: Four years ago, when Senate Democrats filibustered seven of President Bush’s 205 nominees to the federal bench, conservatives deemed the filibuster unconstitutional and invented a tactic known as the “nuclear option” to ram the blocked nominees through the Senate. Hatch and Grassley were on the vanguard of the movement to block any attempt to require judges to be confirmed by a supermajority. Hatch described the filibuster as “unconstitutional,” and Grassley described judicial filibusters as “an abuse of our function under the Constitution.”
Now that conservatives make up only a tiny minority of the Senate, however, they’ve decided that even the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold isn’t a strong enough barrier to block much-needed reform. Instead, Hatch, Grassley, and Enzi now want to impose a 75-80 vote superfilibuster standard that will effectively kill any health care plan they don’t personally approve of.
Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) seeded deep doubts about his commitment to reaching a bipartisan deal on health care reform when he lent credibility to the flagrantly false claim that proposed legislation might “pull the plug on grandma.” He further eroded trust in his ability to negotiate in good faith when he told MSNBC that he wouldn’t support legislation in which he got everything he wanted unless a significant number of Republicans also supported it.
But Grassley doesn’t appear to realize that his actions and comments are driving reform advocates to conclude that he’s “trying to undermine the reform effort.” In an interview with the conservative National Review yesterday, Grassley claimed that he was “losing patience with Democrats”:
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa - the top Republican negotiator in the “Gang of Six,” the group of Senate Finance Committee members that is trying to hammer out bipartisan health-care legislation - tells NRO that he’s losing patience with Democrats, who earlier this week signaled that they were ready to abandon hopes for a compromise. “I won’t walk away,” Grassley says, “but if I’m pushed away, I’ll be on the Senate floor trying to kill bad amendments and get good amendments adopted.”
Appearing on Fox News last night, Grassley claimed that he hasn’t “said anything new since we adjourned for the summer break”:
VAN SUSTEREN: Senator Grassley joins us live. Good evening, Senator. And is there little hope of a bipartisan deal, sir?
GRASSLEY: I haven’t given up yet, and I haven’t said anything new since we adjourned for the summer break that I’ve been saying for the last three months. So for the White House to draw any conclusions other than what I’ve told the president right to his face — and I’ve said a couple things that are very important, and I’ve said them before. I’ve told him for several weeks that, number one, it would really help get bipartisanship if he would make a statement that he would sign a bill that didn’t have a public option, or what some of us call a government-run health plan, in it.
Watch it:
Though Grassley is claiming that he hasn’t said “anything new” since the August recess began, he told the Washington Post yesterday that he thinks “lawmakers should consider drastically scaling back the scope” of reform. Grassley claims his call to “slow up” and scale down reform is “a natural outcome of what people may be getting from the town hall meetings,” which Grassley credits himself with creating.
The Wonk Room has launched “GrassleyWatch” — an effort to track Grassley’s health care misrepresentations and obstructions. Check it out HERE.
Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is releasing a book on September 1 titled, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again.” U.S. News’ Paul Bedard reports that, in the book, Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:
Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.
Playing politics with terror was a relatively frequent occurrence in the Bush administration. In August 2004, the AP reported that even “some senior Republicans” privately questioned Ridge’s timing of a terror alert that came just three days after the Democratic National Convention. According to the AP report, “One top GOP operative, who works closely with Bush’s political team, said the White House appeared to overplay its hand, and voters may smell politics behind the warning.”
Polls have opened in Afghanistan’s presidential election. The vote “has become a critical benchmark of the nation’s progress for the Afghan government and the Obama administration.” Despite the presence of 30,000 Afghan and international troops, the day was still punctuated by attacks and intimidation by the Taliban. According to a new poll, “a majority of Americans” do not believe the war is worth fighting.
In a comparison of OECD countries, Gallup found that “respondents in countries with universal coverage are somewhat more likely to express confidence in their national health systems and satisfaction with the availability of quality healthcare in their communities.” The United States had the second widest gap between satisfaction with availability of local care and confidence with the national system.
The Obama administration has secured commitments from nearly a dozen countries willing to accept detainees from Guantanamo Bay. The Washington Post reports that “four E.U. countries have privately told the administration that they are committed to resettling detainees, and five other E.U. nations are considering taking some.”
“The federal budget picture will look slightly better next week,” as the White House is set to announce that the still-record-breaking deficit for fiscal year 2009 will be “about $262 billion less than officials predicted earlier this year.” The drop in projected deficit is mostly due to the administration’s erasure of “a $250 billion contingency fund it had penciled into the budget in case Wall Street needed more government help.”
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) sent a letter to Massachusetts lawmakers asking them to change state law to allow for faster temporary appointment of US senators. Kennedy also suggested in the letter that the person temporarily appointed to fill the seat should not run in a special election.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews brought on his good friend Tom DeLay today to talk about his training for “Dancing with the Stars.” After a few minutes of chit chat, Matthews asked DeLay about the far right and its conspiracy theories, including whether President Obama is proposing “Hitlerian health care.” Matthews asked, “So you want to get rid of what’s known as Medicare today…[and] replace it with private sector health care?” “Amen brother,” replied DeLay, not realizing that Matthews was asking him a question, not making a statement.
Matthews then asked DeLay whether he is a birther. The former House Majority Leader mistakenly said that he would like to see the President’s “gift certificate” and asked Matthews to personally ask Obama for it. He also compared Obama to “illegal aliens”:
DELAY: Well, I’d like the President to produce his birth certificate. I can. Most illegal aliens here in America can. Why can’t the President of the United States produce their birth certificate? [...]
Chris, will you do me a favor? Will you ask the President to show me his gift certificate — I mean, his — gift certificate — his birth certificate?
MATTHEWS: No, I’m not going to ask him.
DELAY: Oh, c’mon, please!
When Matthews asked DeLay whether anyone has asked him for proof of his birthplace, DeLay responded, “The Democrats sued me for being a resident of Texas. That’s just like asking me for my birth certificate.” “No, it’s not,” responded Matthews. Watch it:
Even while out of office, DeLay has continued to push right-wing conspiracy theories, including that Obama is a “Marxist.”
Transcript: More »
During the presidential campaign and throughout his political career, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was regularly described in the media as a “maverick” — despite the fact that he was “a reliable conservative, and if not a perfectly loyal Republican, at least a reasonably loyal one.” Now, CQ reports that according to his 2009 voting record, McCain is clearly a “maverick no more”:
In fact, McCain is siding with his party this year on closely divided votes with greater frequency than at any other period in his 23-year Senate career, according to a CQ analysis of Senate votes.
On votes that pitted most Democrats against most Republicans, McCain has sided with the consensus GOP position 95.4 percent of the time, a CQ-defined “party unity” score that would be the highest of his Senate career if it holds up for the remainder of the year. He had a 95.2 percent party unity score in 1996, when Republicans held the Senate majority at the end of President Bill Clinton’s first term.
McCain’s year-to-date 2009 party unity score is the 14th highest among the 40 Republican senators. It’s even higher than that of the Senate’s top two Republicans, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (94.0 percent) and Minority Whip Jon Kyl , also of Arizona (94.5 percent).
Days after the President Obama’s inauguration, the Washington Post published an article declaring, the “Senate Gets Reacquainted With McCain the Maverick.” Apparently, they spoke too soon.
Our guest blogger is Gov. Howard Dean, former chairman of the DNC and the author of Howard Dean’s Prescription For Real Health Care Reform.
In today’s Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein argues that Democrats should just give up on the public option. “Enough already with the public option!,” he writes. Steven thinks we should drop one of the most popular and effective aspects of health care reform simply because the fight is too politically difficult in Congress. I think such an approach would ruin health care reform and devastate the Democratic party.
Steven is confusing health insurance reform with health care reform. If we only get reform that requires insurance companies to provide coverage to everyone who applies, charge everyone the same premiums, and end their discriminatory practices, that would be great insurance reform, but it’s not, as Steven writes, health care reform.
Real health care reform that includes a new public health insurance option would give Americans a real choice and not reward for-profit health insurers with 47 milllion new customers. Real health care reform that includes a new public health insurance option would cut out the administrative waste of private insurers and begin changing the way health care is delivered. Real health care reform that includes a new public health insurance option could adopt the kind of payment reforms that would start to “hold down long-term growth in health spending” and encourage providers to deliver care more efficiently. We know that premiums in the public option would be about 10 percent lower and that a real robust plan that piggy backs off of Medicare’s infrastructure could save us somewhere between $75 billion and $150 billion over 10 years.
Just because the public health insurance option is “new,” moreover, does not mean it’s not worth fighting for. Steven points out that I did not propose a robust public option in 2004 election. The measure of good politics and policy is the ability to accept and identify new ideas. My 2004 plan may not have included a new stand-alone program, but it did allow Americans over 55 to enroll in Medicare and everyone under 25 would have been eligible for Medicaid.
I believed that government could help expand coverage and control costs then, and the overwhelming majority of Americans believe it today. If the August recess has taught us one thing, it’s that Republicans have ended all serious conversations about reform and will oppose reform whether it includes a public option or not. They want to make the choice for the American people instead of letting Americans have their own choice of coverage. And if Democrats follow their lead, they will have to face the voters’ choice come November.
As ThinkProgress has noted before, conservatives have frequently obscured the fact that Medicare is a government-run single-payer program. Constituents appearing at health care town halls have even demanded that their members of Congress keep their “government hands off of Medicare.” Now, a new Public Policy Polling poll finds that millions of Americans do not realize that the federal government runs Medicare:
One poll question indicative of how difficult it is to gain public understanding on a complicated issue asked if respondents thought the government should ‘stay out of Medicare,’ something inherently impossible. 39% said yes.
The poll also shows that an additional 15% of respondents were “not sure” if the government should be involved in Medicare. Only 46% of respondents disagreed with the proposition that the government should stay out of the government-run program.
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