Are Republicans Opposed to Everything Positive?

It's hard to know where to begin when it comes to confronting Republican obstructionism to health care reform. Here's my attempt:

There can be little doubt that we are facing a severe health care crisis. And contrary to what some critics of health care reform would have us believe, the crisis is not just about the 45 million non-elderly who do not have health insurance (4 out of 5 of whom are in working households). The high costs and poor quality of health care affect all of us, and represent a very real threat to our health and economic security.

Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have grown four times faster than wage increases over the past nine years. The availability of employer-based health insurance coverage is shrinking, down 8% since 2000. According to a study by The Commonwealth Fund, the quality of U.S. health care ranked next to last compared to the U.K., Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada—despite the fact that the U.S. spends nearly twice the amount of its economic output on health care as other developed nations. As many as 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors, a per capita rate 40% worse than the U.K. and Canada, countries with government run health care systems. The situation is so bad that Medicare refuses to pay for procedures performed on the wrong patient or part of the body.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the “rising costs of health care and health insurance pose a serious threat to the future fiscal condition of the United States.” It goes on to say that without policy changes, “a substantial and growing number of nonelderly people…are likely to be without health insurance.”

The solutions to these problems will be difficult; a healthy debate about alternate approaches is warranted. However, Republican critics of health care reform aren’t showing any interest in having a substantive debate. Rather, just resorting to their usual tactics of spreading disinformation and instilling fear as they block Democratic attempts to help millions of ordinary Americans deal with the real and immediate health care problems they face. These problems are affecting millions of us. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that nearly one-quarter of respondents said they had experienced a serious problem covering health expenses.

Republicans are scaring Americans into believing that the proposed public insurance option is a wicked scheme intended to destroy America. As Karl Rove put it, “If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state.” Contrary to what Republicans would have us believe, the public option is not socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is where the government runs health care facilities and employs health care providers. But as the AARP confirms, the public option proposed by President Obama is a backstop “to give consumers the best value for their money and force greater competition among insurance plans for our business.” It “isn't about a government takeover.”

The facts haven’t stopped critics like the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights from spreading falsehoods about the public option, saying “this government-run plan could crush all your other choices…resulting in 119 million off their current insurance coverage.” In fact, the 119 million figure comes from the Lewin Group (affiliated with insurer United Healthcare) which concluded that, offered a Medicare-like public option, many people and businesses would voluntarily drop their private insurance in favor of the lower cost option. Choice, of course, is not something Republicans like to offer Americans.

The latest misinformation being spread—by Sarah Palin among others—is that proposed legislation would limit end-of-life care and encourage euthanasia, charges that the AARP labels “flat-out lies.” Once again, the truth is closer to the opposite. The provision provides Medicare coverage for optional consultations to receive advice on life-sustaining treatment and hospice care.

Since Republicans believe that the private insurance market is such a great solution for Americans’ health care needs, perhaps they can explain why it is that insurance premiums are growing so much faster than inflation and why the private market can’t make insurance accessible or affordable to 15% of Americans. Or why countries that have single payer, government sponsored programs, such as Canada and the U.K., have lower health care costs and better quality healthcare than the U.S. Or why the price of prescription drugs is substantially higher in the U.S than elsewhere.

Sadly, Republicans believe that it’s more to protect the private sector (which after all is doing such a bang up job) than ensuring the health and well-being of Americans.

GOP Hypocrisy on Student Loans

Isn't it interesting how all the Republican arguments about protecting the taxpayer fade away when it comes to delivering largess to corporations. It seems that giving subsidies is only irresponsible when it helps citizens. In this case the topic is student loans...

The hypocrisy of the Republican Party knows no bounds. Near daily, Republican leaders rail against a public option for health insurance, saying it represents an unfair intrusion into the private sector, and an unwise use of taxpayers' money.

Yet when it comes to eliminating corporate welfare paid for by taxpayers, they yell "foul." Subsidizing the private sector is acceptable, competing with it is not. Such is the case with the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which eliminates government payments to banks to encourage student loan lending. As it turns out, it would be a much smaller drain on the federal budget for the government to lend directly to students, rather than subsidizing banks to do the same lending. Less expensive to the tune of nearly $90 billion over the next 10 years, as forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

But 17 of the 19 Republican members of the House Education and Labor Committee opposed the bill because it replaces private capital in the student lending market. Here is a clear-cut case where Congress can advance an important social goal -- encouraging higher education -- and save taxpayers billions of dollars. It's a win-win by any measure. This one, simple reform could pay for almost one-tenth of President Obama's proposed health care reform.

It's time to call the Republican leadership to account. If they are so opposed to government spending, why are they in favor of giving nearly $90 billion of taxpayer money to the private sector without getting anything in return?

AIG: It's all about greed

The news this week of AIG's bonus payments is a disgrace—so I, like many others, need to sound off.  But not by losing sight of what really needs to be done.  So it's time to start writing again...

AIG wants the country to believe that it had to go forward with bonuses to employees of its failing financial products group based on two arguments. First, it couldn’t risk abrogating the contracts it had with employees, and second, it can’t risk losing these very same employees whose reckless actions led to the largest corporate loss in U.S. history.

It stretches the bounds of credulity to hear AIG talk about managing risk. This is the company that sold one half-trillion dollars of credit insurance without any thought to managing the underlying risk by maintaining adequate capital reserves, leading to a $200 billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

AIG should let more experienced risk managers determine whether abrogating employee contracts in an effort to recoup $165 million of taxpayer money is a risk worth taking. What’s entirely clear is that the issue is not really about risk, it’s about greed. How else can one explain why a company would pay millions of dollars in “retention” bonuses to employees who weren’t even retained? Or how its concerns about meeting contractual obligations didn’t also extend to the customers of the insurance it sold.

For all those free market absolutists who rail against government regulation (because it stifles economic activity), how to explain that it was AIG’s heavily regulated traditional insurance business that generated the capital and profits that were then squandered by the unregulated financial products groups?

There is a proper role for government to regulate a market that is subject to abuse, and when the abuses have externalities. When Congress is finished using the tax code as a means of punishment (a dangerous precedent), hopefully they’ll put their attention to more constructive ways of protecting our economy and taxpayers from the greed of “Wall Street”. Which unfortunately may include the need for further support of the financial institutions responsible for the current catastrophe. But while finding legitimate ways to punish those responsible, Congress shouldn’t let its populist fervor get in the way of doing what needs to be done to get our economy back on track.

"News Flash": Drill, baby, drill won't work

There were a lot of things that disgusted me about the Republican convention--generally centering on playing loose with facts, mean-spiritedness and hypocrisy.  This is one of them, captured in my latest "letter to the editor".  More to be covered in upcoming posts.

John McCain, in his nomination acceptance speech, decried the incompetence of his own party over the past eight years. At the same time, he smiled gleefully in response to his Republican delegates’ chants of “drill, baby, drill”. Electing John McCain President will ensure four more years of incompetence, because he so willingly ignores the facts.

The United States has 2% of the world’s proven oil reserves, but consumes one-quarter of global oil production. According to the Energy Information Administration, expanded offshore drilling would not have a “significant” impact on oil production for more than two decades. The EIA also predicts that drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Preserve would reduce dependence on foreign oil, by 2030, only “slightly”. “News flash” for John McCain and Sarah Palin: we aren’t going to drill our way to energy independence.

According to three Nobel laureates in economics, McCain’s proposed gas tax holiday would generate “major” profits for big oil while doing little to lower prices at the pump. Is that what McCain means by “fighting for you”?

We need an administration and Congress that will make policy decisions based on facts, not chants; an administration which defines “you” as average Americans, not large corporations. That’s why I’m voting for Barack Obama for President and Jim Himes for Congress. They have sensible, fact-based energy policies that will move us towards energy independence, create jobs and wean us off of environmentally harmful fossil fuels. And they will promote energy efficiency and conservation, concepts that McCain and Palin aggressively disdain.

Democrats Responsible for High Energy Prices - NOT!

In our local paper in Greenwich, a reader has written several letters saying "hug a Democrat if you like $4.50 per gallon gas because the Democrats are responsible for it."

My thoughts on the matter:

To claim, as Edward Dadakis did in his letter to The Greenwich Post last week, that Democrats are responsible for high gas prices because they oppose lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling is patently false. The cost of oil has increased dramatically over the past year, well before the discussion about lifting the ban started, so it hardly stands to reason that maintaining the ban is the cause of high fuel prices.

The reason most Democrats, and intellectually honest Republicans, oppose lifting the ban is because it will have no impact on oil prices in the short term, and only a negligible impact in the very distant future, yet has clear environmental risks. According to a report by the Energy Information Administration (the official source of energy statistics from the U.S. Government), expanded offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil or natural gas production or prices before 2030.” Even after 2030, “any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant”, because oil prices are determined on the international market, for which U.S. production accounts for less than 10%.

That hasn’t stopped Republican candidate John McCain from claiming that offshore oil drilling “would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.” Although let’s give credit where credit is due. When confronted by the facts, McCain has since backpedaled (flip-flopped?) to say that expanded drilling wouldn’t provide short term relief, but would have a positive “psychological impact”. Perhaps it doesn’t take much to get McCain’s spirits up, but gas prices being a few cents lower 22 years from now doesn’t do much for me.

The demagoguery about relieving the energy crisis through expanded offshore drilling and suspending the federal gas tax seems merely a convenient way for McCain to reward his big oil patrons—who have donated more than $2 million to his campaign. It’s hard to trust McCain’s independence on energy policy when he has more than 33 former oil lobbyists advising him or raising campaign funds. More than 300 economists, including several Nobel laureates, came out against the gas tax holiday, in part because “research shows that waiving the gas tax would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers.” Of course, consistent with his oil-friendly policies, McCain does not support a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

Casting more doubt on Mr. Dadakis’ accusations are the facts about what energy companies aren’t doing with the federal oil and gas resources already available for development. The House Committee on Natural Resources has documented an extensive array of statistics showing the vast quantity of land and water for which federal leases have been issued—68 million acres—but that are not in production. According to the Minerals Management Service, four-fifths of the oil and gas believed to exist on the Outer Continental Shelf (the offshore area where Bush and McCain want to lift the ban on drilling) are currently open for leasing.

When it comes to energy conservation, McCain apparently thinks ribbing Obama about painless fuel-saving measures such as maintaining proper tire inflation, a position endorsed by AAA, NASCAR and the U.S. Department of Energy, will boost his popularity. Until he realized that once again he was wrong, and recanted.

And then there are the political facts. As McCain himself has said, our “dependence on foreign oil has been 30 years in the making".  Mr. Dadakis might be interested to know that over the past 30 years, Republicans have been in the White House for roughly twice as many years as the Democrats, and have controlled the Senate for 16 years compared to the Democrat’s 12 years. As far as who is up for election this year, McCain has been in Congress for 25 years, six times longer than Senator Obama. And closer to home, Republican Representative Chris Shays has 22 years on his Democratic challenger, Jim Himes.

While America’s failed energy policy goes beyond the political failings in Washington, surely the Democrats are not alone to blame, and have more coherent solutions than either McCain or Edward Dadakis.

Enough with Political Allegiance

As evidenced by the spectacular failures regarding intelligence, the war in Iraq, Katrina, and energy policy, the Bush administration has pursued a policy of rewarding slavish political allegiance ahead of merit and open, constructive debate. In the latest example, the Justice Department’s own inspector general has found that political affiliation has been used, illegally, as a screening criterion for recruiting programs aimed at attracting highly qualified candidates to the Justice Department. The facts are crystal clear—the report found that applicants with Democratic affiliation were turned away “at a significantly higher rate” than candidates with Republican ties.

The relevance of these facts is that Fairfield County’s representative in Congress, Christopher Shays, has steadfastly stood by Bush throughout his tenure in office. While Shays may have expressed muted disagreement here and there, he has not evidenced the independent, principled thinking that we need to solve the many crises that threaten our country. He has strongly supported Bush on disproportionate tax breaks for the wealthy, violating constitutional protections in the name of national security, and waging a war in Iraq that has done anything but made the U.S. more secure. Like so many other Bush loyalists, Shays is unable or unwilling to break free from President Bush and his ill-conceived policies.

Fortunately, it’s within our power to break free from Christopher Shays. With Jim Himes, running for Congress in the Connecticut 4th District, we have an intelligent, independent and socially conscious candidate who can help set America back on course. I urge voters in the 4th District to learn more about Jim Himes in what Time Magazine is calling one of the top 15 Congressional races to watch.

McCain's Economic Illiteracy

By his own admission (to the Wall Street Journal in 2005 and The Boston Globe in 2007, see John McCain on Meet the Press) John McCain is not an expert on economic policy. If anybody doubts this, he proved it with his remarks about the recent employment report. In response to the loss of 80,000 jobs in March, McCain, in a  press release, called for lower taxes and less regulation as a solution to creating job growth.

Under the current administration, overall federal income tax rates are at historically low levels. Yet the overall growth rate of private sector employment during George W. Bush’s administration is the second worst performance since World War II (his dad gets honors for the worst performance). Contrast this with the Clinton record, where despite tax increases, job growth outpaced Bush’s record by a factor of four. This certainly dispels the Republican mantra that the only way to grow the economy is by cutting taxes.

As for less regulation, the cause of the current financial market distress appears to be completely lost on the Republican nominee for president. More, not less, regulatory oversight of the subprime mortgage market could have reigned in the excesses of the imprudent lending and financing practices that are the very cause of the economic downturn that McCain believes less regulation would alleviate.

Regulation serves the purpose of policing markets where the actions of individual players can harm more than just themselves. Surely the current situation, where the reckless actions of companies like Bear Stearns are driving the economy into recession and seriously threatening the stability of financial markets, is proof positive of the need for regulation.

So when John McCain says “The American people cannot afford the Democrats and their economic leadership”, you might want to think twice. It’s time to put somebody in the White House who will put aside dogma in favor of an informed economic policy. Clearly that person is not John McCain.