Congress

Health Care for America Now, a new $40 million campaign to push for universal health care coverage in 2009, kicked off today with a press conference at the National Press Club.

I tend to be skeptical about any campaign with the word "Now!" in it, but early signs suggest this will be a smart effort. Huffington Post has a good write up:

....

The work of Health Care For America Now was first made public late last week. But the group, with Elizabeth Edwards as a figurehead, offered expanded insight into the details of its campaign during a meeting on Monday. In addition to spending $40 million -- $1.5 million of which will be put behind an initial ad buy (national TV, print, and online) -- the group will be sending organizers to 52 cities, blasting out emails to 5 million households, airing spots on MSNBC and CNN and submitting op-eds to major papers (officials hinted at the New York Times piece to come).

In addition, the campaign is going to take advantage of Moveon.org's massive data files to reach out to like-minded supporters and officials promised to work in Democratic and Republican districts alike.

"We'll have an organizer in the district of every Blue Dog Democrat," said HCAN campaign manager Richard Kirsch of the conservative Democrats.

"The focus of the campaign," he added, "is on national legislation. "This year, however, it is also a referendum: do you support quality, affordable, health care for all, or an alliance with the private insurance industry?"

Kirsch stressed repeatedly that the effort was legislative, not political. And, as such, the campaign will not offer direct criticism of John McCain's health care policy. Nor are there plans, at this point in time, to coordinate with Barack Obama -- who has stressed that he will make health care legislation a priority in the White House -- or Ted Kennedy -- who is reportedly set to relaunch a Senate effort to achieve universal care.

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And Ezra Klein notes how different this campaign will be from the last effort:

... shortly before the Clinton plan came out, the Democratic National Committee asked Heather Booth to build their field campaign for the Clinton heath care plan. So Democrats did have a field operation, I asked her last year. She laughed at me. "No," she said. "No." The problem wasn't just that the DNC couldn't get its act together, but that no one on the Left could. Labor was exhausted and angry after the NAFTA fight. The AARP was keeping its powder dry so they could bargain for more gains right before the legislation passed. Organizations like MoveOn, Campaign for America's Future, and Democracy for America didn't exist. "There really wasn't a unified effort on the progressive side," said Booth. "Everyone was fighting for their portion of a bill so strongly that it was hard to fight for something overall. And so we got nothing."

The political paralysis did not extend to reform's opponents. The Health Insurance Association of America raised and spent $50 million ($69 million in 2008 dollars). The NFIB flooded Congress with hundreds of thousands of letters, calls, and visits from angry small business owners. The Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the Manufacturers Association of America, and anyone else you can think of was organizing, spending, and attacking.

So it's of both enormous practical and symbolic significance that, in 2008, the first major health reform coalition with serious money and a genuine pressure plan is on the left. ....

Here's the first ad:

Legislation providing four weeks of paid family leave for federal employees passed 278-146 this afternoon. Some fifty House R's joined D's to pass HR 5781, despite a veto threat from the President. Even if it doesn't pass this year, the bill is a nice warm-up for legislation that would finally give all American workers paid family leave.

Update: For more, see this good WaPo article on the vote.

House Majority Leader Hoyer announced today that the House will vote on legislation that provides federal employees with four weeks of paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child. If passed, this would be a great first step toward providing paid parental leave to all workers. Right now, the U.S. is the only industrialized country that doesn't provide income support for all workers with new children. For more, see this page on Rep. Carolyn Maloney's site.

The White House just announced they would veto the unemployment-compensation improvements included in legislation the House is expected to pass.

Over at my day job, we've got a new paper on how the deteriorating economy is hurting folks at the lower end of the labor market. The bottom line is that the recession is already very much underway, especially for workers with less than a high school education, youth, and low-income families. Congress needs to put a package together to provide relief to the people the economy is letting down. We make a series of recommendations for how to target relief and start putting people back to work.

The latest from Kuttner on how Dems and allies mis-messaged the stimulus:

In addition, the Democrats were (and still are) hobbled by the fiscal conservatives in their own ranks. In the negotiations with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House Blue Dog Caucus insisted that the overall size of the stimulus be held down. The Clintonian idea that the Democrats should first and foremost be the parsimony party still has substantial support. The Democrats actually entered the negotiations proposing a smaller stimulus number than the administration.

The Democrats also bought the centrist mantra, repeated endlessly by a chorus that included former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and countless others, that the stimulus should be "timely, targeted, and temporary." Why this tepid trilogy of weak T's? Democrats were fearful that the economic downturn, absent these caveats, would become an excuse for another round of permanent Republican tax cuts. So instead of looking toward the fall election and the real economic plight of the electorate, they kept looking over their shoulders at the Republicans.

The conventional wisdom among centrist economists is that stimulus bills are very risky. By the time they get through Congress, the recession is often over (hence, timely); Congress is tempted to turn them into Christmas-tree, special-interest bills (hence, targeted); and tax cuts, once enacted, tend to become permanent holes in the tax code (hence, temporary). This wisdom is accurate as far as it goes, but in a structural economic crisis, it doesn't go very far. So instead of coming out of the box with a recovery program that offered at least a down payment on reversing 30 years of economic insecurity, and beginning a serious effort to repair the financial crisis, Democrats yet again were enablers of President Bush.

They were rewarded with a photo op beside a hugely unpopular and failed president bringing Democrats to heel. In the larger context of the general election, Timely, Targeted, and Temporary signaled nothing so much as Think Small.

Last week, CQ described House Dems' potential strategy on health care:

House Democrats are considering combining legislation to boost Medicaid funding for states and a moratorium on administration-imposed Medicaid regulations with an expansion of children’s health insurance, a leadership aide said Tuesday.

Such a strategy is intended to secure enough support from GOP colleagues and Republican governors in Democrats’ push to enact legislation this year to increase funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the House Democratic aide said.

As substance, this package seems fine; as strategy, I'm skeptical, in part because of previous Dem moves and signals that have lessened their leverage:

.... a House GOP aide said it is doubtful that combining an SCHIP expansion with more Medicaid money and a moratorium on the new Medicaid rules would draw enough votes to override a certain veto.

“Most of our guys don’t like that,” the GOP aide said about a temporary increase in Medicaid funding to the states. The aide also said many House Republicans don’t want to revisit SCHIP because they believe the issue is settled. Late last year, Bush signed into law (PL 110-173) a measure that keeps SCHIP running through the end of March 2009 with enough money to maintain coverage at current enrollment levels.

Additionally, the GOP aide said that if Democrats push for more Medicaid funding, perhaps in a second stimulus package, “at some point their Blue Dogs are going to balk” unless it is fully funded and the economy slows enough to warrant such a move.

A strategic limitation of a health care package limited to Medicaid and SCHIP is that conservatives will feel little pressure to support it. As a result, it seems unlikely that sufficient votes could be obtained in the House to get past a presidential veto.

The smartest move for progressives may be to craft a package that is designed solely to prepare the public for a universal health care push by the next Administration. Such a package could include the Medicaid and SCHIP provisions, but only if they're framed as steps toward universal coverage and increased health care protections for the working class and middle class.

Conservative South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is the sole obstruction to legislation that would ensure that thousands of humanitarian refugees who are elderly and disabled aren't cut off of basic income support because they haven't been able to complete the citizenship process within an unreasonable timelime. A tip of the hat to the NYT for getting personal with DeMint:

If you wonder who could possibly object to helping this small, fragile population, the answer is almost nobody. A bill to extend the limit [to obtain citizenship] to nine years passed the House last July by voice vote, with no objections, and it was to be offered for unanimous consent in the Senate. That is until Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, exercised his right to place a “hold” on the bill, sending it into limbo, where it remains.

What is Mr. DeMint’s problem? Is it hostility to immigrants or anything that smells like government assistance, even for the poor and disabled? He won’t say. Congress and the White House must insist on an explanation and press Mr. DeMint to lift his hold. Vulnerable people who have found refuge here must not be forced further into poverty because of a palsied bureaucracy’s inflexible deadlines — or one senator’s obstructionism.

DeMint can't cry "fiscal conservatism"—the legislation's cost is minor, and completely offset, in fact, the bill would save money according to CBO.

Also worth noting, some of the people DeMint is hurting were persecuted in their home lands because of their support for the United States. DeMint's hold isn't just cruel and unhumanitarian, it's ungrateful.

E.J. Dionne on what Congressional Dems need to do to get back on track:

Congressional Democrats need a Plan B. Republicans chortle as they block Democratic initiatives -- and accuse the majority of being unable to govern. Rank-and-filers are furious their leaders can't end the Iraq War. President Bush sits back and vetoes at will.

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The Democrats' core problem is that they have been unable to place blame for gridlock where it largely belongs, on the Republican minority and the president.

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... What's the alternative to the internecine Democratic finger-pointing of the sort that made the front page of Thursday's Washington Post? The party's congressional leaders need to do whatever they must to put this year behind them. Then they need to stop whining. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should put aside any ill feelings and use the Christmas break to come up with a joint program for 2008.

They could start with the best ideas from their presidential candidates in areas such as health care, education, cures for the ailing economy and poverty-reduction. Agree to bring the same bills to a vote in both houses. Try one more time to change the direction of Iraq policy. If Bush and the Republicans block their efforts, bring all these issues into the campaign. Let the voters break the gridlock.

If Democrats don't make the 2008 election about the Do-Nothing Republicans, the GOP has its own ideas about whom to hold responsible for Washington's paralysis. And if House and Senate Democrats waste their time attacking each other, they will deserve any blame they get next fall.

E.J.'s right on. Next year in Congress needs to be about big, defining issues that lots of people care about.

Democrats control both the House and the Senate, and President Bush's approval rating is in the low 30's. Yet, today's papers are full of headlines like this:

Bush, GOP Prevail on Host of Hill Issues

Democrats Bow to Bush's Demands in House Spending Bill

Democrats Bow to Bush Spending Limit

Dems Cave on Spending

Open Left's Chris Bowers may be right.

The folks at the Drum Major Institute have put together a fantastic new website for tracking federal legislation "of significance to the current and aspiring middle class." The site combines have all sorts of great Web 2.0 bells and whistles, including great graphics, with a cutting edge approach to communicating about economic policy.

For DMI, the middle class is an aspirational concept (along the lines of the American Dream), not a narrowly defined political one, and a "middle class issue" in their view isn't simply one that targets tax breaks or benefits to families with incomes between $60,000 to $80,000.

The middle class is more than an income bracket. Over the past fifty years, a middle-class standard of living in the United States has come to mean having a secure job, the opportunity to own a home, access to health care, retirement security, time off for vacation, illness and the birth or adoption of a child, opportunities to save for the future and the ability to provide a good education, including a college education, for one’s children. When these middle-class fundamentals are within the reach of most Americans, the nation is stronger economically, culturally and democratically.

Most Americans identify themselves as middle class. Yet DMI is concerned not only with those who currently enjoy a middle-class standard of living, but also with expanding the middle class by increasing the ability and opportunities of poor people to enter the middle class. The middle class is strengthened when more poor people are able to work their way into its ranks. In a nation that is increasingly polarized between the very wealthy and everyone else, DMI sees the poor and middle class as sharing many of the same interests. Simply put: what strengthens and expands the middle class is good for America.

In some anti-poverty circles, there's still discomfort with using the term "middle class" in advocacy communications. This is unfortunate given that most Americans either see themselves as, or aspire to be, middle class. If you're against poverty, you should be for building the middle class.

At first glance, the tax reform proposal introduced by House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) looks pretty good. The big news is his proposal to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax and pay for it by imposing an alternative levy on taxpayers with income in excess of $200,000. Also worth noting are these two provisions that would make the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit more inclusive by expanding the credits to some people who don't currently receive them:

Modification of earned income credit amount for individuals with no qualifying children. The bill would expand the number of taxpayers that can qualify for the earned income credit. The bill would increase the earned income credit percentage and phase-out percentage for individuals with no qualifying children. In general, current law provides that individuals with no qualifying children are allowed to take an earned income credit equal to 7.65% of their earned income. The amount of this credit is currently subject to an overall limitation that is calculated using a phase-out amount of $5,280. The bill would increase the credit percentage and phase-out percentage to 15.3% of earned income and would increase the phase-out amount to $10,900 (increased in the future for inflation). This proposal is estimated to cost $29.14 billion over 10 years.

Change in refundable child credit. The bill would increase the amount of the refundable child tax that may be claimed. The child tax credit is refundable to the extent of 15 percent of the taxpayer's earned income in excess of approximately $11,000 as a result of inflation adjustments to the original floor of $10,000. The bill would eliminate this inflation adjustment and freeze the floor at $8,500. This proposal is estimated to cost $9.12 billion over 10 years.

It would make more sense to extend the child tax credit to all low-income families with children, but it's still good to see that Rangel is at least lowering the current threshold.

The UI provisions in the House Dems' Trade and Globalization Assistance Act of 2007, introduced yesterday, look pretty good:

The UI provisions in the bill are designed to encourage and reward States for taking specific steps to improve UI coverage for low-wage, part-time and other workers. The bill responds to a GAO finding that unemployed low-wage workers are only one-third as likely to receive UI benefits, but more than twice as likely to be unemployed as higher wage workers. Rather than requiring States to implement reforms, the bill provides financial incentives for those States enacting reforms designed to: count workers' most recent wages when determining UI eligibility; end discrimination against part-time workers; allow separations from work for compelling family reasons (such as fleeing domestic violence); and provide extended benefits during approved training for high demand employment. Funding for the incentives is raised by an extension of a current-law unemployment tax (the FUTA surtax) that President Bush has proposed extending.

The Trade Adjustment Act changes in the bill include: 1) extending Trade Adjustment Assistance to service sector workers; 2) improvements in TAA's Health Coverage Tax Credit; and3) increased funding for job training under TAA (from $220 million to $660 million in 2010).

It's official, a minority of conservatives kept the House from overturning the President's veto of SCHIP today. Final vote was 273-156, so the override side picked up eight votes.

This law review article, by Timothy Westmoreland, provides both a useful overview of the current federal budget process and a compelling critique of what's wrong with the process, in particular its failure to take into account the future value of investments in human capital as well as non-fiscal values:

.... The Congress has blinded itself with budgets. It has hidden much of its true deficit creation and intergenerational transfers of burden behind opaque special rules. It walked away from some of its most basic promises, thwarted its ability to make long-term investments, or stopped itself from recognizing any value to the future except money.

Because of all these structural problems, the enforcement tools of the current budget process should be supplemented. The problems intrinsic to the existing policy—especially its camouflage of complex decisions as simple ones and its virtual dismissal of non-monetary values—call for change in the budget process and an enlargement of its field of vision. If routine measurements are needed to aid policy, they should include both budgetary and non-budgetary projections. If pre-commitment structures are needed to restrain the creation of fiscal deficits, they are needed to restrain the creation of non-fiscal bad legacies as well. Using new measures in health and disability (and in other fields, to the extent that such measures exist), the Congress should attend to which spending is simple present-day consumption and which is an investment with value for the future. It is not an easy course to steer, but it is the better one.

Westmoreland also puts forward a number of innovative proactive ideas for reforming the budget process. For example, here's one on PAYGO and health (apologies in advance for the acrynoms, you'll just have to read the article to find out what they stand for!):

Replicating another pre-commitment structure could also help redirect legisla- tion toward investments of future value rather than purchases of simple current consumption. For instance, imagine a PAYGO device for health standards (rather than dollar standards) that prohibit consideration of any legislation that adds morbidity, mortality, or YPLL, or that reduces QALYs. Thus, if legislation to ease air pollution standards were estimated to increase morbidity and mortality from cancer and asthma, it would have to be accompanied by legislation to provide offsetting benefits, say through increased childhood immunization. If a bill to reduce funding for lead-poisoning screening were scored as increasing developmental disabilities and thus reducing QALYs, it would have to be coupled with a disability-reducing action, such as better containment of toxic chemicals. Such a health and disability PAYGO would at least assure that new laws do not make the Nation's future health and disability status worse, just as a budget PAYGO is meant to assure that new laws do not make the Nation's future finances worse.

Conservatives have had a proactive budget process agenda for a while now—balanced budget amendment, dynamic scoring, etc—but there really isn't a proactive progressive budget process agenda. Westmoreland's article makes an important contribution in this area.