Rep. Steve Dreihaus and Rep. Steve Kagan are two of the latest Congressmen to feel the wrath of their constituents over health care reform, cap and trade, and other issues. Meanwhile, the push is on to trivialize and demonize the backlash that’s going on at local town hall meetings. The DNC released a statement blaming Republicans for riling up “angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists” being bussed in and well-funded by lobbyists. It’s not grassroots, you see, it’s astroturf.(A quick aside: Can we ban the use of the word astroturf by both sides of the political aisle. It’s lame, overused and cliched already, and it’s only been in rotation for a few months.)

In addition to the DNC, you have pundits like Rachel Maddow whining about the “hooliganism” of protesters at the same time the White House releases a video with former ABC reporter Linda Douglass accusing opponents of health care reform of using scare tactics, and specifically targets a spliced-together video that’s gone viral showing President Obama and others in their own words speaking of their desire for a single-payer system.

This is all while the White House health czar has put out a call for reports on health care disinformation on the web. Rhetorical question: what do you think the reaction would have been from the left if President Bush had asked for reports on disinformation on the Patriot Act? It all adds up to a push to paint the very real opposition to health care reform as extremist and imaginary, since no real American could have strong feelings against health care reform, right?

What is left out is that, yes, most Americans know we don’t have a perfect system, and want the costs of health care to go down. That doesn’t then mean that you can assume they all want a costly government health insurance plan to take care of everyone. The fact is that opposition to the government option is very real and very potent. Health care insurance reform supporters (as they’re being re-termed) are overstating the ability of the right to coordinate and organize in the same manner that the left does. I’ve seen the videos and I’ve been to the Tea Parties – by and large, these aren’t paid activists from out of town, these are local folks who have strong concerns about the direction of the country. You would think with the falling poll numbers the left would at least entertain the idea that opposition to their ideas is possible.

But the easier path is to ignore the concerns and paint the opposition as extremist and irrelevant. It’s an approach that shamefully sidesteps any debate on the issues involved with health care reform and goes straight to the line of thought that says, “It’s my way or nothing at all, so just shut up otherwise.” The left seems to have forgotten its own mantra of the last eight years – dissent, I suppose, is only patriotic when it’s a liberal engaging in it. When conservatives do it, it’s just obstructionism and hate. It makes political debates much easier when you can utilize painful black-and-white thinking like this to avoid defending your own ideas and policies.

And in any event, the wailing over the protests is just a tad hypocritical from supporters of a President who told them during the campaign he wanted them to “get in the face” of their friends and neighbors. Aggressive and impassioned campaigning, you see, is only reserved for one side of the fight. But despite what they might say publicly, politicians and pundits recognize that the backlash is real, and that’s why they are fighting back so hard against it and to mischaracterize its reality and the impact on both health care reform and the politicans who vote for it.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

As the Senate wraps up its business and the House heads home for vacation, the debate over health care reform continues. Central to the Democrats’ selling of their health care proposal is the notion that their “public option” won’t lead to government takeover of health care and won’t lead to the destruction of private insurance.

The only problem is that their own words contradict it. In a spliced together video, President Obama, Rep. Barney Frank, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky are all caught on tape telling what they hope will happen with health care (Hot Air and Michelle Malkin have it). In a SEIU health care forum, President Obama speaks of not being able to eliminate employer coverage immediately, and in a 2003 speech before AFL-CIO, he says he’s a proponent of a single-payer system. Rep. Frank says a public option is the best way to get a single-payer system, and Rep. Schakowsky practically crows about the fact that a government plan will destroy the private insurance industry (which we pointed out back in May).

Some would argue that none of those goals is a bad thing. My question is then, why not be open about it? Why not just come out and say that the plan is move to a single-payer system, to get rid of those evil private insurance companies, and to admit that the model is a European or Canadian one? The answer is that if that agenda were put to voice, the American public would react with even more vigorous rebuttal than it’s currently displaying. So at the heart of the matter, there is a certain dishonesty in motive and design in selling the public plan, as if a government plan would have no impact at all on employer coverage or on private insurance companies.

This same cognitive dissonance leads to the recent mixed signals on tax increases. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Obama economic advisor Larry Summers (who had just finished Googling the topic of the day) left the door open for tax increases on their respective news shows, leaving it to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to assure the press that, yes, the President would keep his pledge to keep taxes low. The rub is that tax revenues are already declining, and to pay for such a massive increase in the size of government, the funds must come from somewhere, and you can only soak the rich for so much.

It all comes down to messaging. The proponents of the public option can’t be honest and say they hope government runs the private insurers out of town, and they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that what they’re asking for isn’t cheap and must be paid for. Is health care reform necessary. You bet? But as I’ve stated before, trading a private bureaucracy for a government one isn’t reform – it’s cost-shuffling that doesn’t attack the fundamental cost of care. And, as the President, Rep. Frank, and Rep. Schakowsky state, at some point, perhaps not immediately, but some years removed, it will indeed lead to the single-payer state and the disappearance of private health insurance.

If that’s the goal, and such a noble one, then be honest about it.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

The highly anticipated “beer summit” took place this evening with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden sitting down for a beer with Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. The meeting comes a week after a press conference in which the President said Crowley and other officers “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates, right after admitting he knew nothing about the case. He looked foolish after more details emerged that portrayed Gates as the one to invoke race as he went off the deep end on officers just doing their job.

President Obama tried to portray the beer moment as a great step forward in race relations:

I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode.

Whatever happy spin he tries to put on it, the President is trying to put this behind him as a lot of Americans reacted negatively to his reflexive attack on the police without knowing the facts. Among other things, it diminishes his political capital at a time when he needs it the most to sell his health care plan.

As for the beer session itself, what did it really accomplish? I’ll agree with Obama in noting that it’s nice to see that Crowley and Gates have already talked about the subject and plan to talk again. Officer Crowley called the meeting productive and said all parties are looking forward (a relief to the President, I’m sure), but according to him he and Gates “agree to disagree” about the confrontation. Doesn’t that leave us back at square one? I’m all for people of all colors sitting down together, particularly for a nice cold one, and I’m all in favor of a frank, candid, and civil discussion on race.

But let’s be honest – this moment wasn’t about that. When you have news agencies breathlessly reporting each man’s beer of choice, you know it’s less about substance and more about style. This “beer summit” was only about a photo op and providing damage control for the President. The honest discussion on race will have to wait for another day.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

There are reports that a deal has been struck to move the health care bill out of committee in the House very soon, but even President Barack Obama is becoming resigned to the idea that he won’t have a bill on his desk until fall at the earliest. I’m with Ed Morrissey when he says that getting the bill out of committee and then waiting for weeks is a dangerous tactic that gives the illusion of momentary victory but in the long run hurts the bill’s chances with increased exposure.

Regardless of the timetable, this bill is a disaster that will do nothing to solve our problems with health care. I’ve read a few liberal blogs urgently insisting that the opposition get out of the way so we can solve the imminent health crisis. They’re coming from a few shaky assumptions. The 47 million uninsured Americans is a number that is being bandied about with near religious authority. The number comes from the Current Population Survey from the Census Bureau, and Keith Hennessey has an excellent breakdown of the actual data. Of the 47 million, 9.3 million are non-citizens, 5 million are childless young folks, 4.3 million are Medicaid or SCHIP eligible, 10 million are at 300% of the poverty level, and 6.4 million are people who, based on an HHS analysis, mistakenly don’t list their Medicaid benefits as health insurance.

So that leaves us with 10.6 million uninsured who don’t fall into the above categories. And by the way, 253.4 million of us do have health care. Thinking about those numbers should shift the priorities around a bit. Do we need to wipe out our current health care system for a number that’s smaller than advertised? I’ll leave that to you.

Another justification, made even by the President himself, is that public option health care is going to reduce costs and cut deficits. Step beyond the initial absurdity of the logic that increasing spending will cut costs. The fundamental truth is that the current health care proposal does little to bring down the fundamental costs of health care. What is being proposed is a shuffling of the costs from private insurers to the government. That isn’t going to result in cost savings, it’s going to result in fewer private insurers and more administration costs by federal bureaucracy.

And the size of the problem is likely understated. Medicare, when enacted in 1965, was projected to have hospital costs of only $9 billion in 1990. The actual number that year was $66 billion, and in the 19 intervening years the disparity between projection and reality has only gotten worse. If the CBO estimates $240 billion will be added to the deficit over the next ten years, you can bet that the actual amount will be higher.

It’s no surprise that a Wall Street Journal poll shows 42% of Americans think the plan is a bad idea compared to 36% that like it, and 47% of those with insurance disapprove. In addition, only 20% thought that their own care would improve under the current proposal. That’s why the current delay is more of a setback for public option health care supporters – the more time the voters have to stew, the less likely they’ll be to stomach this boondoggle.

The question then becomes will legislators listen to their constituents or be strong-armed into toeing an imaginary party line so a few can put feathers in their cap? If the latter comes to pass, the country will be ill-served indeed. Do we need to reform health care? Yes. But providing an all-inclusive government plan isn’t reform, it’s unsustainable cost-shuffling that will hurt us financially as a nation and won’t end up helping  us one bit.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

The controversy over President Obama’s birth status, quietly simmering since last fall, has over the last few weeks hit a kind of boiling point with CNN anchors, US Senators, and the White House Press Secretary all weighing in on the subject. Numerous lawsuits have been filed, and a soldier on his way to Afghanistan recently protested his deployment on the grounds that the President hasn’t proven himself to be a citizen.

It’s a theory that requires a conspiracy of large proportions – the Obama campaign, the McCain campaign (whose lawyers apparently investigated the issue and found nothing), the state government of Hawaii, the DNC, the FEC, and the Supreme Court. This is the sticking point for many conspiracy theories – how do you keep all those people from squealing what would be the biggest story of the century?

The so-called “Birther” movement is attracting so much fire from multiple sides of the ideological spectrum that one wonders if it isn’t being brought to the forefront to deflect from the President’s sagging poll numbers and the public’s increasing distaste for an unsustainable public health plan. The left seems to never miss an opportunity to paint conservatives with the same broad brush (see the Pittsburgh shooting and the Holocaust Museum killer for examples).

Here’s what I believe – until proven to me otherwise by strong affirmative evidence, Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States and the legitimate President of America. Those who question his birth status will quite frankly have to do a lot better to convince me that there’s more to see, but in all the debate over long-form birth certificates versus certificates of live birth, one thing must be remembered – absence of evidence doesn’t mean evidence of absence. If Obama’s student transcripts were to somehow show he applied as a foreign student, then that affirmative evidence might raise more legitimate concerns, but until then, the birth certificate issue is a non-productive waste of time and effort that should be spent battling universal health care and cap-and-trade.

Likewise, the left should not be so keen to try to smear all conservatives, Republicans, and Tea Party activists with the Birther label. No Republican in elected office or in the chain of party leadership has signed on to or endorsed the idea, and despite claims to the contrary, the Tea Parties are a response to out-of-control government spending, not Obama’s birthplace. Even more tenuous is the idea that the Birther movement is more evidence of the latent racism of conservatives – after all, why else would they be questioning the citizenship of the first black President, right?

To some on the right, the birth certificate issue might seem an alluring option for defeating the President’s agenda – if he’s shown to be illegitimate, then all his ideas and legislation would be null and void anyway. But here’s the point – that’s not necessary. The President’s ideas are becoming more unpopular by the day as the stimulus is shown to be the failure that it was destined to be. The illegitimacy issue was raised before by the hardcore anti-Bush crowd when he was “selected not elected” back in 2000. The venom and acrimony didn’t help them in 2004, and it won’t help our side in 2010.

This whole debate should have remained on the back-burner where it belonged. For whatever reason it’s been brought to the fore, and it only serves as a distraction to the more pressing issues of the day. Bringing it up is like playing with matches in a grain silo – it may end up burning everyone. I say put the lighter away and oppose Obama on his greatest weakness – the futility of his own agenda.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

The Columbus Dispatch has an interesting snippet from outgoing Republican Sen. George Voinovich. The main thrust of the article was to highlight Voinovich’s upcoming involvement in opposing gambling, but Weepin’ George also offered up this choice quote on the recent downturn in the GOP’s fortunes (Heads-up from Right Ohio):

We got too many Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn’s (R-Ok.). It’s the Southerners. They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr.’ People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?

Errrr, errrr? Way to completely denigrate an entire section of the country, Senator. It’s apparent that Voinovich has a problem with Sen. Jim DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn (Is Oklahoma really the South?). That’s amazing, because those two have been the most able communicators on behalf on conservatism and the GOP. I suppose Voinovich is more concerned with looking erudite and learned – never mind that Midwestern values jive a great deal with the conservative values that DeMint and Coburn are trumpeting.

With this kind of backward and self-defeating thinking, Ohio will be better off without Voinovich representing them in the Senate.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World

Sherrod Brown, Senator from Ohio, has been named along with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in a report on ACORN issued by Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (heads-up from Right Ohio). The report alleges that ACORN, a recipient of taxpayer money, donated money and personnel to promote a partisan political agenda in violation of many tax and election laws. An ACORN spokeswoman dismissed the report as a partisan screed, but Rep. Darrell Issa, the ranking GOP member on the House committee, said the following:

“We stand by the findings of the report … There are a lot of legitimate questions raised about the political activities and organizational structure of ACORN. We’d certainly like to have a venue and platform for ACORN to respond to our report. … It is outrageous that ACORN will be rewarded for its criminal acts by taxpayer money in the stimulus and is being asked to help with the U.S. census. This report shines a light on clear criminal conduct and it is abundantly clear that they cannot and should not be trusted with taxpayer dollars.”

We all know the story on ACORN – at the very least, the labyrinthine network of shell companies and groups seems a little suspicious. And there’s no doubt that ACORN is a partisan outfit, which is one of the reasons it’s troubling they’re going to “help out” with the 2010 Census. Indeed, just two months ago charges were filed against the Nevada branch of ACORN, and it’s my belief that there’s a lot more to this organization than meets the eye.

I’m a little shocked but not completely surprised by the linkage of Sen. Sherrod Brown to ACORN. Described glowingly in liberal circles as an “unabashed progressive” concerned with “social justice,” Brown’s views undoubtedly jive quite nicely with those of ACORN. I don’t know if Brown or his staff are guilty of any wrongdoing, and at this point it would be premature to speculate. I don’t believe they are, but any hint of a connection with such a shady organization casts a pall over any who are tied to it.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World

In a prime-time press conference yesterday that President Obama hoped would bolster support for his plans for health care reform, the President gave a weak performance that was short on details and gave little in the way of new information. The press conference was the lowest-rated thus far for Obama, and he used his time to go after a few groups of people.

In a bizarre section of his remarks, Obama went after doctors, using the example of tonsillectomies to supposedly illustrate that it’s doctors and their unnecessary tests that are driving up the cost of health care:

Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that’s out there. … The doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, ‘You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out. Now, that may be the right thing to do, but I’d rather have that doctor making those decisions just based on whether you really need your kid’s tonsils out or whether it might make more sense just to change; maybe they have allergies. Maybe they have something else that would make a difference.

So according to the analysis of the President (who, according to his diagnosis, must have medical training), it’s not malpractice lawsuits, health insurance premiums, or the intrinsic cost of medical tests that are responsible for the high cost of health care – it’s those greedy doctors who just want to order the most expensive test possible! Those greedy doctors! Obama will make ‘em pay!

The assertion is an absurd one. Doctors and nurses don’t make medical decisions based on fee structure, they make them on behalf of the patient. Health insurance providers might make decisions on how to reimburse based on fee structures, but to malign caregivers as predatory vultures out to make a buck is a shameful manipulation of the public and a false characterization of the hard work of so many in the health care field.

The President didn’t stop there. One of the hard-hitting journalists in the White House Press Corps, rather than pressing the President about dismal CBO scoring of the health care plan, the crisis in Honduras, nuclear weapons in Iran, or a whole host of other more relevant issues, served Obama a softball about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The quick version is that police, acting on a phone call from a neighbor who saw two men trying to break into Gates’ home, arrived and confronted Gates, eventually placing him under arrest. The President, after saying he didn’t know the facts in the case, promptly said the Cambridge police “acted stupidly.”

Mr. President, if you don’t know all the facts, perhaps you should preclude on passing judgment. Delving into the story deeper, the police version says that Gates was immediately belligerent when the police showed up, shouting that they were questioning him simply because he was “a black man in America.” Gates continued to shout at the officer who would eventually arrest him, Sgt. James Crowley, saying “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” asking several times for the officer’s badge number and shouting over the officer’s responses. When Crowley asked Gates to come outside, Gates replied, “Ya, I’ll speak to your mama outside” and proceeded to continue shouting at the officer as he followed him outside. Now in public, Crowley warned Gates a few times before handcuffing him for disorderly conduct.

Does race play a factor in interactions between police and blacks? In some cases, yes, but from what I’ve seen, this wasn’t one of those cases. Indeed, if the police report is accurate, it would seem that Gates was the one who acted in a racially motivated manner. But rather than speak with prudent caution about a case he admittedly knew little about, Obama had a knee-jerk reaction to side against the police. I’m not saying it’s the greatest controversy ever, but Obama should have kept his mouth shut. It’s no surprise that the Fraternal Order of Police condemned Obama’s comment, along with comedian Bill Cosby.

The long and the short of it all is that Obama failed to make a compelling case for government-run health care. Indeed, he really didn’t answer much of the criticism at all, and pooh-poohed charges that he was jamming legislation through with little consideration, giving the cheesy justification,”I’m in a rush because I’m getting clobbered by letters of people concerned about their health care.”

His effort also did little to sway those in Congress as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today indicated they would hold off further debate until the fall. Reid even gave the suprising reasoning of ”It’s better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through.” (Heads up from MM) Sheesh, better late than never, I guess, but that kind of thinking would have been helpful when the stimulus and cap-and-trade were jammed through.

Is the health care debate Obama’s Waterloo, as Sen. Jim DeMint suggested? If so, he’s failing badly as more Americans become deeply skeptical of his plan, not due to any Republican media campaign, but due to the murky nature of the plan itself and the expensive nature of the government-run public option that Obama has stated he wants to implement. His anemic performance should finally put to rest any claims of Obama as the greatest orator in American history. Is he great giving campaign-style speeches with soaring rhetoric? Sure, but so would Denzel Washington or Johnny Depp. That makes them good communicators, but not gifted politicians or skilled leaders.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

America got some much needed breathing room today as two major domestic items were taken off the fast track for some much needed reconsideration. First the Washington Post reported that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee won’t consider cap-and-trade until September at the earliest. Then Blue Dog Democrats in the House demanded a delay on crafting a health care reform bill so concerns over potential tax increases and government-sold insurance could be worked out. Speaker Nancy Pelosi still wants the bill out by mid-August, but Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) of the Blue Dogs says no vote should be taken before the fall, saying, “We need to slow down and do it right.”

Truer words could not have been spoken, Rep. Ross. Since the inauguration, Congress and the President have been on a nonstop dash to enact every piece of legislation they could before the present situation arose – declining poll numbers for Obama that have Democrats skittish of hitching their wagon with no cover of Republican support. For all the pre-election talk of bipartisanship, the GOP has been marginalized like no time before, and was basically ignored during the crafting of the stimulus and the cap-and-trade debacles. Those who might say that it’s the right of the majority party to do so probably weren’t thinking that way back in 2004 with the GOP in control of both Houses.

It’s good news for those concerned that these two items would be railroaded through Congress with no time to consider key provisions or even, heaven forbid, to read the bill. Final passage of both is still a very real possibility, though, so at this point it’s not a “Stick a fork in ‘em” moment. However as the electorate learns more of these two proposals with the delay, support may sour more than it already has, particularly if the health care reform bill will still include a government-run public option and utilizes dangerous tax increases to pay for the mammoth cost, and if the cap and trade bill … well … exists, period.

Democrats may come to the realization that they have the firepower with the electorate to attempt only battle, and at that point, cap and trade will be abandoned and it will be the universal health care battle that is undertaken. For now, though, America has a reprieve from knee-jerk legislation and now has a chance to more effectively debate the merits of health care reform and cap and trade.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, taking a position I think would actually be beneficial to the health care debate, has been slapped down by liberal activists and even the President himself. Emanuel suggested that the White House would consider a “trigger” clause on a public option health plan, which means that the plan might not be adopted at all if private insurers met certain guidelines. Within hours, the Progressive Caucus and MoveOn came out strongly against Rahm’s comments, and President Obama even took time out of his Moscow trip to publicly restate his support for the public option.

I agree with Rahm Emanuel on very little, but the “trigger” seems to me a valuable compromise option. It preserves the free market system for the time being, and delays and perhaps even forestalls government involvement. What’s unfortunate is that it’s clear from this episode that political pragmatism and centrist governance aren’t what’s driving the agenda, it’s liberal activism.

So committed are the activist groups to a publicly-funded and government-run health care plan that they will accept no substitute, no dilution of the prize, and certainly no compromise. With the President’s statement, it’s clear he’s on the side of the activists here as well, so a public option seems to be a non-negotiable part of any attempt at health care reform. Unfortunately, it’s also the most unsustainable portion and will prove to be the most damaging. And the rabid support of the public option demonstrates that it’s not the intention of the Obama administration to reform health insurance – it’s their intention to dominate and drive out private insurers with a government plan.

Taking the “trigger” path would have been at least a token step at attempting to appease the concerns of many that government is bound and determined to get into the health insurance business. With the rebuff of Rahm, it should be patently clear who’s driving the bus when it comes to setting the agenda for Congress and the White House. Here’s a hint: it’s not you or me.