START Ratified, 9/11 Responders Cared for (Sort of), Senate Looking to Reform Filibuster
As 26 Republicans voted against a nuclear treaty which is clearly in the best interests of the nation and the world, they seem to have inadvertently handed Obama a bigger victory than he would have gained otherwise. Without opposition, the treaty would probably have been ignored by the media as simply business as usual. Instead, its passage has made headlines and comes across as an Obama victory.
This only emphasizes what Obama could have gotten done had he and the Dems had any kind of backbone when it came to the tax cut legislation, or any number of other issues that they became spineless on. The START treaty is poor compensation for other, even more critical decisions that were flubbed. In this case, in classic Obama fashion, he gave Republicans credit for not overwhelmingly sabotaging American security, saying, “The strong bipartisan vote in the Senate sends a powerful signal to the world that Republicans and Democrats stand together on behalf of our security.” So, a dozen Republicans voting for something clearly necessary for American security–while double that number voting against said security so they could score political points–is “strong bipartisanship”? Only relative to Republican standards, i.e., any Republican who votes for anything that could cast even a halfway-decent light on Obama and/or the Democrats is a traitor.
In the meantime, the 9/11 First Responders bill finally passed after years of Democratic attempts to get it through and repeated Republican attempts to block it–but not before Republicans slashed the amount of care they will get by 40%, and cut the length of coverage by three years. Because nothing is too good for the heroes, except, of course, money, health care, and respect. Dozens of Republicans in the House still voted against the bill, but even the GOP had a hard time justifying a “no” vote on this one.
Something interesting, if two years too late: Senate Democrats seem unified in approving a change in the filibuster rules. Every Democratic senator signed the petition. It’s not a call for a “nuclear option,” but a change in the rules that would change filibustering from dead-simple, no-pain casual act into, well, a filibuster. Maybe. The details are not fully clear, but it’s pretty certain it would simply make it harder for anyone to anonymously stop a vote cold, or for one party to kill a bill simply by saying so. How the details are worked out should be interesting–and expect the Republicans to make huge noises about it.
I somehow doubt they’ll call it a “constitutional option” this time.
kinda dumb calling for changing the filibuster when the Repubs own the House now.
No legislation is going to see Obama’s desk that they don’t approve 100% on.
Guess it’s good for getting nominees through the Senate tho . . .
This could be Obama’s finest hour! Keep up the good fight!
I wanted to point out that, here in the States, the media credited the 9/11 First Responders Bill to John Stewart’s call to action. John devoted several shows to driving the point home that Republicans were the only thing blocking the bill which Americans overwhelmingly support. Moreover, after calling on FOX news (and other news sources) to publicize the Republicans’ deplorable actions, even FOX news took on the challenge of exposing those Republicans for what they are.
Without such media exposure, the vote might have turned out differently. This kind of coverage could make the next two years of Obama’s administration very interesting.
Sure, this would have done the Dems 1000% more good if it had happened two years ago, and they could have seen this coming. But it would only be dumb now if the Republicans fully controlled the Senate rather than the House. Without this, Republicans could still filibuster easily; with it, they’ll be harder-pressed to make one stick, something that could prove vital in cases where a bill squeaks through the House and would otherwise be easily deflected by Republicans in the Senate. But yes, there is definitely a certain level of closing the barn doors after the horses have fled. Maybe this will do more good down the line–one can only hope.
Nothing is going to “squeak through the House” for the next 2 years.
The Speaker and majority whips tightly control the House’s legislative agenda.
Image-wise, I guess it’s good for the Senate to actually pass stuff to have die in the House — so they can run on that — but the House theoretically runs the show really.
Seems to me only one thing matters: money.
For ordinary people that means jobs.
On the one and only issue that matters, Obama failed. Terribly.
Because he failed on that issue, Republicans took over the house. Now, nothing, NOTHING progressive or positive is going to happen for the next two years.
Obama got lots of victories on non-monetary issues.
On monetary issues, the filthy rich walked off with another trillion dollars.
Health Reform is a gift to the insurance industry – giving them millions of new customers, forcing us to pay inflated prices for deflated service.
Finance reform? Nada.
Stimulus? almost Nada.
Then again, Obama is probably not for helping ordinary Americans, at the expense of the filthy rich’s interest. So that explains the nada. Obama, I’m sure is supremely happy.
Essentially, Obama gave in on the material issue, and the other side gave him a lot of nice consolation prizes that, in the end, were mostly good for them too – like the treaty with the Russians, I’m sure the filthy rich don’t want a lot of nukes floating around on the black market either. As for DADT, the filthy rich could give a squat.
What we really needed was a two trillion dollar stimulus package (minimum) to shore of the nation’s infrastructure and put ordinary Americans back to work, and in the process the filthy rich would have gotten their pound of flesh anyway as growth in demand would have inflated all of their assets anyway.
Obama’s late legislative victories, like the health reform without a public option, is like soda without the bubbles. Really, it’s just a bunch of crap. Reminds me of the Christmas we had as a kid when my father was struggling with his own business… a bunch of plastic junk that didn’t work. When he got a high paying job we got a color TV and Air Conditioning.
I don’t get the Obama hate.
The admin went on on a centrist note, what with having Rick Warren give the invocation at the inauguration.
The health care reform was just about all the present system was capable of vending.
Touching people’s existing insurance was the mistake Hillary made in 1993, so we had to work within the existing problem. Thanks to Franken not getting seated until June and then Teddie dying in August there was never really 60 democratic votes in the Senate to “ram” anything through, and given the number of conservative Democratic Senators like Lieberman and Baucus, health reform was going to be watered down anyway.
Going along with the insurance mandate is tightening of MLRs to 80-85%. If you don’t know what MLRs are you have no business holding an opinion about this debate.
I agree that the Obama team made a mistake not fighting for a bigger stimulus, but at the end of the day any amount of stimulus just isn’t going to work.
Obama has fired many of his advisors, but my feeling is that they were more willing to err on the side of caution than boldness, they wanted to get attacked more from the left than the right.
This proved to be stupid as the right doubled down on their attacks, usually quite senselessly, and when the recession failed to lift in 2010 the Dems were screwed.
But the nature of the underlying causes of the recession meant that just throwing money at it isn’t really going to fix things. We’ve made the same flaming bed that the Japanese made in the late 80s, what we have is a bona-fide “balance sheet recession”.
I’m withholding my judgment on the Obama presidency still. The fight for the American people begins now. It can still go either way, but if Obama starts monkeying with Social Security and my ~$100,000 that I’ve been over-taxed since 1986 to build up the FICA surplus, ima gonna be really pissed.
> I don’t get the Obama hate.
Then you must not be part of the 10%+ of American’s who are unemployed. Or who have lost homes or savings recently. I know that everyone here just blames that on Bush, but Obama was elected to make things better. He hasn’t. And charts and statistics that “prove” that his policies are working just aren’t believed by people who can see the financial distress all around them.
> Going along with the insurance mandate is tightening of MLRs to 80-85%.
You make this sound like a good thing. But insurers may not be able to offer some plans that they otherwise could. And they may need to cut back on preventative care and administrative costs to pump up their relevant “Medical” payouts. Some companies (e.g. McDonalds) have warned that their health plans can’t meet these ratios. So insurance options would simply not be offered at all. Thanks Obama!
> I agree that the Obama team made a mistake not fighting for a bigger stimulus, but at the end of the day any amount of stimulus just isn’t going to work.
So they made a mistake by not wasting even *more* money which wouldn’t work? Does not compute…
The best thing about the Obama presidency is that it’s already half-over.
Then you must not be part of the 10%+ of American’s who are unemployed. Or who have lost homes or savings recently.
It’s not rational to blame Obama on failing to fix a financial collapse of such magnitude that occurred 2007-2009.
The damn thing was a smoking ruin in 1Q09.
I know that everyone here just blames that on Bush, but Obama was elected to make things better. He hasn’t.
Utter lie. Things have in fact gotten “better” since Bush handed things off in 1Q09. The S&P was well under 1000, now it’s well over 1000 and most 401Ks have recovered thereby.
If you were interested in an honest discussion of the various failures involved, I would get into it more, but discussing anything with you is like talking to a wall so I’ll just repost what I’ve posted elsewhere.
This is the Federal Reserve’s estimate of total household real estate residential holdings — primary and secondary, not investment or rental.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-5.pdf
B.100 Balance Sheet of Households and Nonprofit Organizations
Line 4 — Assets — Tangible Assets — Real Estate — Households — At market value
2005 $22.0T
2006 $22.7T
2007 $20.9T
2008 $17.4T
1Q09 $16.5T
2Q09 $16.7T
3Q09 $16.9T
4Q09 $17.0T
1Q10 $17.1T
2Q10 $17.2T
3Q10 $16.5T
What happened in 2003-2006 was an asset bubble very similar to what Japan experienced in the late 90s. “Blaming Bush” is in fact very proper since it was his team’s ideologies and lack of desire to police industry that put in place the feedback loops that created that $22.7T asset bubble.
And charts and statistics that “prove” that his policies are working just aren’t believed by people who can see the financial distress all around them.
Obama shouldn’t be concentrating on reinflating the bubble since more expensive housing is in fact not an advancement in our standard of living, quite the opposite.
There is nothing to “fix” with the 2003-2007 asset bubble other than continued unwinding. We really f—ed ourselves up financially 2003-2007, borrowing several trillions of dollars against our houses that we simply could not pay back.
But insurers may not be able to offer some plans that they otherwise could. And they may need to cut back on preventative care and administrative costs to pump up their relevant “Medical” payouts. Some companies (e.g. McDonalds) have warned that their health plans can’t meet these ratios.
This is either the typical mix of bullshit and lies we get from you here. McDonald’s was raping their employees and once the state exchanges are on-line (assuming the health care reform is followed-through on, a big assumption now), everyone will have access to non-predatory insurance and McDonald’s sorry offering will go by the boards.
So they made a mistake by not wasting even *more* money which wouldn’t work? Does not compute…
The stimulus spending is bandaids on a sucking chest wound. It is only palliative care, while the actual stuff we need to do to fix things is simply politically impossible now.
The best thing about the Obama presidency is that it’s already half-over.
cackle away, monkey boy.
Troy:
Hmm, I wonder what the MLR is on single-payer insurance? Oh, wait, Medicare is about 97%. In the 1990’s, private insurance had MLRs in the high-80’s to mid-90’s; today it’s as low as 70% or lower. Ergo:
Interesting that (a) programs like Medicare seems to offer good plans just fine under 90%+ MLRs, and (b) so did the private insurers a few decades ago.
When someone talks about insurers “unable to offer some plans” because MLRs are too high, what it basically says is that insurers will try to break the system if they can’t take as much profits as they want; this is not about allocation of medical funds, it’s purely about profits and how much the industry can squeeze out of people they cover.
That’s the main benefit of single-payer–you get rid of all profits, which makes up for any imagined government inefficiency many times over. 80~85% is better than now, but 97% is way better. Too bad it’s socialist and will destroy us all–I mean, what would happen to America if insurance companies couldn’t skim hundreds of billions of dollars off insurance premiums? Capitalism would collapse! Just like it has in every country in the world with single-payer insurance!
Sadly, I can easily imagine insurers getting around MLR with accounting tricks. They have the will in bucket-loads, all they have to do is find a way.
Single-payer is of course the way to go, but I don’t think it was possible this cycle.
Us being a nation of tards and all.
As for the accounting tricks, one of the central weaknesses of the ACA is the lack of cost controls. I don’t know how the combination of subsidies, MLR-controls, and uncapped service providers are going to mix, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to go all that well.
Where this country is going to get the hundreds of billions to subsidize the insurance costs on 80% or so of the country remains a mystery. The US is going to be facing some very stark choices this decade, and I don’t have much hope that we’ll be making any correct choices.
Living in Geoff’s dream world…
The corporations would have every politician in their pockets, insurance coverage costs would spiral out of reach of the average consumer, only the very wealthy could afford decent housing, most families would have to work 3 or 4 jobs to make ends meet, oil companies would profit more than ever (while putting renewable energy sources out of business), benefits for the poor would become almost non-existent, “trickle-down” economics would once again be tried and proven false, while record profits would get lost in offshore untaxed foreign bank accounts, unemployment and foreclosures would continue to rise, the gap between rich and poor widens every year…
Oh, yes, we all long for the Bush years when presidents did nothing to help save the nation from economic demise, when in fact the politicians were bought and paid for by the wealthy and voted as mere puppets for the corporate interests instead of the benefit of the nation, when wars were fought as a means of building up the presidents’ family’s personal wealth and that of his wealthy buddies…
Oh yeah…Gosh! That is the world we already live in!
Well, I’m glad to see you take the side of the corporations, Geoff, because that is exactly what they want you to do. You shamelessly point your finger at the one president who, unlike Dubya, actually has the balls to tell corporations “OK, enough profits! Now it’s time for you to pay your share!” But thanks not to Obama, but those like you who hate Obama, it is business as usual, the economy still has not recovered and nothing changes…
And yet, you still find a way to blame Obama.
All I can say is, “remarkable”.