NewsTrust - U.S. Congress - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

How Stimulating

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Nov. 21 (Comment) - Republican critics of the economic recovery efforts, when they're not taking credit for the money that's benefiting their state/district, take it as a given that the stimulus "failed." For the right, it's a foregone conclusion, hardly worth discussing anymore. The New York Times reminds us today that "dispassionate analysts" agree that a fair look at the stimulus package shows that it may be "messy" but it's also "working."

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Anticlimax in the Senate

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Real Clear Politics - By Jay Cost - Nov. 21 (Opinion) - The media is stirring up drama regarding tomorrow's vote - namely, they are speculating whether Landrieu and Lincoln will vote with Reid to start debate. Of course they will. Three big reasons:

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Easy Choices

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

OurFuture.org - By Terrance Heath - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - I'll say it again. Whether it's Sarah Palin's self-serving contradictions, or Democrats' and Republicans' cynical political compromises, in the realm of politics, the choices we make for others are the truly easy choices.

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The New Arms Race

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - America will not win the arms race of the 21st century with rockets, but with robust investment in and support of U.S.-based green technology. While Congress dawdles, China is clobbering us.

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The psychology of healthcare reform

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

CNET News - By Adam Richardson - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - The House has passed the first comprehensive reform package of the health insurance industry in decades, which is now up for debate in the Senate. This is a highly complex issue, but there are some quite basic reasons why it's so difficult to accomplish significant reform, and in part these have to do with psychological responses to change and uncertainty.

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An Open Letter to Harry Reid on Controlling Health Care Costs

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Robert Reich - Nov. 13 (Comment) - But Harry, you really need to take on future health-care costs. The House bill fails to do this. The public option in the House bill is open only to people without employer-provided health insurance.

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Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity Falsifying Footage To Make GOP Protest Appear Bigger

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Nov. 11 (Comedy News) - Sean Hannity and his team did more than cover the event. They not only inflated the number in attendance with their words, but actually used footage from a heavily-attended protest this summer to make this health care rally appear more popular. Hannity even pointed out that this was a huge crowd for a Thursday, when the protest footage they used was from a Saturday.

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Five Senators To Watch On Health Care

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Real Clear Politics - By Kyle Trygstad, Mike Memoli - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - With 60 Democrats in the Senate, the party has enough votes to pass any bill it pleases -- but that total includes two independents that caucus with the party and leaves no room for error. The tight margin is on display once again as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) searches for enough support to both bring health care reform up for a vote and actually pass it.

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The Drama Was In The History

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By Jonathan Cohn - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - Do not be fooled by the Beltway conventional wisdom, which has repeatedly treated House legislation as inferior to its counterpart in the Senate. If anything, the opposite is true. Should the House bill or something like it become law, the vast majority of Americans would have health insurance--protecting them from financial calamity and giving them access to medical care when they need it.

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A very bad deal to pass a very good bill

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - The final compromises before a bill comes to the floor are never very pretty. This one, however, is worse than I anticipated. Opposition from anti-abortion Democrats, driven in large part by aggressive activism from the Catholic Church, forced

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Want to Save Our Economy from Almighty Greed? Here Are 10 Crucial Fights and Key Fighters to Watch

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Zach Carter - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - There are no less than four federal regulators responsible for overseeing consumer protection in finance, and all of them are terrible.

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Too Big to Fail - Too Big to Exist -

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

senate.gov - By Senator Bernie Sanders - Nov. 06 (Statement) - Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would break up financial institutions that are too big to fail. "If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," Sanders said. "We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy. We should end the concentration of ownership that has resulted in just four huge financial institutions holding half the mortgages in America, controlling two-thirds of the credit cards, and amassing 40 percent of all deposits."

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The Generals' Revolt

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:07:22 -0800

Rolling Stone - Nov. 04 -

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Republican calls for patient-centered wellness

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Yahoo! News - By Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - Immediate, obvious measures include reforming medical liability laws; ending exclusions for pre-existing conditions; expanding health savings accounts; providing tax credits for purchasing private health insurance; allowing association health plans; permitting health insurance purchases across state lines; encouraging individuals to insure against changes in health status; incentivizing preventative health care; and applying information technology to enhance transparency and increase efficiencies. All this can be achieved without trillions in new spending, taxes and government-dictated, radical changes to Americans’ current health care.

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Jon Stewart Takes On Media, Lieberman Over Public Option

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Oct. 29 (Comedy News) - After much debate and speculation, after every cable news network declared it dead one point or another, Senator Harry Reid announced that a public option would be included in the Senate health care reform bill, allowing millions of Americans to purchase government-run insurance.

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Ezra Klein on the House health care reform bill

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Oct. 29 (Interview) - So what exactly did the House put out this morning? Is it the Robust opt-out Public Option that Sen. Reid talked about? Ezra Klein: No. So to do a bit on defining terms here: Robust refers to a public option that can use Medicare's payment rates. That would let the public option save 20-30 percent against private insurance. Neither the House nor the Senate includes such an option. The House bill has a national public option that will set rates in the same way private insurers do (negotiating with providers). The Senate bill has a national public option that works the same way as the House's, save that it has an opt-out feature starting in 2014.

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House Health Bill

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Think Progress - By Matthew Yglesias - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - One of the key differences between the early draft of the House health bill and the Senate Finance draft was the different long-term implications of the financing mechanism. The House bill is financed by taxes on rich people. Since health spending is increasing faster than the overall economy, this meant that even though the House bill was deficit neutral in the 10-year CBO window, by the end of that period expenditures are rising faster than revenues. The Senate Finance bill, by contrast, raises revenue by phasing out the tax exclusion of employer-provided health insurance. Initially it does this by taxing only a small number of “Cadillac” plans, but over time the tax’s bite grows and grows. That means you have fiscal sustainability over the long run.

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Health Care Budgeting 101: Congress’ Fiscal Scolds Earn an “F-”

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Firedoglake - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - the market carve-out for Medicaid saves money, which means that if Blue Dogs really wanted to save money, they would enlarge the Medicaid carve out — say, up to 250 or 350 percent of FPL. In other words, if the fiscal-deficit scolds were genuinely serious about reducing the cost of the reform bill, they would expand eligibility to public health care to a lot more people and forget about shielding private insurers from competition.

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Making Sure The States Don't Pay (Too Much) For Reform

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Suzy Khimm - Oct. 25 (Comment) - The House is still deliberating between two versions of the public option, as Cohn laid out earlier: a stronger version that would tie public option pay rates to Medicare “plus 5” percentage points, and a weaker version that would have negotiated rates, but also separately raise Medicaid eligibility from 133% to 150% percent above the poverty line to save money. (It’d be cheaper to cover Medicaid patients than in the public plan.)

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In recent polls, GOP limited to Southern comfort

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OregonLive.com - By David Sarasohn - Oct. 24 (Opinion) - For months, Barack Obama’s national approval rating has been hovering in the low to mid-50s. The level is respectable — his predecessor hadn’t been there for his last three years — but not exactly intimidating, not exactly a number to make congressmen think they’d better get in line

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Clean-energy transition promises brighter economic prospects

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Dean Allen, Maud Daudon - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - WITH the introduction of the Clean Energy Jobs bill in September, the U.S. Senate began work on repowering America's economy with a comprehensive climate and energy policy. As Washington business leaders involved in building our local clean-energy economy, we're delighted to see the other Washington moving ahead to restore American leadership in the most dynamic sector of the new economy.

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"Jezebel" is Olympia Snowe

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Savage Nation - By Michael Savage - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - Michael Savage dubs Sen. Snowe "Jezebel" for Finance Committee health care vote. From the October 13 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation. Audio excerpt (1:30)

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Exactly Which 1/6 of the Economy is Affected by Universal Healtcare? // Current

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

current.com - By Jon Raymond - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - So the argument that we can't have a universal health care system due to it being 1/6 of the economy is questionable. With universal health care we can eliminate medical debt, which is a big part of the problem, since it is the cause of most foreclosures.

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Harry Reid and the Blenders

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David M. Herszenhorn - Oct. 14 (Opinion) - The Senate Finance Committee had barely voted on the big health care legislation when the infinitesimally short attention span of Capitol Hill shifted to the next step. And it sounds like the debut of a 1950s doo-wop band: Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Harry Reid and the Bill Blenders.

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The truth about the Baucus bill

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

washingtonexaminer.com - Oct. 11 (Editorial) - Whatever the content of the Baucus bill once it is voted out of the finance committee, it will disappear into a legislative black hole as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and their key aides do what they did on the economic stimulus package back in February -- huddle together behind closed doors to write the final bill, which will then be presented as a fait accompli in the form of a conference report. Everything else is mere sound and fury signifying nothing until Harry and Nancy do their thing in the dark.

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