President Obama is now known as “President Whatever” in D.C. The president who was elected on the hope that he can lead to “change we can believe in” seems a victim of forces beyond his control. And the leadership for “change” has passed to Republicans, Tea Parties and voters who want someone to “shellack.”
I want to defend the president based on the size of the problems he was handed by the Republicans. The audacity of … Continue reading »
Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) was as instrumental as anyone in Barack Obama’s election as president. Having lost a re-election bid to John Thune (R-SD), the former majority leader turned his talents to health policy reform and wrote a book on the subject. Drawing on several decades in the House and Senate he concluded that health system reform was impossible without changing the Medicare program. Changing Medicare, like changing health care generally, depended totally on every elected official’s … Continue reading »
House Republicans claim to have called the Democrats’ bluff on government spending with their threat to close down the government. They further claim they’ve set the stage for debates this year on the size and scope of government during the debt ceiling and the FY2012 budget mark-ups. Exactly what that means remains to be seen.
As a percentage of total spending, the FY2011 budget reductions are not comparable in size nor in policy implications to the 1981 … Continue reading »
House Republicans claim to have called the Democrats’ bluff on government spending with their threat to close down the government. They further claim they’ve set the stage for debates this year on the size and scope of government during the debt ceiling and the FY2012 budget mark-ups. Exactly what that means remains to be seen.
As a percentage of total spending, the FY2011 budget reductions are not comparable in size nor in policy implications to the 1981 … Continue reading »
The Senate and the House have had a Joint Economic Committee and a Joint Tax Committee for some years. It is always well staffed and led. Suppose they created a joint committee on the economic security of Americans designed to establish a national economic security policy? To that end it would continually review each private and public program of social or private insurance or employee benefits designed to provide employee compensation in the form of economic protection … Continue reading »
Jim Abeler, a chiropractor by profession, is the new Republican chair of the MN House Health and Human Services Committee. For 13 years he served in the minority, most of them when DFLer Paul Thissen was chair. Today Thissen is minority leader of the House and two weeks ago both came to speak with my MBA students at Opus College of Business. Republicans are challenged to cut $5 billion from projected increases in spending for the … Continue reading »
My first health reform bill in the Senate was the Consumer Choice Health Act of 1979. It didn’t pass, but, in principle, it advocated employers provide employees a choice of at least three health plans, including an HMO, in order to qualify for the income tax subsidy for both employer and employee. People need financial incentives to stay healthy and to make wise choices of plans and providers. Private plans can provide the risk-bearing coverage … Continue reading »
Let’s assume the candidate who exudes “Minnesota Nice” (as opposed to Wisconsin Nasty) becomes the Republican candidate for president. And assume Republicans are successful in making the A.C.A. (Obamacare to them) the issue in the campaign. It’s obvious that Democrats in Congress won’t and we don’t know how strongly President Obama feels about his signature accomplishment. Democrats and Independents won’t let Pawlenty get by with just repeal. So what can President Pawlenty sell to Republicans … Continue reading »
Hardly. As the Arab demand for democratic societies broke across North Africa into the Gulf, I found myself holding my breath. Just waiting for Republicans to pull on the rug on which the president of the U.S. unexpectedly found himself standing after the self-immolation of a Tunisian shopkeeper. Sure enough Tim Pawlenty went first and, then it was Libyans and Bob Gates who said no to a fly zone, John McCain. Even the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor … Continue reading »
The answer is zero. The Republicans began the 2012 presidential campaign from a new national base in the South and driven by corporate and wealthy donors, not party activists. President Obama waited until nearer the end of 2010 to begin. It is campaign time in America and everything the leadership does, when they do anything but speechify, in Washington, is calculated. There are serious Republican and Democratic members of an otherwise dysfunctional U.S. Senate meeting weekly … Continue reading »
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