Republicans are hoping to raise $80,000 (£53,000) from donors by offering them the chance to meet David Cameron, according to a leaked party document... Attractions beside Mr Cameron also include an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout in Las Vegas and a "professional bull riding event", planned to net $60,000 and $50,000 respectively.
I expect the Cameron people to commence distancing themselves from this with blinding speed. However, worth saying that I attended the Republicans Abroad drinks do at the last Conservative Conference (as an interested outsider, obviously) and heard a surprising amount of "here here's" to the "let's shrink government down to bathtub drowning size" rumbling there.
I'm not taking a (public) position on the British election, so enjoying this purely as spectacle...
Today at the Democrats Abroad International meeting, one lovely young woman from France said that she was interested him hearing what being a Democrat means to us - why do we do it?
The next speaker after her complimented the presenation that had just been given, saying that having attended the earlier meeting to discuss it, which had apparently been lively, he felt that the final presentation was (probably not an exact quote): "A beautiful synthesis of complaint and argument into something really great."
I responded that that's what being a Democrat means to me.
Hello sports fans! So maybe you’ve been hearing that health care reform has gone the way of the dodo. That it’s pushing up daisies. It’s deceased, snuffed it. Has shuffled off this mortal coil. That THIS is an EX-bill!
Nonsense.
Folks like to get overexcited. Folks are excitable. But, a month on from the Dems unfortunate loss in Massachusetts, the President is uncreasingly ungently urging Congress to go just what I told you they should do.
(Yeah, Rahm’s on the phone to me all the time. “What do you think, Karin? What’s your legislative strategy, Karin? Oh help me, great guru.” It’s so annoying.)
The House is preparing to pass the Senate bill, unamended. After its passage, the Senate will pass a package of amendments to the bill that will reconcile it with the House legislation on key points.
After which, the President signs both bills into law, making for the most comprehensive reform of our health care system since, well... ever. Actually.
Every single health care bill that has ever been passed in the USA until now has failed to address the whole of the population or the whole of the industry. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been some good work done – from the creation of Medicare aimed at Seniors, to Medicaid for the poor, and SCHIP for children.
But frankly, as a childless working age adult I don’t see why I should be excluded from any improvement in the problems that affect me. (Awake, silent majority!)
Right now, if I lived in the USA I would currently be without health insurance. OR, I would be paying over $1,000 per month for basic cover as a self employed person. My mom, who is currently uninsured, was quoted $1,000 per person per month for catastrophic care only. Yeesh. Frankly, considering that I would like to keep some of my income and maybe even, heavens, buy myself frivolous luxuries – a washer dryer! A car! Imagine the luxury! – I’d rather not do this.
But fortunately, I don’t have this problem. For instead, I pay £38 per quarter as my self employed contribution towards the National Health Service, for which I get – well, whatever I need. I don’t get what I WANT, friendly and attractive staff, music pumped through the waiting rooms, unlimited on demand tests and optional services. But I guess if the NHS were willing to run up costs more than twice what they currently spend (i.e., something approximating what the US pays) they might be able to provide some of that stuff too. Meh.
I digress. Obama’s plan is utterly unlike the NHS. It’s a moderate, minimalist BEGINNING that probably won’t be enough to solve the whole problem.
What it WILL do is:
• Insure 30 million more Americans than are currently insured.
• Ban the insurance companies from denying care to the sick or at risk.
• Provide a choice of insurance plans to every American who needs it
• End“job lock” allowing people to make career decisions based on their ambitions rather than their fears.
I'm off within the hour for a weekend trip to Florence Italy. The Democratic Party Committee Abroad's (DPCA for the acronymically inclined. Democrats Abroad in plain English) international meeting is there.
So I've got two days closed into conference rooms with no time set aside to explore one of the most beautiful cities in the world. On the one hand, poo. On the other, hurray! Should be great to see folks again. I'm always amazed by the cross section of folks represented at these Meetings; expats from Israel and Italy, Holland and Hong Kong, India and Indonesia, Afghanistan (yes, really!) and Australia.
Now THAT'S a state party with diversity. Hah.
Will report back after the fact.
In the meantime, if you too are a Democrat abroad (whether or not you are a Democrat Abroad) make sure you do request your absentee ballot for the midterms. We always advise everyone to submit a ballot request, even if they expect to get a ballot from their state. Better safe than sorry!
Oh crumbs. I'm so dissappointed to learn that Senate Dems do not literally have the power to force would-be-filibusterers to stay on the Senate floor talking until they pass out. I was so perversely fond of the idea that we might finally solve America's health care crisis and overcome right wing obstructionism by forcing our most self-regarding lawmakers into peeing their pants on C-Span.
Hello loyal blog fans. I have not forgotten about you - just returning this week from an amazing 2 week vacation in the US. And Canada (Vancouver Olympics! Yay for maple leaves!).
Your regularly scheduled Obama administration and health care obsessing will resume shortly.
In the meantime, here's some tidbits for your reading pleasure:
Republicans in the House and Senate voted unanimously against supporting the stimulus package that economists now agree has had a major positive impact on jobs and the economy. Then they have travelled around the country, with tedious frequency, touting the benefits of the stimulus funds in their own districts. Why?
Isn't it obvious? If they really thought those funds would be bad for their constituents, they wouldn't insist on taking credit for them.
Democrats have a majority, and it's time we started using it, because Republicans have no interest in doing the right thing.
1) The FBI has successfully detained and interrogated a would-be terrorist who is supplying useful information and will be tried and jailed for his crime. This used to be considered a GOOD thing.
2) Apparently, Susan Collins believes that something should have been done differently in this case, although it is unclear exactly what.
The Obama administration has also spearheaded a little-noticed but rather dramatic reform of K-12 education through its Race to the Top programme. The way this worked was to create a substantial pool of funds to be given away as part of a competitive grant process to states that cut through interest-group demands and implemented evidence-based reforms. The result of this has been a tide of reform sweeping state legislatures all across the land, with restrictions on test-based assessment of teacher quality and arbitrary caps on charter schools falling by the wayside. What’s more, by pairing these reforms with the timely provision of stopgap funds that have allowed states to weather the recession without mass teacher layoffs, the administration has been able to secure union acquiescence in this reform agenda.
He’s also had a number of small-bore spending initiatives:
The administration has also put $19 billion into upgrading America’s health IT infrastructure, $70 billion into clean-energy programmes, $1 billion into better understanding which health treatments actually work and $7 billion to expand access to broadband internet.
And that was all in one law—the stimulus bill! Then there’s this other stuff:
[T]he administration has secured legal authority for the FDA to regulate tobacco, provided health insurance to millions of children, given victims of on-the-job-gender discrimination effective legal rights, confirmed a Supreme Court justice and vastly improved America’s image in the world. Mr Obama has also systematically reformed and reinvigorated America’s regulatory apparatus.
If this agenda had simply been spaced out as one small-to-medium sized achievement per month, and Obama had never attempted systematic reform of the health care system, then his administration would look like a stunning series of policy successes. And with his job approval rating at 51 percent you’d say he was doing fine politically as well. The fact that he accomplished most of the small-to-medium sized stuff in a single giant leap doesn’t mean it didn’t happen nor does the fact that his ambitious health reform drive may not work invalidate everything else that’s happened. In America, it’s hard to pass laws. If you’re passing some, and staying more popular than the other political party, then you’re doing pretty well. The greatest presidents, of course, exceed that standard. But “he’s not getting as much done as Lincoln” is a long way from “he’s a failure and needs to ditch the core of his team.”
Word. Eveyone has insanely high expectations for this man, and this historical moment. I do too. But we all need to take a step back and realise how far we've come from where we were a year ago.
Every time I think about health care in America, I am more and furious at how diastrously wrong we have allowed it to go.
There's just no excuse for this.
Most importantly, I want everyone to understand that Americans ARE NOT HEALTHIER. If you pay twice what someone else pays for a product, you'd expect it to be better, right?
It's just crazy. And every single Republican in the US Senate has decided that this is a problem they do not want to solve. As much as the Ben Nelson's and Joe Liebermans of the world make me nuts, in the end they demonstrated some minimal sense of comapssion for the American people with their yes votes.
Republicans should hang their heads every day in shame for what they are allowing to happen. Yes, am angry.
Ben Nelson should have just voted for it, no bribes required. (Booo hisss, bad Ben. Bad)
Since he made it clear he WOULDN'T vote for it without a bribe, the question Americans should be asking is: "How much I willing to personally suffer in order to punish Ben Nelson?" Or in other words, "Is it OK if I'm screwed as long as I know Nebraskans are no better off?"
I think it would be neat if we could reduce the deficit just by wanting to really badly. That would be so much more fun than having to raise taxes or cut spending.
I'd also like to lose weight by eating more. I'm sure it's Obama's fault that I can't do this.
So I had a chat today with my Dad. Dad's 1) a smart guy 2) reasonably informed and 3) favours health care reform.
So I was surprised to hear him say that he was glad that the current health care reform proposals haven't gone through. His perception was that there had been too much back room dealing, to many negotiations, to many compromises. Now bear in mind, Dad's a natural New England Republican in many ways - so it wasn't that he wanted something more radical, he's uncomfortable with government expenditure generally but recognises that health care is a problem that needs to be fixed. In many ways he's the EXACT constituency this bill was designed to appeal to.
So what's the problem? Essentially, he's been turned off by the process. No one has sold this bill to him, and a lot of folks have been talking it down. He's been hearing about the compromises with Ben Nelson, and months of wrangling and has come to the conclusion the whole thing hasn't been well considered or thought through.
So here's my message to my Dad and the millions and millions of Americans just like him: I hear you. The process sucked. It did.
But you are presented now with a simple choice. We pass this bill, which will cover more than 30 million Americans more are currently covered, will REDUCE the deficit, strongly regulate the insurance companies, and provide security to every man woman and child that they will always be able to get health insurance.
Or we do not pass it, and bankrupt Medicare within a generation, continue to pay more than twice as much for health care than any other nation on earth (without being any healthier), and still leave abotu 46 Million Americans without health insurance.
This is the bill we can pass, and it will make life in America better. Or, we can let it die and be worse off.
"impose a requirement that key parts of the budget must be paid for with spending cuts or tax increases to prevent the federal deficit from increasing."
This is called "Pay As You Go", and it's a discipline that was brought in at the urging and under the administration of President Bill Clinton.
Under the Bush administration, this approach was scrapped, enabling the turnaround from a massive budget surplus to the $1.3 Trillion deficit that President Obama inherited.
Now, with Obama's encouragement, the Senate has passed a bill imposing restrictions on itself - if they want to spend more, they have to find the money from elsewhere or raise taxes. If they want to cut taxes, they also need to cut spending or find efficiencies that match. It's neither a progressive nor a Conservative approach - it's a discipline and a responsibility.
