• The Housing Crisis and Wall Street Shame
• How Health Care Reform Could Fall Apart
• Work-Related Injuries Underreported
• Democrats Seek to Stem Job Losses
• Survey Finds Deep Shift in the Makeup of Unions
• For Left, House Bill May Be As Good As It Gets
• GOP Counters with Health Plan of Its Own
• Teamsters Praise Bipartisan Bill on Pension Reform to Protect Workers

BY ROBERT REICH, Political Commentator
(November 29, 2009) One out of four homeowners is now under water, owing more on their homes than the homes are worth. Why? The biggest single factor behind the housing crisis is rising unemployment. According to the latest ABC-Washington Post poll, one out of every three Americans has either lost their job or lives in a household with someone who has lost a job.

Robert Reich is currently a Professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a regular editorial commentator in many newspapers, and on TV political newscasts and opinion shows. He served from 1993 to 1997 as the 22nd U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.

Today it takes two and sometimes three incomes to buy the groceries and pay the mortgage or the rent. So if one of those incomes is gone, a homeowner can't make the payment.

The scourge of unemployment is splitting America into three groups:

• The third just mentioned, whose households are in danger of losing their homes and whose kids are surviving on food stamps (that's up to one in four children in America today);
• The vast majority of Americans who are managing but worried about keeping their jobs and homes; and
• A small number who are taking home even more winnings than they did in the boom year 2007.

Prominent among category (3) are Wall Street bankers, many of whom are now concluding their most profitable year ever. Goldman Sachs is so flush it's preparing to give out bonuses in a few weeks totaling $17 billion. That will mean eight-figure compensation packages for lots of Goldman executives and traders. JPMorgan Chase is rumored to have a bonus pool of around $5 billion. The three other major Wall Street banks are ratcheting up their compensation packages so their "talent" won't be poached by Goldman or JPMorgan.

WHY WALL STREET IS BOOMING
Wall Street is booming again in large part because the rest of America -- categories (1) and (2), above -- bailed it out to the tune of $700 billion last year. The Street has repaid some of that but, according to the bailout program's inspector general, much of it is gone forever. For example, the taxpayer money that bailed out giant insurer AIG went directly through AIG to its "counterparties" like Goldman Sachs -- to whom Tim Geithner, according to the inspector general, gave away the store. As Goldman Sachs prepares to dole out some $17 billion to its executives and traders, it's worth noting that Goldman received $13 billion a year ago from the rest of us via AIG and Geithner, no strings attached.

• Which brings us back to homeowners who are falling further behind. The $75 billion federal program designed to bribe banks to modify mortgages has been a bust. No one knows the exact number of mortgages that have been modified (that will be reported next month) but housing experts I've talked with say it's a tiny fraction of the number of homeowners in trouble. Seems that the big banks can't be bothered. "Some of the firms ought to be embarrassed," Michael Barr, the assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions told the New York Times.

Barr says the government will try to use shame as a corrective, publicly naming institutions that have moved too slowly. But the banks have done almost nothing to date. "We've made dramatic improvements, and we continue to try to get better," says a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, but as a practical matter JPMorgan has done squat.

Shame? If we've learned anything over the last year, it's that Wall Street has none. Ten months ago Wall Street lobbyists beat back a proposal to give bankruptcy judges the right to amend mortgages in order to pressure lenders to reduce principle owed, just like Wall Street lobbyists are now beating back tough regulations to prevent the Street from causing another meltdown.

NO SHAME
Shame? For Wall Street, it all comes down to PR, at minimal cost. Goldman Sachs, attempting to preempt a firestorm of public outrage when it dispenses its $17 billion of bonuses, is setting up a crudely conceived $500 million PR program to help Main Street.

• Shame won't work. Only political muscle and courage will. Congress and the Obama administration should give homeowners the right to go to a bankruptcy judge and have their mortgages modified.
• And while they're at it, resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate investment from commercial banking, so Wall Street can't continue to use other people's money to gamble.
• Finally, before Goldman hands out $17 billion in bonuses, claw back the $13 billion Goldman took from AIG and the rest of us and add it to the pool of money going for mortgage relief.

(This editorial was cross-posted on the Huffington Post after appearing first on Reich’s personal Blog Site, and was made available for general public reading via the Interne through his Site.)

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HOW HEALTH CARE REFORM COULD FALL APART

The Politico - Online
BY TPO Reporter CHRIS FRATES
(November 23, 2009) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) eked out 60 votes on a procedural motion to start the health care debate Saturday night — but there's no guarantee he can pass a bill on the merits. And as he struggles, the reasons are clear: deep divides among Democrats on a public insurance plan, abortion, tax hikes and cost-cutting. Liberals want the plan to be generous enough. Moderates fear a budget-buster. And everyone is trying to avoid angering seniors.

Democratic Sen. from Nevada, the Majority Leader, Harry Reid, got his 60 votes on a procedural motion to start the health care debate but there's no guarantee he can pass a bill after the debating. Getting the Democratic senators to cooperate with each other is like trying to herd cats.

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has made it clear to the Obama administration and to Democratic Senate leadership that his vote for the final bill “is by no means guaranteed.”

Democratic Sen. from Nebraska Ben Nelson, who opposes abortion rights, says weak language against it in the current bill draft could be enough to make him oppose final passage.

Even in the blush of Saturday's victory, Reid is far from having the votes to move his $848 billion package to final passage. At least four centrists have pledged to oppose it in its current form, largely over the public option. Reid is in a bind. Stay to the left, and moderates vote no. Move a tad to the right, and Reid faces insurrection from the left, as liberals in his own caucus and in the House vow not to compromise any further on their signature issue.

As one of the Senate most liberal members, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), told POLITICO's The Arena: “I have made it clear to the administration and Democratic leadership that my vote for the final bill is by no means guaranteed.”

Health care reform proponents considered Saturday's vote a major milestone, one that significantly boosted the odds of passing a bill. But, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed Saturday, “the battle has just begun.”

Here are the battle lines where President Barack Obama's vision of reform could falter.

NO GOOD OPTION FOR PUBLIC OPTION
A Democratic dream – expanding the government's role in guaranteeing health care to the uninsured — might well be reform's undoing.

Public option proponents, including Sanders and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), say they have already given up enough. They agreed to forgo a single-payer system. They decided not to push a government plan tied to Medicare rates. And they accepted Reid's proposal to include the opt-out provision. That's it, they say.

The more conservative members of the caucus won't budge either. They agreed Saturday to allow the debate to begin, but effectively killed the opt-out idea — Reid's attempt at compromise.

Right now, there is no public option plan that could garner 60 votes. A public plan “trigger” if private insurers fall short could come close — saying, losing Sanders but picking up Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) — but there's no guarantee it would fly in the House.

Enter “The Hammer,” an idea from Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.). States that lack affordable choices would be required to offer a national insurance program that wouldn't be government-financed or government-run.

Carper had already attempted a compromise with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — and came up empty-handed. Brown and others sound prepared to walk away if Democrats can't work this out.

“Four members of the Senate aren't going to tell the other 56 what to do on these issues,” Brown said of the public option.

NO ROOM FOR ABORTION COMPROMISE
It's one of the most emotionally charged issues in the debate, with anti-abortion activists insisting that health reform cannot expand federal funding for abortions.

But when it comes down to whether Democrats can accomplish health reform this year, it becomes a vote-counting problem — how many anti-abortion Democrats would walk away from a bill they don't like?

Reid can't afford a single defection — and already, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who opposes abortion rights, says weak language could be enough to oppose final passage.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could lose at least 10 Democrats if the Senate tried to water down the tough anti-abortion language in her bill.

At the same time, about 40 Democrats in the House say they can't vote for a bill that goes as far as the House bill does now, with the so-called Stupak amendment that prevents a public insurance plan from offering elective abortions.

The big player here isn't Reid or Pelosi but the Catholic Church, which helped get the Stupak amendment into the House bill. Any abortion language may have to win the backing of the church for members to sign on — and the church is sticking by a tough anti-abortion stance that angers many liberals.

Is there a middle ground? That's not at all clear.
 
MILLIONAIRES VS. CADILLACS
Republicans pounded one big talking point all day Saturday: health reform raises taxes. And it's true, the plans would. What's worse for Democrats is that the House and Senate have starkly different visions of how to pay for reform. The House hates the Senate tax, and the Senate hates the House tax.

Not surprisingly, politics are at play. The House went with a populist soak-the-rich tax on “millionaires” to pay for almost half the near-trillion dollar price-tag in its bill. And bowing to pressure from powerful union backers, Democrats steered clear of any tax on the so-called “Cadillac” plans — high-cost policies that many unions have negotiated for their workers over the years.

Reid relies heavily on taxing the Cadillac plans — but won't touch a millionaires tax, which was never debated in the Senate.

IS THERE ANY GIVE?
Reid signaled he might be inclined to get a little closer to the House by saying he'd bump up the Medicare tax on high-earners. The “botax” on cosmetic surgery also seems aimed at the wealthy but only raises $5 billion. So, this will be one of the hottest debates when the House and Senate try to merge their bills.

SCARING SENIORS: MEDICARE CUTS, HIGHER PREMIUMS?
Republicans also tried to stir this sleeping giant Saturday, pounding Democrats for big cuts in Medicare under the Senate plan — at least $300 billion worth. “So, here we are telling the American people that we're going to fix health care in America and the way we're going to pay for the massive government takeover of health care is through cuts in Medicare?” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

The reductions will almost certainly cut some benefits for seniors, a fact that has become a central opposition argument echoed from Capitol Hill to K Street. The cuts are likely to bump more than half the seniors currently enrolled in the popular Medicare Advantage program.

Democrats are keenly aware of the danger in a senior revolt and note that AARP, the nation's largest seniors's lobby, would not have endorsed reforms if they hurt seniors.

ANOTHER DANGER TO DEMOCRATS LURKING
But there's another danger to Democrats lurking in the bill – dissent toward the White House deal with the drug-makers. Many Democrats feel PhRMA got off easy by only having to kick in $80 billion in cuts toward health reform. So some liberal Democrats want to change the deal's terms and force the industry to sell drugs to the federal government at a discount.

PhRMA insists that would bump up the seniors's Medicare prescription drug premiums by 20 percent. If the Senate includes the rebates, industry officials privately say that they'll consider running ads slamming senators for voting to increase seniors's drug costs.

“PhRMA would have to let people know the truth,” said a senior pharmaceutical lobbyist. “I don't know why they would want to increase premiums.”

HEALTH FIX FUELS DEFICIT WORRIES
When Obama campaigned on enacting reform, he pledged to cut premiums, reduce the spiraling growth in medical costs and not add a dollar to the federal deficit. It's not completely clear that he'll be able to accomplish any of those goals, and the public is catching on.

That's bad news indeed for Obama's efforts, especially at a time when voters already are giving him low marks for the sputtering economy and the 10 percent unemployment rate.

A Quinnipiac poll found that only 19 percent of voters believed Obama's pledge that health reform wouldn't boost the deficit in the next 10 years.

Doug Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that neither the House bill nor the Senate bill would add to the federal deficit. But federal spending for health care would go up under both bills in the next decade — as much as $598 billion under the House bill over 10 years, roughly $85 billion in the Senate Finance Committee bill, the CBO said.

No one has been able to guarantee premiums won't rise. And there are serious questions about whether the bills go far enough to rein in costs. That may explain why Democrats are now talking more about how the bills will expand coverage than about whether they will lower premiums for most families. And that's a big problem for the president and his congressional allies, given how uneasy independent voters and moderate Democrats feel about health care at this point.

In the absence of CBO data on premiums, expect Republicans to keep exploiting this weakness.

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WORK-RELATED INJURIES UNDERREPORTED

New York Times
(November 17, 2009) Employers and workers routinely underreport work-related injuries and illnesses, calling into question the accuracy of nationwide data that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration compiles each year, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

   
Left, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington State and Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. Right, U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

• The report, by the G.A.O., the auditing arm of Congress, said many employers did not report workplace injuries and illnesses for fear of increasing their workers' compensation costs or hurting their chances of winning contracts.
• The report also said workers did not report job-related injuries because they feared being fired or disciplined and worried that their co-workers might lose rewards, like bonuses or steak dinners, as part of safety-based incentive programs.

“The widespread underreporting so clearly documented in this report is undermining the health and safety of American workers,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “If we don't know the full extent of the workplace hazards workers face, we cannot fully address these risks.” Mr. Harkin was one of the Congressional leaders who requested the report.

• In response to the report, which examined OSHA's audits from 2005 to 2007, the safety administration said it would adopt the accountability office's recommendations, which include requiring inspectors to interview employees during all audits to check the accuracy of employer-provided injury data.
• The accountability office noted that the rate of workplace injuries — there were 4 million in 2007, including 5,600 fatalities — has declined fairly steadily since 1992, which OSHA attributed to improvements in workplace safety and the decline in the number of manufacturing jobs.
• But the G.A.O. report cited several academic studies that found that OSHA data failed to include up to two-thirds of all workplace injuries and illnesses. The report noted that because of OSHA's “sole reliance on employer-reported injury and illness data” in one of its major surveys, “some academic studies have reported that the survey may undercount the total number of workplace injuries and illnesses.”
• The accountability office also found that more than a third of the occupational health practitioners it surveyed said that employers or workers had pressured them to provide insufficient medical treatment to hide or play down work-related injuries or illnesses.
• The safety and health administration requires employers with more than 10 workers to record every work-related injury or illness that results in lost work time or medical treatment other than first aid. Some occupational health practitioners say that to avoid recording an injury, some employers will try to limit treatment for a serious injury to just first aid.
• In other cases, the practitioners said, employers might seek alternative diagnoses if the initial diagnosis would result in a recordable injury or illness.
• One manager took an injured worker to several medical providers until the manager found one who would certify that treatment required only first aid, thus making it an injury that did not have to be recorded, one practitioner told researchers, according to the report. Many employers fear that reporting numerous injuries will prompt a full-scale OSHA inspection.
• The accountability office said that 53 percent of health practitioners had reported experiencing pressure from company officials to play down injuries or illnesses, and that 47 percent had reported experiencing this pressure from workers.

“This report confirms that when it comes to the documenting of workplace injuries, we can't just take employers at their word,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. “The system, to this point, has been all too easy to game.”

• According to the G.A.O. report, 67 percent of the 1,187 occupational health practitioners surveyed had reported observing worker fear of disciplinary action for reporting an injury or illness, and 46 percent said this fear had some impact on the accuracy of employers' injury and illness records.
• One reason workers fail to report injuries, the report said, was that their employers required drug testing after incidents resulting in reported injuries or illnesses, regardless of any evidence of drug use.
• The report also questioned employers' safety incentive programs, which reward workers when their worksites have few recordable injuries or illnesses.

While these programs can promote safe behavior, the report said three-quarters of health practitioners said they believed that workers sometimes avoided reporting work-related injuries and illnesses as a result of these programs because they feared that doing so would cause them or their co-workers to miss the chance of winning prizes.

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DEMOCRATS SEEK TO STEM JOB LOSSES

Congressional Quarterly Weekly
(November 17, 2009) House Democratic leaders have decided to move legislation before the end of the year aimed at creating jobs, as worries persist in their caucus that unemployment will continue to be a problem during next year's campaigns.

With potentially vulnerable centrists especially restive, the House Democratic Caucus met Monday night to discuss the dismal jobs situation and ways to address it, including infrastructure spending, aid to small businesses and tax break extensions.

The Senate may be unable this year to move legislation that goes beyond extending existing economic stimulus measures, and the White House is concerned about adding to the budget deficit. Both chambers are expected to back expanded aid and health benefits for the unemployed that were part of the stimulus package (PL 111-5) and expire at year's end.

But John B. Larson of Connecticut, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said the House will consider legislation yet this year that will go beyond those policies. Larson mentioned funding for infrastructure projects House Democrats have been pushing, and Democratic aides said the House might also move extensions of tax policies set to expire at the end of the year. Among them are the research and development tax credit, incentives for biodiesel, an additional standard deduction for property taxes, accelerated depreciation for motorsports complexes and expensing of brownfields cleanup costs.

Expiring business provisions are more likely to be extended than those affecting individual taxpayers. Extension of the business provisions would have an immediate impact on corporate planning and could affect quarterly earnings statements since companies cannot otherwise assume their extension.

One Democratic lawmaker said there has also been talk about using money from the financial sector bailout (PL 110-343) to aid small businesses.

Larson said Democratic leaders have not decided whether to move their jobs proposals separately or as a package.

CENTRISTS UNEASY
The national unemployment rate stands at 10.2 percent, the highest since the early years of the Reagan administration. Democrats, particularly those in the House, are worried about voter backlash. “A jobless recovery is just simply unacceptable,” Larson said.

Republicans have criticized the $787 billion stimulus package enacted in February, arguing that it has swollen the deficit without creating enough jobs. Democrats in the Senate have also expressed worries about high unemployment, but health care legislation and appropriations bills have made it difficult for leaders to put anything else on the agenda.

“All of us understand that we have to get the economy back on track and people back on the payroll,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D. “We're all talking about what are the best ideas to pursue.”

House Democratic aides said the Obama administration has advocated a slower approach because of concerns about the rising deficit and how much a jobs package could cost. On Monday, the White House announced that President Obama will hold a jobs forum on Dec. 3 with labor and business leaders. The president will then head to Allentown, Pa., to kick off a “listening tour” that will take place over “the next few months.”

EYE ON INFRASTRUCTURE
Some House Democrats used Monday's caucus to make the case for trying to jumpstart the stalled reauthorization of surface transportation programs and for sweeteners that could be part of a year-end tax break extension bill.

“I want the whole highway bill, but if I can't get a whole loaf, I'll take a slice,” said Leonard L. Boswell of Iowa, a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats.

The caucus meeting was scheduled in response to discontent, particularly among some centrists, with a perceived lack of Democratic initiatives to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Although Boswell backed the House-passed health care overhaul (HR 3962), many other moderates were on the other side of the leadership's top priority. Some, like Boswell, argue that the party needs to move the highway reauthorization bill and other economic priorities that they can support before the start of the peak 2010 campaign season.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said a number of potential vehicles for moving job-related measures, including spending bills, are being considered.

“We need a comprehensive approach to creating jobs,” said Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo. “We've seen a handful of positive economic indicators. But historically, there's a one-year-plus lag between the indicators and the creation of jobs. It's our job to shorten that lag time. My number one priority is the highway bill. Transportation funds would help with the spring road construction season. That would be one of the best job creators.”

INFRASTRUCTURE JOBS
Infrastructure jobs also are on the minds of senators. “My own view is that infrastructure should be emphasized, and I would prefer to see this paid for — not immediately, because that would offset the lift to the economy, but that they be paid for over time, within a budget window,” said Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

Paying for such policies will be part of the debate. One idea that has been floated is to tax financial transactions such as stock trades, based on the value of the trade. But some Democrats are worried that it could have unintended consequences.

“Look, that would have to be something that was done in conjunction with our trading partners, not to have the potential to chase an important industry away from our country. If we could get agreement with other countries to have such a levy that might have merit,” Conrad said.

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SURVEY FINDS DEEP SHIFT IN THE MAKEUP OF UNIONS

New York Times
(November 12, 2009) A study has found that just one in 10 union members is in manufacturing, while women account for more than 45 percent of the unionized work force. The study, by the Center for Economic Policy Research, a Washington-based group, found that union membership is far less blue-collar and factory-based than in labor's heyday, when the United Automobile Workers and the United Steelworkers dominated.

According to the study, “The Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2008,” just 11 percent of union members work in manufacturing, down from nearly 30 percent in the 1980s.

• Indeed, for the first time since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935, the percentage of factory workers who are in unions, 11.4 percent, has fallen below the percentage of all workers who are in unions — 12.4 percent last year. That is down from 35 percent in the 1950s. The membership of the U.A.W. has fallen to less than 500,000, from 1.5 million in 1979.

Many labor leaders argue that for unions to reverse their long-term decline, labor will need to win passage of federal legislation to make it easier to organize workers. And many labor leaders say that public-sector unions, like those representing teachers and municipal employees, which have grown rapidly in recent decades, should do more to back unionization efforts in the private sector.

• The study found that white men represent just 38 percent of all union members and that women will come to represent more than half of all union members during the next decade.
• About 48.9 percent of union members are in the public sector, up from 34 percent in 1983. About 61 percent of unionized women are in the public sector, compared to 38 percent for men.

Elizabeth Shuler, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s new secretary treasurer, said she found the study encouraging because of the increased female membership in unions. “It shows that the diversity initiatives we've been pushing have made a difference,” she said. “Unions have been pushing hard to open their doors.”

To help reverse the decline of union membership in the private sector, she called for enacting the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would make it easier to unionize. Business groups have denounced the bill, saying it would raise costs and make it harder for companies to make a profit and add more workers.

• The study found that 38 percent of union members had a four-year college degree or more, up from 20 percent in 1983. Just under half of female union members (49.4 percent) have at least a four-year degree, compared with 27.7 percent for male union members.

The report, written by John Schmitt and Kris Warner, said that:

• Hispanics represented 12.2 percent of the unionized work force, up from 5.8 percent in 1983.
• Immigrants represent 12.6 percent of union members, up from 8.4 percent in 1994.
• Mr. Schmitt said globalization was making it harder to unionize factory workers because “globalization makes for a much more credible threat to say, ‘We're going to shut down this plant if you organize.' ”
• He saw a few bright spots for labor, particularly the Pacific states, where there has been moderate union growth.
• “And there's been growth among Latino, Asian and immigrant workers — so there is a little hope for the future,” he said.
• Blacks represent 13 percent of the unionized work force, which has remained relatively steady over the last quarter-century. During that time, the unionization rate for blacks has fallen steeply, to 15.5 percent, from 31.7 percent in 1983.
• The typical union member is 45 years old, compared with 41 for the typical American worker. The age for both the typical union member and the typical worker is seven years older than a quarter-century ago.
• According to the study, the most heavily unionized group was workers age 55 to 64 — 18.4 percent of them were in unions. The least unionized age group was 16- to 24-year-olds (5.7 percent were in unions.)
• The percentage of men in unions has dropped sharply, to 14.5 percent in 2008, from 27.7 percent in 1983, while the percentage for women dropped more slowly, to 13 percent last year, from 18 percent in 1983. For the work force over all, the percentage of workers in unions dropped to 12.4 percent last year, from 20.1 percent in 1983.

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Teamsters News Link:
FOR LEFT, HOUSE BILL MAY BE AS GOOD AS IT GETS

The Politico Online
(November 10, 2009) Saturday night's House vote on health care reform was the most significant liberal legislative triumph in years, and progressives are now scrambling to capitalize on the fast-fading momentum. There's only so much they can do. Few progressives think the $1.2 trillion House bill, which covers 96 percent of Americans and provides the strongest public option left standing, will ever make it into law.

Their best bet? That the 220-215 House vote will steel the spines of Democrats in the Senate, where it's currently hard to see how any bill with a public option even gets to a floor vote.

“There's no doubt that this is the most liberal health care bill that's ever going to be passed by the Congress,” said a senior Democratic aide who helped ram it through the House. “Everything after this is likely to be weaker.” The aide called the House bill “an opening bargaining position” and argued that passage of the public option in the House gives progressives “a little more” leverage than they had before.

But the House vote does nothing to change the thus-far intractable public option math in the Senate: There are, at best, 57 to 58 votes for any form of the public option. Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman's announcement that he will join Republicans in blocking a floor vote on any bill containing a public option means, on its surface, that Democrats will have to secure the vote of Maine Republican Olympia Snowe to get to 60. And Snowe has categorically rejected all public-option proposals — except the trigger, which is the one that is most objectionable to progressives.

“The trigger would be absolutely unacceptable to progressives and the overwhelming majority of Americans who are clamoring for a public option now,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has run ads and commissioned polls in support of the public option. “Politically speaking, undermining the public option is the 2009 equivalent of voting for the war in Iraq — except more Americans will die at the hands of insurance companies than died in Iraq,” Green added.

The great fear among progressives is that Senate Democrats will resolve that impasse by selling them out on the final deal — in the belief that liberals won't vote to kill universal health care coverage because of any single objection, no matter how significant. “We're not going to let them betray us,” said a health reform advocate. To head off that possibility, a coalition of pro-reform groups, including Families USA, are organizing a lobbying and PR campaign to prevent Lieberman and other senators from voting no on a series of procedural cloture votes preceding the final heath care vote.

“The key thing we need to focus on is the filibuster vote,” said Families USA founder Ron Pollack. “All of us need to get together right now to ensure that we have the 60 votes to get a floor vote. ... That's what we should be doing.” But other groups are taking a more bellicose approach. MoveOn.org is organizing 115 community events to capitalize on the momentum of the House vote. The group has also cut a series of 30-second TV ads, due to run later this week, targeting a handful of high-profile Democrats who bucked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including Reps. Mike Ross of Arkansas, Heath Shuler and Larry Kissell of North Carolina, Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, Glenn Nye and Rick Boucher of Virginia and Lee Terry of Nebraska.

“The House bill isn't flawless,” read a blast e-mail sent to MoveOn members Monday. “It includes a compromise version of the public option and an ugly anti-choice amendment. But it's a huge step forward. ... And the only way we'll get anything like it through the Senate is if we all come out right now and demand it.”

The problem — a sign of the tough fight that looms for liberals — is that they spent most of Monday fighting a rear-guard action to eliminate hastily adopted abortion restrictions that were a controversial addition to the House version. Several dozen Congressional Progressive Caucus members are drafting a letter to Pelosi saying their “yes” votes Saturday will turn into “nays” if the language isn't scrubbed from the final House-Senate version.

“[The Stupak amendment] represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women's ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled,” the members wrote. “We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law.” But anti-abortion Democrats in the House are unlikely to vote for a bill that doesn't include such language. And in the Senate, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — another vote Majority Leader Harry Reid needs to get to 60 — said Monday that he's “highly unlikely” to back any bill that doesn't incorporate the abortion restrictions included in the amendment introduced by Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak.

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GOP COUNTERS WITH A HEALTH PLAN OF ITS OWN

New York Times
(November 4, 2009) House Republicans have come up with an answer to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, drafting an alternative health care bill that would reward states for reducing the number of uninsured, limit damages in medical malpractice lawsuits and allow small businesses to band together and buy insurance exempt from most state regulation.

In its opening section, the Republican bill, which has no chance of passing, promises to lower health care costs and expand insurance coverage “without raising taxes, cutting Medicare benefits for seniors, adding to the national deficit, intervening in the doctor-patient relationship or instituting a government takeover of health care.”

The bill defines the differences between Republicans and Democrats, who intend to take up their bill on the House floor this week, after resolving intramural disputes over abortion and immigration.

The Republican bill differs from the Democratic measure in that it would not require people to obtain insurance or require employers to offer it. It is almost surely cheaper than the House Democrats' bill because, unlike that proposal, it would not expand Medicaid or offer federal subsidies to low- and middle-income people to help them buy insurance. Nor would the Republican bill impose new taxes.

The House Republican bill would not explicitly prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people because of pre-existing medical conditions, even though many Republicans have said they agree with Democrats that the federal government should outlaw such denials.

House Republicans completed work on their measure as Senate Democratic leaders acknowledged that Senate floor debate on their bill was likely to slip to December, making it virtually impossible for Congress to achieve President Obama's goal of enacting major health legislation this year.

If Congress is still wrangling over the legislation next spring, many of the 2010 midterm elections could turn into referendums on Mr. Obama's health policies.

Pressed about the timetable, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, declined to predict when Congress might complete a bill.

“We're not going to be bound by any timelines,” Mr. Reid said at a news conference. “We need to do the best job we can for the American people.” He said that the bill would be posted on the Internet and that lawmakers would have ample time to study it.

Senate Democratic aides said it was still possible, but increasingly unlikely, that Congress would send a bill to Mr. Obama by Christmas.

The House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, said his bill would “lower costs and expand access at a price our nation can afford.”

In a few ways, the House Republican bill resembles the one headed for the House floor. It would allow young adults to stay on their parents' health plans at least through age 24, compared with 26 under the Democrats' bill.

House Republicans, like the Democrats, would prohibit insurers from imposing annual or lifetime limits on spending for covered benefits. And they would prohibit insurers from canceling or rescinding coverage after a person became sick unless the person had intentionally concealed “material facts” about a medical condition.

Democrats, who have been hearing unofficial accounts of the Republican bill, said it was too little too late.

Representative Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said the Republican bill would perpetuate the status quo for people with pre-existing conditions. And for millions of people who would still be unable to afford insurance, he said, the Republican message was, “Sorry, you're out of luck.”

Reid H. Cherlin, a White House spokesman, said the House Republican bill “does nothing to provide more stability and security for people with insurance.”

The bill would offer $50 billion in federal “incentive payments” over the next 10 years to states that reduce the cost of health insurance or the proportion of their residents who are uninsured.

The bill would also make it easier for insurers to sell insurance across state lines. Policies would be subject to laws in a company's home state, but would be exempt from many of the consumer protection laws, rating rules and benefit mandates in other states where the company sold coverage.

Republicans would also allow small businesses to pool their insurance buying power through “association health plans,” sponsored by trade and professional associations and chambers of commerce. These plans would have “sole discretion” over what services to cover.

Consumer groups, state officials and Blue Cross and Blue Shield executives have historically opposed such association health plans, saying they could engage in risky practices free from state regulation.

The House Republican bill would offer $15 billion to states to establish high-risk pools, for people who could not otherwise obtain coverage, and reinsurance programs, under which states act as a backstop to private insurers. Under a reinsurance program, a state pays a large share of the cost if claims — for an individual or a group — exceed some threshold.

The House Republican whip, Eric Cantor of Virginia, said high-risk pools and reinsurance programs would “guarantee that all Americans, regardless of pre-existing conditions or past illnesses, have access to affordable care.” Health policy experts say insurers can lower premiums if state reinsurance programs protect them against the risk of catastrophic costs.

In addition, the House Republican bill would impose new restrictions on consumer lawsuits against doctors, hospitals and makers of drugs and medical devices. In general, such lawsuits would have to be filed within three years after an injury became evident.

The bill would set a $250,000 limit on non-economic damages, for physical and emotional pain and suffering. It would establish new hurdles for consumers to obtain punitive damages and would limit contingency fees for plaintiffs' lawyers.

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IBT News Release:
TEAMSTERS PRAISE BIPARTISAN BILL ON PENSION REFORM TO PROTECT WORKERS
LEGISLATION WOULD STEM LOSS OF JOBS

The IBT is happy there is some bipartisanship going on in Washington, D.C. The Teamsters are praising U.S. Representative Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., left, and U.S. Representative Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, for introducing legislation that would if passed save jobs and stabilize worker pension plans.

(October 27, 2009) The International Brotherhood of Teamsters today applauded Reps. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., and Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, for introducing legislation that would save jobs and stabilize pension plans.

Many single- and multi-employer pension plans are suffering funding problems because of the unprecedented financial crisis facing our country, putting unreasonable financial pressure on companies that employ tens of thousands of workers. The long-term retirement security of these workers and millions of retirees is being threatened. If Congress fails to change the laws governing the funding status of pension plans, dozens of companies could face bankruptcy, worsening the current unemployment crisis. This bill would help avert such a disaster by setting new funding rules for defined benefit plans to allow them time to recover.

“This is about jobs,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “We have to live up to promises that workers can retire with dignity, but we also need to make sure we don’t jeopardize jobs to fulfill that promise.”

“Reps. Pomeroy and Tiberi are responding to concerns by both employers and workers about the pension and jobs crisis facing our country,” Hoffa said. “This is a catastrophe caused by both irresponsible Wall Street speculation and recent pension legislation that did not contemplate the kind of collapse of financial markets that occurred in 2008. We can’t do much about Wall Street’s past bad behavior, but we can at least fix the law to take into account this unprecedented situation.”

At the end of 2008, the largest U.S. pension funds had just 79 cents for every dollar owed to current and future retirees.
“This legislation would simply give our pension plans some breathing room to recover from the Teamsters Commend Bipartisan Bill On Pension Reform To Protect Workers catastrophe that the big banks and Wall Street operators created,” said Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Tom Keegel. “Congress must act quickly or pension funds will fail, and the bill introduced by Reps. Pomeroy and Tiberi is a good one.”

Particularly important in the legislation are amendments that would alleviate the problems faced by multi-employer plans. In many of those plans, the number of retirees far exceeds active participants because many former employers have failed. In those funds, the funding pressure on the remaining employers is unsustainable and if not dealt with soon will lead to a new wave of bankruptcies.

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