• Drug Industry Girds for Rise in Its Share of Overhaul
• If Health Care Reform Fails, America's Innovation Gap Will Grow
• YRC Teamsters in Chicago Vote Down Wage Cuts a Third Time
• Sharp Tones in Senate Health Care Bill Debate
• 'Labor Will Support Champions of Our Values'
• Health Haggling Heating Up
• 'We Got Shaft on Carhaul'
• Taking Public Outrage to the Bank
• Unions Ask Congress to Back Off Health Taxes
• Trick For Democrats is Juggling Ideology and Pragmatism
• Climate Change on Back Burner?
• ARCHIVED VIEWS FILES

Teamsters News Link:
DRUG INDUSTRY GIRDS FOR RISE IN ITS SHARE OF OVERHAUL

New York Times
(December 23, 2009) Facing last-minute liberal resistance in Congress, the drug industry is bracing for an increase in its share of the cost of the proposed health care overhaul beyond the $80 billion over 10 years that it had negotiated with the White House, industry lobbyists say.

• House lawmakers and Senate liberals were furious to learn in August that to win drug makers' political support, the White House and the Senate Finance Committee had struck the deal to cap industry costs at $80 billion. But the White House and the Senate nonetheless appeared to stick by the agreement, which drug lobbyists called “rock-solid.”

Now, after narrowly beating back some Senate proposals to extract far more and facing similar demands from House leaders, the drug makers acknowledge that they may have to renegotiate, several drug lobbyists said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the overhaul legislation is not yet final.

As the health care bills move toward a House-Senate conference, the liberals appear poised to lose on so many other issues — including a proposed government-run insurer, a so-called Cadillac tax on expensive health plans and an independent Medicare-cutting commission — that the drug makers have come to accept that their deal may have to be modified, the lobbyists said.

Some industry lobbyists say the added costs could come to as much as $20 billion more.

• In an interview, Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry's main trade group, acknowledged that industry lobbyists were open to renegotiation but insisted they would drive a hard bargain.

“There is still a gap that has to be closed between what the Senate is proposing and what the House passed,” he said. “I think there is a growing sense that they may need some additional help to achieve that goal, and as a result we are willing to listen.”

Underscoring the delicacy of the talks, he followed up with an e-mail message to qualify the industry's new openness. “We're not an A.T.M.,” he said. “There are limits to what we can do without turning our industry upside down and adversely impacting patient care in the process.”

• Spokesmen for the White House, Senate leaders and the House speaker declined to comment on Tuesday. Lobbyists for all the health care industries are still working frantically to monitor and adjust the final form of the legislation, often at odds with one another.

After endorsing the Senate legislation at a news conference on Monday with the Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, Dr. Cecil B. Wilson, the president-elect of the American Medical Association, took credit for securing several last-minute changes in the bill to protect doctors from various payment cuts or fees. Among other things, Dr. Wilson said, the A.M.A. had enlisted its network of physicians around the country to protest the short-lived proposal to let people over 55 buy into Medicare, which pays fees the A.M.A. considers too low.

• What's more, Dr. Wilson said, he had received public “assurances” from Senate leaders that by the end of February, the chamber would pass a $250 billion bill to undo currently mandated cuts in Medicare payment rates. Congress has regularly passed short-term changes to put off the pay cuts, and the medical association has pushed for a permanent fix as a tacit condition of its support for the health care overhaul.

The Senate recently defeated a measure to do just that, with many Democrats balking at adding $250 billion with no plans to pay for it. But Dr. Wilson says the A.M.A. is still holding out for such a permanent fix; at the organization's request, Mr. Reid removed another temporary deferral from the health care bill. Instead, House and Senate leaders inserted a two-month extension of current pay rates into a military spending bill headed for the president's desk, giving Congress two months to somehow resolve the matter.

“Something has to be done between January and March 1 or else the cuts will go through, so that is the window of opportunity for the House and the Senate and the White House,” Dr. Wilson said. “We have had assurances in public from Reid and Baucus,” he added, referring to Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, “and the White House is also indicating it is important to them.”

• Lobbyists for the health insurance industry, meanwhile, are complaining to lawmakers that the administration's deals for the political support of the doctors, drug makers and other care providers have precluded meaningful cost cuts. As a result, they argue, health insurers have come under the regulatory knife while the providers they pay have largely escaped.

“They pretty much left the rest of the system, which is responsible for pricing medical services, alone,” argued Karen M. Ignagni, the chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, “and therein lies a major problem down the road in terms of whether health care will be affordable.”

• The insurers are focused on stripping out measures that would cap the amount of revenue insurers could spend on their administrative costs and profits — 20 percent in the Senate bill and 15 percent in the House bill. Ms. Ignagni argued the caps were “unprecedented regulation” that would limit insurers' ability to coordinate care.

On the two other issues of biggest concern to health care lobbyists, the White House has already spoken in favor of the more cost-conscious Senate bill and against the preferences of most House liberals. The White House has said it favors the proposed “Cadillac tax” on expensive insurance plans, which many House Democrats opposed because it could affect some health plans negotiated under union contracts (and the insurance industry opposes for its own obvious reasons.)

And the White House has also said it supports the Senate bill's creation of an independent Medicare commission that could impose cuts on the program. Many health care providers oppose the commission as a threat to their fees, and many House Democrats oppose it as an intrusion on their power.

The House bill would also impose several burdens on the drug makers that are anathema to the industry, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and allowing cheaper drug imports from abroad. Senate leaders narrowly beat back similar proposals, partly with the help of a Food and Drug Administration letter raising safety concerns about imported drugs.

To avoid those threats, industry lobbyists said, drug makers were preparing to absorb more of the costs of closing the “doughnut hole”— a gap in Medicare drug coverage that can mean beneficiaries pay thousands of dollars for drugs each year. The industry had previously agreed to provide discounted drugs to help fill the gap but may now cover as much as $20 billion more over 10 years, the lobbyists said.

• It is a stark shift from August when Billy Tauzin, the former Republican congressman from Louisiana who leads the industry's trade group, insisted the $80 billion cap was inviolable, a “rock-solid deal.”

Back then, he publicly warned the Obama administration, “Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don't keep their word?”

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Teamsters News Link:
IF HEALTH CARE REFORM FAILS, AMERICA’S INNOVATION GAP WILL GROW

New York Times
(December 16, 2009) Greg Woock is the chief executive of Pinger, a fast-growing Silicon Valley company that makes iPhone applications. So Mr. Woock spends a fair amount of time interviewing job applicants. In almost every interview, he told me recently, the applicant asks about Pinger's health insurance plan.

Now think about that for a minute. In the cradle of American innovation, workers are making career choices based on co-payments, pre-existing conditions and other minutiae of health insurance. They are not necessarily making decisions based on what would be best for their careers and, in turn, for the American economy — that is, “where their skills match and where they can grow the most,” as another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Cyriac Roeding, says. Health insurance, Mr. Roeding adds, “is distorting the decision-making.”

• It is impossible to know how much economic damage these distortions are causing, but they clearly aren't good. Economic research suggests that more than 1.5 million workers who would otherwise have switched jobs fail to do so every year because of fears about health insurance. Some of them would have moved to companies where they could have contributed more, and others would have started their own businesses.

• This link between insurance and innovation isn't relevant merely for the obvious reason that Congress is in the late stages of debating health reform. It is also relevant because the United States is suffering from an innovation deficit.

Even before the financial crisis, the decade that will end later this month was on pace to have the slowest economic growth of any since before World War II. The No. 1 reason, I'd argue, was our innovation deficit.

For most of this decade, the rate at which companies eliminated jobs was actually lower than in the 1990s (despite the stories you sometimes hear about the United States having entered a new era of economic instability). The problem was that companies weren't creating enough new jobs. The rate at which existing companies added jobs declined 14 percent from the end of the 1990s to 2007, according to the Labor Department. The rate at which start-up companies created jobs fell even more: 24 percent.

• Given the consequences of the innovation deficit — slower growth, fewer jobs, lower living standards — you would want to look for every possible solution, wouldn't you?

You'd want to allow more talented immigrants to become citizens, so that the next Sergey Brin, Liz Claiborne or Andy Grove, immigrant entrepreneurs all, didn't end up starting their companies elsewhere. You would want to clean up the tangled corporate tax code. You would want to finance more basic research.

And you would want to make people feel confident that they could take risks — start a new company or join a young one — without worrying about whether they would still receive adequate medical care.

VERY PROMISING HEALTH REFORM BILL
Congress is now close to passing a very promising health reform bill. Neither the bill that the House passed last month nor the bill being debated in the Senate is good enough yet. But they are close.

• Ultimately, health reform will be judged by two yardsticks. The first will be whether it begins to shift medicine away from the corrosive fee-for-service system that leads to uneven results and soaring costs. The second will be whether people can easily buy insurance even if they don't work for a large company or qualify for Medicare or Medicaid.

Silicon Valley, with its network of venture capital backers, figures out a way to get most of its workers some kind of health insurance. But many other entrepreneurs have a harder time of it. Only 46 percent of companies with three to nine employees offer health insurance, down from 56 percent a decade ago, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Why? The administrative costs of insurance are high when they aren't spread over a large group of workers. Insurers also know that the individuals and small companies who sign up for health plans tend to be the ones with the most medical problems, pushing premiums for such plans even higher.

• So unless the government steps in to create a large pool of workers who can then buy insurance more cheaply, many small companies will go without it — and some workers will find themselves tethered to the safety of a big company.

As Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, told me, “There clearly are people who choose to stay in their jobs due to the fact that they don't have insurance portability.” Just consider the economic research showing that people married to someone with health insurance are more likely to work at small companies than people who aren't so lucky.

PATH TO GOOD HEALTH REFORM FAIRLY CLEAR
The path to a health bill that begins to solve both core problems — access and cost — is fairly clear, numerous health economists say. It involves combining the Senate provisions on cost and quality control (and, ideally, strengthening them) with the House provisions on insurance access. Ezra Klein, the blogger and health policy writer, refers to it as a “health care reform fantasy draft.”

• The House bill does a good job of creating affordable insurance plans for the uninsured but does little to attack fee-for-service medicine. As a result, medical costs are likely to stay high for everyone.
• The Senate bill, by contrast, has the “essential elements of a successful, fiscally responsible reform strategy,” according to a recent letter from 26 economists, including four Nobel Prize winners and two former directors of the Congressional Budget Office. But the Senate plan is too rough on the newly insured. It would force many of them to pay thousands of dollars a year out of pocket, on top of their premiums, for care.

“Take the Senate on cost control and the House on affordability,” Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T. argues, “and you've the best possible bill.”

And what if Congress — distracted by hot-button issues like drug imports, government-financed abortions and the so-called public option — produces something short of best? Should we then hope that it gives up and take another crack at health reform in, say, 2025?

Well, remember that this process was never going to be easy and was always going to be messy. But in the coming days and weeks, the choices before Congress will be straightforward: How can the bills still be improved? And once all the negotiating is over, will the final package seem likely to do more good than harm?

Last week, Medicare's chief actuary came out with a report that offered some useful guidance on that second question. The report became fodder for critics of the bills because it estimated that the current Senate plan would raise national health spending slightly. Without health reform, the country would spend $4.67 trillion on medical care in 2019. With it, we would spend $20 billion more, a total of $4.69 trillion.

If you dug into the report, however, you discovered the main reason for the projected increase. Vastly more people — about 33 million — would have insurance if the Senate plan passed. “There are more people insured, and more people getting treatment,” the actuary, Rick Foster, said.

Yet health spending would rise by just 0.5 percent. The cost of insuring a given individual would be significantly reduced, in other words, and millions of people would no longer have to worry about whether they were insured.

Maybe one of those millions will end up starting the next great American company.

(Article by David Leonhardt, New York Times columnist)

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Teamsters News Link:
YRC TEAMSTERS IN CHICAGO VOTE DOWN WAGE CUTS A THIRD TIME

   

YRC is one of the few remaining union freight companies around these days. Union carriers under the YRC banner include Yellow, Roadway, and Holland. Chicago dock workers rejected a $1.16 per hour wage cut for a third time. City drivers voted no for the second time. Two IBT Vice Presidents have been deeply involved in the discussion and debate, Tyson Johnson and Pat Flynn. Johnson, left, IBT Vice President, Southern Region, has been a Teamster for 40 years. During that time, he has served as steward, business agent and an officer of Local 745 in Dallas. He got his first Teamster job in 1967 on the dock at Yellow Freight. He became a business agent for Local 745 in 1979. He served as an officer, including Secretary-Treasurer, of Local 745 from 1985 until 2003. Since then, he has devoted all his energy to his duties as an International Vice President and as the National Freight Director. Flynn, IBT Vice President, Central Region, was born into a Teamster family in Chicago, Illinois. His first experience with the Teamsters came in 1974, when he went to work as a dockhand. In Flynn’s Teamster career, he has served as a steward and, with Local 710, an organizer, business agent, Recording Secretary, Vice President, Director of Organizing, President and, as of 2003, Secretary-Treasurer, and Trustee of Joint Council 25.

Labor Notes
(December 10, 2009) One of the few remaining union freight companies, YRC is attempting to fight off bankruptcy through concessions. Union carriers subsumed under the YRC name include Yellow, Roadway, and Holland. Despite pressure from Teamsters officials and YRC management, Chicago dock workers rejected a $1.16 per hour wage cut for a third time yesterday. City drivers voted no for the second time.

Teamster officials had told workers that floundering YRC, which employs 40,000 other Teamster drivers and dock workers nationwide, would go out of business if 1,500 Chicago workers did not accept the wage cut Teamsters voted up nationally last summer. But many members, as well as industry analysts, believe YRC is doomed in any case.

Chicago Locals 710 and 705 have bargained separately from the National Master Freight Agreement for 45 years, usually getting the same wage increases but setting a better standard on some terms.

THE SQUEEZE
IBT International VP Tyson Johnson and Local 710 President Pat Flynn, also an IBT International VP, visited terminals to argue that it wasn't fair for Chicago-area Teamsters to reject concessions that were accepted nationally. At the Chicago Heights facility the road show turned into a shouting match. One worker interrupted Flynn to ask who he was. Told he was the Local's president, the worker called him a liar: Pat Flynn never comes to the Heights night shift.

At the Holland McCook terminal the shouting was so loud that Johnson gave up trying to speak and walked out. Earlier, at the May Local 705 membership meeting, there were eight minutes of spontaneous chanting [...] .

NATIONAL TAKEOVER OF BARGAINING
On November 24, Johnson issued a memo saying the Union's Executive Board had taken the authority to abolish the Chicago-area freight contracts and impose the National Master Freight Agreement (and its lower standards). Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the reform movement, said the International had feared members would file a lawsuit if it imposed the concessions without a vote.

The vote count in Local 705 was low because balloting was held at the terminals during the day, when drivers were on the road. Teamster votes are usually taken by mail. Local 705 members voted 234 no, 132 yes, and Local 710 voted no by 337-319, with many challenged ballots. About 100 workers were brought back from layoff in 710 in hopes that they would vote yes. Earlier votes had turned the concessions down by 2-1 margins.

After the vote, Johnson issued a memo expressing “disappointment.”

A Local 705 rank and filer who asked not to be identified said that after a year spent watching “death by a thousand cuts,” workers are expecting YRC to fold. Will the Company's 50,000 shipments per day be taken up by non-union competitors?

“That's on the Teamsters,” said the member, a veteran of earlier reform efforts in the Local. “Had they been organizing the whole time, there's 50,000 shipments that have to be gotten out that could have been taken over by Union companies.”

Chicago Teamsters have a tradition of militancy. In the famous UPS Strike of 1997, Local 705 UPSers stayed out two extra days for a better deal. In recent UPS negotiations, the Local held out for better language and vacations.

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Teamsters News Link:
SHARP TONES IN SENATE HEALTH CARE BILL DEBATE

The Health Care Reform debate has shifted from the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate.
Unfortunately, the “tone” of the debating is about what the nation has seen during “public meetings” earlier in 2009.

The Politico - Online
(December 1, 2009) A historic debate on health care opened in the Senate on Monday, November 30, on a fiercely partisan note, as Democrats and Republicans traded shots over the $848 billion bill and the breakdown of trust between the parties.

If viewers tuned in for an elevated exchange about the state of American health care, what they received was a healthy dose of street-level Washington sniping.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called on his colleagues to “avoid the temptation to drown in distractions and distortions.”

But within minutes, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) accused Reid of engaging in a “stunt” by catching the Republicans unprepared with requests to agree to prohibit senators from raiding surpluses from Social Security or a new long-term care insurance fund. Reid also sought agreement that all senators must first post amendments on their Senate Web pages before proposing them on the floor.

“To just throw those out at the beginning, when I had about a minute and a half notice that they were going to be thrown out, I just don't think this is the right way to go about this whole process,” Enzi said. “I had high hopes that this would be the year that the Democrats and the Republicans of the Senate would work together to provide health insurance to every American.

“Unfortunately, the majority leadership had other ambitions, because the bill being debated today is a testament to partisan ideological division,” Enzi said.

Reid responded that he was “disappointed” with the way the debate started, but it was hardly surprising.

SQUABBLING SHOWS POISONED RELATIONS
The squabbling was only a snapshot of the increasingly poisoned relations between Democrats and Republicans on health care reform. Both sides have essentially reached an impasse, creating the sense that the next few weeks of floor debate may be more about delivering political messages than about legislating.

The Senate opened its debate, but there was no agreement on a way to move forward. Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) still had no parameters by the late afternoon on the terms of the debate, including the vote threshold for passing amendments and the amount of time each one would be discussed.

Democrats and Republicans also quarreled over the first independent analysis of the legislation's impact on the cost of premiums. The Congressional Budget Office analysis offered a mixed bag for reform proponents, concluding that premiums would rise for some Americans and go unchanged or decrease for others.

If Republicans put up stalling tactics, Reid said he would keep the Senate in session late into the evenings and on the weekends to complete the bill before Christmas.

“There is not an issue more important than finishing this legislation,” he said.

BACKROOM STRATEGIZING EVIDENT
Reid plans to let the floor debate play out publicly while he works behind the scenes on a public insurance option compromise. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and a lineup of top administration officials met with Reid at the Capitol on Monday — a meeting that underscored how this phase of the health care debate is as much a backroom operation as one that unfolds on the Senate floor.

Those in the strategy session included Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle. Top Democrats, including Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chuck Schumer of New York, were also present.

At least four centrist senators have said they cannot support the bill in its current form because of the inclusion of a government plan with a provision for states to opt out. Reid knows where every member of his caucus stands and is attempting to develop a compromise that all 60 members can support, aides said.

Although it occupied the attention of the Democratic leadership, the public option wasn't the focus of the floor debate Monday.

THE AMENDMENT PROCESS IS UNFOLDING
The first amendment offered by Senate Democrats focused on preventive health care for women — hardly a central pillar of the bill but a potential political winner for Democrats. The first day of the debate garnered significant media attention, so the lead amendment on both sides reveals strategy — and women are a key constituency who need to be sold on the benefits of this bill.

Republicans led with an amendment to scale back more than $400 billion in proposed Medicare cuts, which has been a mainstay in the GOP attacks on the bill. Democrats say the cuts would redirect wasteful spending, shore up Medicare and not affect beneficiaries, but Republicans say that would not be the case.

“I don't know what's more preposterous — saying that this plan saves Medicare or thinking that people will actually believe that,” McConnell said.

Reid sought an agreement at the beginning of the debate on shielding the surpluses from Social Security and the long-term care program as a way to block alternate funding sources for Republicans who want to scale back the Medicare cuts.

Enzi said Reid should have sought protections for Medicare funding. “Medicare is going broke,” Enzi said. “Why would we take $464 billion out of Medicare to use on other programs?”

Republicans also seized on the CBO premiums study as evidence that the Democratic bill would not leave most Americans in a better position. But the study wasn't a clear-cut boost for either party.

The big winners are people who would qualify for subsidies to purchase insurance. Premiums would be “roughly 56 percent to 59 percent lower, on average,” than under current law, the report found.

Not-so-big winners: people who purchase coverage on the individual market but do not qualify for subsidies. Their premiums would be 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than under current law, in part because of significant changes to the insurance market.

For the vast majority of Americans — those who receive coverage through large and small employers — the legislation “would have smaller effects on premiums,” the report found.

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Seattle Times Very Wrong:
‘LABOR WILL SUPPORT CHAMPIONS OF OUR VALUES’

Washington State Labor Council
(November 30, 2009) A few days ago a “guest column” by Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender appeared in the Seattle Times. It was written in response to a November 15 Seattle Times editorial which trashed the WSLC and its “friends,” which of course include Teamsters Local 174. The Bender response is printed below, and in it is a link to the Seattle Times editorial, if you want to read that.

REWARDING THE LEGISLATIVE CHAMPIONS OF LABOR’S INTERESTS
By RICK BENDER, President, Washington State Labor Council
A shift in the political strategies of organized labor here in Washington seems to have exposed the reality of The Times editorial board's corporate agenda: dominance over a subservient work force ["Washington state's labor leaders don't get it," editorial, November 15, 2009].

Rick Bender was elected President of the Washington State Labor Council in March 1993. Prior to that he served as WSLC Vice President (1988-1993); Executive Secretary of the King County Labor Council (1991-1993); and Executive Secretary of the Seattle Building and Construction Trades Council (1987-1991).

A member of Laborers Local 242 and Elevator Constructors Local 19, he began his long accomplished career with organized labor as an apprentice with Cement Masons Local 528 in 1966. Rick also was a State Legislator from 1973 to 1991, serving 10 years in the House and eight in the Senate.

Among his accomplishments in Olympia were serving as Senate Majority Whip, House Assistant Majority Leader and chair of the Senate Transportation Committee. A Vietnam War veteran, he majored in economics at the University of Puget Sound.

The labor movement makes no apologies for our mission to help workers find their voice in the workplace. We will continue to be a leader supporting progressive politics that give rise to better conditions for workers, including a strong minimum wage, defined benefit pensions, quality affordable health care, and safety in the workplace.

We believe that our fight is even more crucial in the face of the shaky moral compass with which business directs itself today. The huge disparity of income rising from the obscene salaries of executives, the collapse of the financial industry, the structure of corporate greed, and the destruction of our middle-class security exposed the business mantra — the end justifies any means, no matter who gets left behind.

Our political involvement is a way to inject fairness into the process. For years the Democratic Party stood beside us in our quest to help workers prevail over corporate interests. But over the past few years the Democratic caucus has watered down its positions on worker rights, and has tossed aside its responsibility to stand strong for the little guy.

We refuse to join them in the race to the bottom. We believe that what we have here in our state is good for workers and good for business and we won't give up our fight to keep it that way.

The Times is out of touch with the reality of the business climate here in Washington state. At the national level, we have consistently been recognized as a great place to do business. But locally, the business community and its lobbyists in Olympia ignore those high rankings and instead want our Legislature to follow South Carolina's lead.

South Carolina's low wages and lack of unionization were the primary lures for Boeing when the company chose to locate its second 787 production line there. If business climate had anything to do with it, the choice would have been different.

In the same Forbes Magazine poll, which ranks Washington as the second-best state in the nation for business, South Carolina was ranked 26th. The unemployment-insurance system in South Carolina — the linchpin of survival for a laid-off worker — is bankrupt. The education system ranks near the bottom of the nation. And when reading about scandals from the offices of South Carolina's governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, it seems the state's political leadership is bankrupt as well.

This is not the path that we at the Washington State Labor Council choose for the workers of our state. That is why we have made a change in our political program — why our affiliates have opted to evaluate our legislators according to how they champion the rights of working people — not merely by the "D" or "R" next to their names.

And that is why we will support champions of our values instead of giving in to corporate dominance over a subservient work force.

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Teamsters News Link:
HEALTH HAGGLING HEATING UP

Wall Street Journal
BY WSJ Reporter JANET ADAMY
(November 23, 2009) Democratic leaders finally moved their sweeping health bill to the Senate floor, where wheeling and dealing over major unresolved and divisive issues likely will shape the legislation before its next big test.

HEALTH-CARE DEBATE MOVES TO SENATE FLOOR
Democratic senators voted 60 to 39 to move sweeping health-care legislation to the Senate floor. What is the significance of the move and what's ahead in the debate. A handful of Democrat centrists say they can't support the government-sponsored health-insurance plan — known as the public option — that is included in the bill. And Democrats are divided over abortion, an issue that nearly derailed the House earlier this month when it narrowly passed a health bill that blocked abortion coverage from federally subsidized insurance plans, including some run by private insurers.

Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu “sold” her “yes” vote. Sen. Reid tucked in a Medicaid-spending provision valued, she said, at $300-million to benefit her hurricane-hit state.


Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown does not want “four Democratic senators dictating to the other 56 of us, and to the country,” that the public option is not going to be in the final bill.


Independent Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman is one of the four Democratic Caucus senators who have said they might vote against a final bill with a public-insurance option in it.

Another growing concern even as the bill progresses is the political heat on Democrats over expanded government spending amid rising unemployment and deficit concerns.

"We simply cannot ignore the growth in the federal government," said Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, one of those centrists. She was the last Democrat ahead of the vote to declare her support, ensuring Democrats would have the 60 they needed to overcome Republican stalling tactics. But she and other holdouts warned that doesn't mean they'll support final passage.

The 60-39 vote Saturday night, November 21, set the stage for as many as three weeks of debate and compromise in December and perhaps more in January, a struggle that is sure to color the 2010 fight for control of Congress. If the bill passes the Senate, it will then need to be reconciled with a version already passed by the House and then the final bill will have to pass the entire Congress before being sent to President Barack Obama for his signature.

REPUBLICANS STILL HAVE INFLUENCE
Republicans, even in the minority, have leverage to shape the Senate debate. They portray the legislation as a huge long-term liability for U.S. taxpayers. "It raises premiums," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) on "Fox News Sunday." "It raises taxes. It cuts Medicare."

Groups with a stake in the legislation — insurers, drug makers, small businesses, unions — are also gearing up for one of their final chances to change the health bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be at the center of the deal making, balancing contention with compromise on major components of the bill and smaller matters that might win over senators wavering in their support.

Saturday's vote was a preview of sorts. In a nod to liberal Democrats, Mr. Reid included a public-insurance plan in his bill, while giving states the right to opt out of it. After appeals from Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, Mr. Reid tucked in a Medicaid-spending provision to benefit her hurricane-hit state.

NO ‘MINORITY’ RULE AMONG DEMOCRATS
Liberals said Sunday they want to preserve the public-insurance plan, insisting the government needs to get involved to ensure people have an affordable alternative to private insurance.

"I don't want four Democratic senators dictating to the other 56 of us, and to the country, when the public option has this much support, that it's not going to be in it," said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) on CNN's "State of the Union."

The four senators most skeptical of the public-insurance option are Ms. Lincoln, Ms. Landrieu, Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent. With varying degrees of firmness, all four have said their votes can't be counted for a final bill with a public plan as proposed by Sen. Reid. They say it would get the government too involved in health care and fear it wouldn't be self-supporting as planned, forcing the government into an expensive bailout.

THE CARPER COMPROMISE
The seemingly irreconcilable positions led Sen. Tom Carper, even before the Saturday vote, to begin working on a possible compromise that would create a government-insurance plan available initially in states where insurance is deemed to be unaffordable for average American families. Under the Delaware Democrat's still-evolving idea, the plan would be set up by the Department of Health and Human Services, and would eventually be overseen by a nonprofit board. States where insurance is considered affordable could participate or not in the government plan.

"We're trying to find something that addresses [centrist] concern about government-run, government-funded [plans], but still addresses the needs for affordability and the need for competition in states that don't have it," Mr. Carper said.

After Saturday's vote, Mr. Reid expressed hope that Mr. Carper's efforts would bear fruit. Ms. Landrieu said she wants a "better and bipartisan solution" to the issue and showed sympathy for a proposal by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who has suggested a trigger that would put the public plan in effect only if other steps don't expand coverage as planned.

While Mr. Lieberman has been the most determined in stating his refusal to vote for a bill that includes a public-insurance plan, some Democrats believe Ms. Lincoln, who faces a tough re-election fight next year, may present the most nettlesome case. She left a hint of wiggle room, saying she doesn't support the public plan "as written."

If the holdout senators stick to their guns, some kind of change to the public plan is likely to come to the floor. But even after a change, the broader bill would again need 60 votes to pass, putting Mr. Reid in a tough spot since liberal senators want to avoid weakening the bill.

ABORTION ISSUE STILL DEEPLY IN THE PICTURE
The abortion-funding issue likely will lead to another amendment. Antiabortion advocates, led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are pushing for tighter restrictions. "The sanctity of life is not an issue that can be traded away for political expediency," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), who is leading the fight on the Senate floor.

The Senate bill allows women who receive a government subsidy for health insurance to enroll in a plan that covers abortion. The bill also includes the procedure in the public health-insurance plan. In both instances, women would have to use private money to pay for an abortion.

The bishops want to ban most types of abortion coverage for any plan held by a person receiving a government subsidy. They won such a ban in an amendment approved at the last minute by the House, and abortion-rights advocates are fighting to avoid the same outcome in the Senate.

The 2,074-page Senate bill, estimated to cost $848 billion over a decade, is designed to achieve Mr. Obama's goals of extending health coverage to tens of millions of Americans, while controlling the growth of health-care costs. Groups with a stake in the legislation are also gearing up for one of their final chances to change the health bill.

TEAMSTERS AND OTHERS FIGHTING ‘CADILLAC’ TAX
Unions are still fighting a proposed tax on high-value insurance plans. Many health-policy specialists say the tax will discourage private employers from offering "Cadillac" plans that do little to control health costs. Currently those plans enjoy the same favored tax status as thriftier plans.

"The idea that this tax will curtail rising premiums is just dead wrong," said Jim Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Small businesses, which the White House is courting, are lobbying for more generous tax credits. Under the bill, businesses with 10 or fewer employees who earn an average of $20,000 or less would be eligible for tax credits worth up to 50% of the employer's insurance costs. The National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group, wants to extend the reach of those credits.

"To get it through for us, it's going to have to show that it's going to do more to lower the costs for small businesses," said federation president Dan Danner.

Drug makers plan to fend off attempts by Democrats to make them offer additional discounts for prescriptions the government provides to people who are eligible for both the Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs.

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Teamsters News Link:
‘WE GOT SHAFT ON CARHAUL’
The Street

The automakers say they need to reduce costs where possible in a competitive global auto market. The Union has mounted an aggressive campaign against the shift.

"We are perplexed to the fact that the bailout money was intended to keep good-paying middle class American jobs, but the auto companies are taking the money and destroying good middle class jobs," says Fred Zuckerman, Director of the Carhaul Division for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and President of Teamsters Local 89 in Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky is the third largest auto-production state.

"We supported Obama, no doubt about that," Zuckerman says. "Then he decided to bail out the Industry. Now, the manufacturers want to put our guys out on the street and we have to change their minds."

About 4,800 Teamsters currently work in the Carhaul Industry, down from about 10,000 just two years ago. Then, Union drivers hauled about 78% of the new cars produced in the U.S. by domestic and foreign manufacturers: Today, the Union share is between 60% and 70%. Teamster drivers earn as much as $70,000 to $80,000 annually, working 60 to 70 hours a week.

"Cars are very fragile when they are in transit," and replacement carhaulers often lack the expertise to haul them, Zuckerman says. "These folks don't have the proper training and equipment to haul cars. They use the wrong hooks and put them in the wrong places," causing damage and delays.

Incidents of damage are detailed at a Teamster Website, www.carbuyersbeware.com. Additionally, the Union has produced a report that cites safety problems at non-union carhaul companies: It will be released to Congress... Union members also have leafleted 400 dealerships in 40 states.

Chrysler spokeswoman Shawn Morgan says the automaker has shifted about 28% of its carhaul business. Chrysler has been spending $111 million annually to haul cars, but says that cost will eventually diminish by $31 million annually as a result of its vendor shift on select routes.

About 75% of the business will remain with Teamster-staffed companies, Atlanta-based Allied Systems Holdings and Illinois-based Cassens Transport Co., even though "Chrysler has been working for over a year with (the pair) to get them more competitive, but in that time they have not made the effort necessary to become more competitive," Morgan said.

Meanwhile, General Motors is negotiating with both union and non-union car haul companies and "has no plans to phase out unionized hauling companies," said spokesman Alan Adler. "We are currently in contract negotiations with several haul-away companies, both Union and non-union, due to contract expirations," he said.

"Our focus is to help solidify the most profitable business arrangements with our current providers and then to conduct a competitive bid process for the remaining business requirements," Adler noted. "We are committed to working collaboratively with our supply base to achieve mutually beneficial results."

The Ford and Toyota contracts with the Union carhaul companies expire June 1. "Ford is not a problem yet," Cassens says, but the union worries that it could follow the lead of its competitors.

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Teamsters News Link:
TAKING PUBLIC OUTRAGE ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK

Citizens are angry at greedy Goldman Sachs from West Coast to East Coast, from one Washington to the other — that is, from our own Washington State to the national capital in Washington, DC. This rally was in DC.

Union City
(November 17, 2009) FROM UNION CITY, METRO WASHINGTON COUNCIL NEWS, AFL-CIO — Calling investment bank Goldman Sachs “pure evil,” hundreds of taxpayers and local labor activists converged on the Wall Street financial firm’s Washington, DC office at noon yesterday to demand an end to multi-billion dollar bonuses at banks which received money from the federal stimulus package.

“Goldman Sachs, you’re the worst; it’s time to put the people first!” chanted the demonstrators, outraged that Goldman Sachs is projecting $23 billion in bonuses and compensation this year.

“We’re angry that big banks have been bailed out but nothing has come to help Main Street,” Barb Kalbach (at right foreground in the picture), a Registered Nurse and member of the Iowa Citizens For Community Improvement, told Union City. “The reality is that while Goldman Sachs floats, we drown!” she added.

Andrew Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, called on Congress to “implement immediate financial reform,” and demanded that the projected $23 billion in bonuses go to foreclosure prevention programs. “This company is putting greed over human need,” said Stern. “It’s pure evil.” [Report and photo by Adam Wright.]

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Teamsters News Link:
UNIONS ASK CONGRESS TO BACK OFF HEALTH TAXES

The quartet said they were concerned by provisions of the bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee last month that would levy a new tax against high-value health care plans, or so-called "Cadillac plans." Such a tax could put a serious dent in the finances of union health plans that have already been battered by stock market declines and ever-rising health care costs.

The House narrowly approved a health care reform bill late Saturday after weeks of bare-knuckle partisan brawling over the contentious issue. Democrats in the Senate have said they are hoping to hold a vote on their health care reform package before Christmas. At this point, it's uncertain if the final version of the Senate bill will include any tax on "Cadillac" plans — but showbiz union leaders aren't waiting to weigh in.

"We applaud your efforts to expand affordable health care coverage to more Americans and to reform the health insurance industry," the letter from the guild toppers said. "However, we are deeply troubled by the provisions of the bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee that would levy a new tax against so-called 'Cadillac plans.' The individual unions and guilds of the entertainment industry have struggled and sacrificed for decades to negotiate and defend their own Taft-Hartley health insurance plans."

The presidents said the Senate Finance version of the bill would place "catastrophic" burdens on maintaining health benefits.

"For decades our individual guilds and unions have had to forgo wage increases and other benefits simply to maintain the current level of health benefits for our members," the letter said. "It is a choice our members were forced to make over and over at the bargaining table — affordable health care versus better wages — and our members chose health care for themselves and their families every time."

If the proposed tax is enacted, it could "jeopardize our ability to keep our plans solvent," the letter said.

The unions' health and pension plans are funded by employer contributions and administered jointly by reps of the unions and the employers. SAG's pension and health plans, for example, receive a payment from the employer equal to 15% of an actor's compensation for any given job.

The plans have been hit by the decline in the stock market — which has lowered the value of their investments — and the generally slowdown in showbiz employment, particularly in the highest-paying job classifications of primetime network TV and feature films.

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Teamsters News Link:
TRICK FOR DEMOCRATS IS JUGGLING IDEOLOGY AND PRAGMATISM

New York Times
(November 10, 2009) Democrats have displayed a striking degree of pragmatism in seeking to push the health care bill through Congress, embracing or rejecting ideological considerations as needed to keep the legislation moving.

But if the flexibility shown by party leaders on issues like abortion and the proposed government-run insurance plan has kept the legislative process on track, it has also left many liberals off balance and risked alienating the party's base as the midterm elections approach.

“I am having people come up to me and say, ‘This is the most tepid revolution we have ever had,' ” said Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York. Mr. Weiner dropped his insistence on a vote for a government-run single-payer system in deference to Democratic leaders as the House passed a health care bill with two votes to spare.

The challenge of balancing ideology and pragmatism confronting Democrats stems from the party's success in building large but diverse majorities in the House and Senate in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

In both of those cycles, the party aggressively recruited candidates who could win in traditionally non-Democratic areas, producing a class of legislators that has a decidedly conservative stance on issues like abortion, gun control and the size of government.

Democrats are now encountering the complications of that success, and a task that faced Republicans during periods of both the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations: How to manage an ideologically diverse caucus to produce legislative victories without alienating base voters.

Republicans ran up big legislative victories under Mr. George W. Bush but then found conservatives becoming dispirited over issues like the creation of a Medicare prescription drug plan and rapid growth in government spending.

The loss of enthusiasm among conservatives contributed to the Democratic resurgence in 2006 and 2008. Democrats said they were aware of a similar risk with the party's left wing; on Monday, more than 40 liberal Democrats signed a letter pledging to vote against a final health bill if it, like the bill passed Saturday, blocks the use of federal subsidies for insurance that covers elective abortions.

In going down that road, the White House and Congressional leaders have calculated that winning a health care bill that expands coverage to tens of millions of uninsured people, an unrealized aspiration of Democratic ideology for more than a generation, would in effect eclipse any concerns liberals have about some of the compromises the party makes.

“Look at the Republicans,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and the leader of the House Democrats' campaign operations. “They have been rigid ideologues, and I think if you want to govern effectively you have to be willing to find the common ground. If you are so rigid that you refuse to entertain any other ideas, you will become so rigid it will break. You are not going to be able to get things done.”

Not incidentally, two Democratic leaders who were critical in recruiting the candidates who led the Democrats to control of the Senate are now playing central roles in the health care debate: Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, who once held Mr. Van Hollen's job, and Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who headed the Senate Democratic campaign committee and is now No. 3 in the Democratic leadership in the Senate.

Mr. Emanuel, in an interview, disputed the notion that electoral success was breeding legislative difficulty. “Did it get harder?” he said. “It's been hard for 70 years. And it would not be possible without being in the majority. Everything after that is Monday morning quarterbacking.” Mr. Schumer, who recruited Democratic candidates who did not support abortion rights if he judged them better positioned to win their states, said: “Look, getting to 60 means by definition you are going to have a lot of senators from red states.”

Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who protested the insertion of the abortion language in the House version of the bill, said she nonetheless was struck by just what Congress has accomplished. “An ideologically diverse caucus came together and supported an excellent piece of legislation,” Ms. DeLauro said. “What would the alternative have been? To kill health reform?”

Still, Democrats are clearly remembering what happened to Republicans under Mr. Bush when conservative voters stayed away from the polls, permitting Democrats to win House seats in otherwise Republican districts. Mr. Weiner added: “The problem we have today is that the White House has approached this with a kind of cold pragmatism — ‘let's just get a score up on the board' — which is a particularly frustrating tone when much of our base was animated ideologically in 2008 because they wanted health care and things like that.”

For all that, Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative who played an important role under Mr. Bush and Ronald Reagan in keeping the conservative coalition together, said he was not convinced that Democrats would lose the support of liberal voters if the final bill included the abortion restrictions or failed to include the so-called public plan. “I tend to think that hard-line D's and hard-line R's show up to vote,” he said.

The three principal players — President Barack Obama; Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, and Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader — have a history of different approaches. Ms. Pelosi is a liberal, which some Democrats suggested gave her added flexibility in making the kind of compromises that got the bill through over the weekend, to the distress of other liberals. Mr. Reid is more of a pragmatist, and personally moderate. Mr. Obama has been more of an enigma, though his overall thrust on health care has been very much in keeping with liberals on the issues.

Representative George Miller of California, the Democratic chairman of the Education and Labor Committee and one of Ms. Pelosi's closest advisers, said that if the caucus was struggling after winning so many seats in centrist or Republican-leaning districts, it was a problem he was glad to have. “What's the alternative?” he said. “To remain in the minority? I tried that for 12 years, and this is much better, whatever the makeup of the caucus.”

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