Two things I read in this morning's NYTimes I think are worthy of note:
1. The NYTimes editorial board has a great piece out making the case for reconciliation in a very succinct, reasoned way. It lays out three important arguments:
(a) The Republicans has no moderates, only partisan conservatives who want to see this as Obama's Waterloo.
Mr. Obama should know from sad experience the pitfalls of seeking bipartisan cooperation from a Republican Party that has sloughed off most of its moderates and is dominated by its right wing. His stimulus package was supported by no Republicans in the House and only three Republicans in the Senate, so-called moderates whose support was won by shrinking the package below the size at which it would have done the most good.
[...]
Even if the group reaches an agreement, which is by no means certain, its compromise is unlikely to win support from a Republican Party that seems bent on delay.
(b) Grassley, who I think made his critical mistake when he said he was only interested in a bill that could achieve more than just 3 or 4 Republican votes, is negotiating to a place where not just fundamental reform is untenable- because he wants so many Republicans to sign on that the legislation is weak tea- but where it just ain't going to happen, because too many Republicans will vote against any bill. E.g., it should be clear to the Administration that where Grassley is leading them by the nose is not a place they will be comfortable in, either because the bill is so weak or because there will be no bill at all.
(c) The Democrats should move forward on using reconciliation, and a great statement against the pitfalls of bipartisanship, sacrificing reform for comity.
Clearly the reconciliation approach is a risky and less desirable way to enact comprehensive health care reforms. The only worse approach would be to retreat to modest gestures in an effort to win Republican acquiescence. It is barely possible that the Senate Finance Committee might pull off a miracle and devise a comprehensive solution that could win broad support, or get one or more Republicans to vote to break a filibuster. If not, the Democrats need to push for as much reform as possible through majority vote.
Jbearlaw in quick hits points to an article by David Corn and Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones as "More Evidence Geithner in Wall Street's Pocket", but I don't quite think that's the right metaphor. Nor is Geithner necessarily the one to focus on. Rather, I come away from the article feeling, more than ever, that the entire Obama Administration is embedded in Wall Street.
It's not a question of doing Wall Street's bidding, because they won't, necessarily. Rather, it's a question of thinking Wall Street's thoughts, of having absorbed them by osmosis for so long, and through so many channels that even when they seek to oppose Wall Street on some issue or another, the form it takes is virtually indistinguishable from agreement to anyone who's not an insider themselves. But let me run it down on the flip, and see what you think for yourselves.
The Obama administration may be about to pull the plug on the health czar. The position has gone unfilled since Obama's appointee-apparent, former Sen. Tom Daschle, withdrew his name from consideration for both czar and Secretary of Health and Human Services in early February. Several serious candidates are emerging in the unofficial race to lead HHS, but there's no corresponding shortlist for health czar.
Tom Daschle withdrew his name from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Health Czar on Tuesday in the face of overwhelming public pressure to step aside. Daschle had been plagued by ethics problems that emerged during his confirmation process: He failed to report taxable benefits, including a chauffeur and vehicle loaned by a political ally. Daschle repayed over $100,000 in back taxes and interest last month, but it wasn't enough.
My only reaction to Daschle's withdrawal from Health and Human Services is that I wish either Treasury Secretary Geithner or Defense Secretary Gates had been defeated, too.
Giethner, like Daschle, had tax issues, and yet he was confirmed by the Senate. Now, he is about to light hundreds of billions of dollars on fire as part of the biggest corporate welfare program in history. He also worked with the Bush administration in handling the first $350 billion of the bailout.
The three largest federal departments, in terms of budget outlays, are easily Treasury, Defense, and Health and Human Services. While I don't want to defend Daschle, I do wonder why nominees for the two other large federal departments--both of whom were directly tied to the Bush administration, both of whom have ethical questions, and both of whom are currently lighting hundreds of billions of dollars on fire--passed and Daschle was defeated. Why did Daschle have to fall on his sword, but Gates and Geithner did not? It is a worthwhile question to ask, and one of the few thoughts I have on the Daschle story.
Within hours of taking the Oath of Office, President Barack Obama ordered all federal agencies to suspend all of Bush's eleventh-hour rules changes, pending a full review. This means that Bush's notorious "conscience clause" rules are on hold until Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services can review them. That would be Tom Daschle. It's highly unlikely that Daschle would sign off on these rules, which would give government healthcare workers unprecedented latitude to refuse reproductive health services on religious grounds.
2009 already is shaping up to be a year of surprises. Yesterday, we learned that America's favorite TV doctor, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, will likely be the next Surgeon General of the United States.
There has been good news and bad news in healthcare this week. On the plus side, momentum continues to build for healthcare reform on both a national and state-by-state level. Unfortunately, those sneaky rules changes at the Department of Health and Human Services appear to be a done deal.
Let's start with the bad new first to get it out of the way. It's a done deal, folks. RH Reality continues its coverage of the eleventh hour rules changes at the Department of Health and Human Services which will give federal employees the unprecedented right to refuse to give out birth control based on their demonstrably false religious belief that hormonal contraception is abortion. Despite massive public outcry, the rules have reached the final stage before they officially take effect.
Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has been offered the job of Health and Human Services secretary by President-elect Barack Obama and has accepted the job, according to a Democratic source close to Daschle.
Daschle, who served in the Senate until he lost his re-election bid in 2004, also is set to take on the position of "health care czar" in the Obama White House, ensuring that he does not get bigfooted on matters relating to health care policy, according to this source.
Leaving the merits of Daschle aside, isn't it weird that cabinet appointments are basically subordinate to White House staff positions? It's like, when did 'czar' become a laudable title? That's a Russian authoritarian title derived from the dictatorial name 'Caesar'. Go democracy!
Still, for my own bureaucratically OCD tendencies, I guess it's good that Daschle has finally reunited health care White House policy with the Cabinet department charged with leading health care policy.
In an article in today's New York Times, unnamed Obama advisers float a Tom Daschle trial balloon for Chief of Staff in an Obama administration; he's already been widely mentioned for other senior policy positions.
Appointing Daschle, who's pulls in around a million dollars a year as a "Special Policy Advisor" (not a lobbyist) for the law firm Alston and Bird, would be a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of Obama's pledge that lobbyists "will not run my White House" or his administration, one of the hallmarks of his platform and one of the main way he differentiates himself from John McCain's lobbyist-riddled campaign.
Although Daschle technically avoids lobbying requirements, here's how Bob Dole described the reasoning behind recruiting Daschle to join him to the Washington Post:
"He's got a lot of friends in the Senate, and I've got a lot of friends in the Senate, and, combined, who knows -- we might have 51," Dole joked. "It's going to work fine. You need some flexibility and diversity. I don't think any successful firm is all Democrat or all Republican."
There are several articles today on Obama moving to the center. In the LA Times, Obama is shifting toward the center, several pundits discussed Obama's recent political triangulating. Will Marshall of the DLC, Thomas Mann at the Brookings Institution, and Matt Bennett of Third Way all effusively praise Obama's repudiation of his own earlier statements on NAFTA and FISA. Marshall noted that "I've been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center." Indeed. Bennett commented that Obama is "doing all he can to make sure people know he would govern as a post-partisan moderate."
I won't delve into the DLC, as that terrain has been well-trod. To give some frame of reference on Third Way and Matt Bennett, it's worth noting that Bennett destroyed the Wes Clark campaign in 2004 as communications director, was pivotal in the loss to the NRA in his role in the triangulating Americans for Gun Safety (whose founding billionaire donor was indicted for embezzlement) around 2000, and works for an organization, Third Way, whose chairman strongly pushed the privatization of Social Security from within the Democratic Party in 2005. Third Way is funded by executives by all the top Wall Street firm in business: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and a variety of private investment, hedge fund, and private equity shops.
Bennett is such a loser and a failure that he got his start in politics working as an advance man for Michael Dukakis, and he "keeps the jumpsuit from the tank moment in his closet as a souvenir." Bennett is truly a man dedicated to ensuring that the status quo remains as is, and he's paid well by powerful financial interests to be such a loser.
"Those who accomplish the most are those who don't make the perfect the enemy of the good," said former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle, a key Obama supporter. "Barack is a pragmatist. In that sense, he has a larger vision but oftentimes knows that we can't get there with one legislative effort. When these occasions arise, he is willing to accept progress, even marginal gain, as a step toward that vision."
Tom Daschle, a former Senate Majority leader, is widely liked in DC. He's considered a lovely man, wise and with a wide network of supporters and loyalists that were fighting the Clinton wing of the party in the 1990s through Congress. Of course, Daschle is also known as a key supporter of the Iraq war, co-sponsoring and jamming through the Iraq War resolution, undercutting Joe Biden's attempt to push a different resolution requiring UN authorization before the President was authorized to use force. It's possible to see this as just a bad political decision, but there's more behind the scenes.
His wife, Linda Daschle is a lobbyist for pharmaceutical industries, aerospace, and defense contractors. During her husband's time as a key political leader within the Democratic Party, she pledged to remain independent of her husband's work, but that kind of conflict of interest, with a Senate Majority leader married to a defense contracting lobbyist is pretty severe.
It's quite obvious that Daschle didn't take the conflict of interest very seriously, as he did very well after leaving the Senate in 2004, joining K Street law firm Alston and Bird to become a special advisor paid in the neighborhood of a million dollars a year to help in "the law firm's legislative and public policy group." He was recruited by another Alston and Bird's special advisor, Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole. Daschle was an ally of corporate interests in Congress, literally married to them in fact. And outside of Congress, he reaped a rich reward.
The kicker of course, is that Alston and Bird did work lobbying on immunity for telecoms on FISA, even serving as a recruitment bed for the McCain campaign. And that's what is really going on. Bribery. Tom Daschle goes in the Washington Post and makes the argument that Obama is being pragmatic by caving to big business on a core issue of civil liberties. He preaches the virtues of bipartisanship while working at a firm whose McCain supporting lawyers also support immunity for telecom interests. Meanwhile, Daschle and his wife are and did make enormous sums of money lobbying for the firms benefiting from Obama's so-called pragmatism. It's a sick, perverted, corroded system whereby perpetual political losers like Matt Bennett and affable status quo lobbyists like Tom Daschle push their agenda through journalists like Jonathan Weisman, without any disclosure whatsoever about possible conflicts of interest. And it's bipartisan and flows through the leadership of both parties.
Tom Daschle is going to end up in a powerful position within the Obama administration, either head of HHS or Chief of Staff. He's going to use the millions he and his wife have made to throw parties, give gifts, have a wonderful life, go to important conferences like Davos, and generally preach in favor of 'moderation' and 'bipartisanship'. What's important here is that we on OpenLeft and in the blogs in general be educated about who these people really are. Tom Daschle's belief is that moderation and moving to the center is pragmatic, and it is. Or at least it is for Tom Daschle. How else would he make a million dollars a year with his friend Bob Dole?
The single man most responsible for the fiscal wreckage that is our budget, other than Bush himself, is up to his old tricks. I'm talking about Max Baucus.
A little bit about the 2001 tax fight before I get to the main point. In the heat of the fight over the massively irresponsible Bush tax cut, Tom Daschle in a much under-reported and under-appreciated speech to the Senate Democratic caucus told his colleagues that the only way to have power with Bush in the White House and Republicans controlling the House and Senate was to hang together and have each others backs. If we stay together, Daschle said, Bush will be forced to come to the table on this and every other bill.
Baucus, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, promptly went out and cut a deal with the Bush White House, giving them virtually everything they wanted. It ended any chance the Democrats had to stop Bush on his most important single policy, and set a pattern for a lack of Democratic solidarity against Bush that continues to this day.
Now Baucus is screwing his fellow Democrats again. The Hill has a new article by Alexander Bolton describing how Baucus is helping Gordon Smith, using Smith's language and giving Smith lots of credit on an Iranian sanctions bill. Smith is one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the Senate, and Baucus is delightedly helping him out on a highly questionable bill. That is just pathetic.
Baucus has never been a progressive, spending way too much time sucking up to big corporate interests, as David Sirota has documented many times. But, jeez, Max, at least don't screw over your fellow Democrats politically - again.
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