Pennsylvania 2010 - The Official Thread

[Lunar]

I also support his no vote on the Employee Forced Choice Act. I think Congresspeople should take a very strong stand against bills that don't exist.

Doesn't the legislation exist already?  Wasn't it unsuccessfully introduced in 2007?


It's not like anyone is confused as to what the current state of the bill, introduced by Tom Harkin (D-IA) means policy-wise.  It's pretty easy to take a stand on that.

[Lief 🗽]

I oppose the Forced choice act, because there's no such thing. I strongly support the Employee Free Choice Act.

[Lunar]

Ah, I missed the key word!  Nevermind, I don't keep up with topical subjects which I myself introduce, apparently.

[Keystone Phil]

Uh, no thanks, Mark - http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_624341.html


I remember liking the guy when he ran for Mayor of Pittsburgh but he was insanely hyped. They were talking about him having a real chance at winning and then he went on to lose 65% to 35%.

If I remember correctly, he was a rather progressive candidate which is fine with me (for the most part) in city elections but this isn't another Mayoral race. He has money but he'd be trounced. He won't run anyway. The anti Toomey forces are really struggling...

In other news, Bill Scranton said he won't run either.

[TeePee4Prez]

Think this will get to 500 pages by early 2010?

[© tweed]

Think this will get to 500 pages by early 2010?

no

[Lunar]

If Rick Santorum enters the race against Toomey, yes

[Keystone Phil]

If Rick Santorum enters the race against Toomey, yes

Don't even joke like that. I'd support the guy I like more but I would not want him to get in the race with Toomey already in the running. Plus, there is the fact that Toomey is more electable...

[Lunar]

Don't even joke like that?  It's not like I'm making a necrophiliac joke about my friend's dead mother or something like that, I just know it would generate such a flurry of posts that it'd be hilarious.

[Lunar]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_health_overhaul

Specter reversess his position on having a public component in healthcare reform.  Shocked, I'm shocked.

Odds of Senator Sestak drop rather substantively.  Health care is something that could come down to a 59-60 wire and there is nothing more important on the Democratic agenda this year.

[Keystone Phil]

Don't even joke like that?   I just know it would generate such a flurry of posts that it'd be hilarious.

I know but that primary would drive some of us insane (as if we're not crazy enough). 

[Torie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_health_overhaul

Specter reversess his position on having a public component in healthcare reform.  Shocked, I'm shocked.

Odds of Senator Sestak drop rather substantively.  Health care is something that could come down to a 59-60 wire and there is nothing more important on the Democratic agenda this year.

What do we all think of this Op Ed editorial from the WSJ?  Sam Spade? Does the language, "they'll add a new multitrillion-dollar liability to the federal fisc anyway, using a process that was designed to cut spending and reduce the deficit," refer to circumventing a filibuster cloture vote, and if so, what is the leverage on the GOP wets if the Dems have the power anyway? Is the game here to give the wets a bone, and if so, why would the wets accept a bone?  This part of the editorial is quite opaque to me and does not very clearly present the mechanics of the coercion.

Republicans and the 'Public Option'

A case in which compromise means government health care.

   
So Democrats have declared their willingness to use a parliamentary tactic to force a far-reaching restructuring of U.S. health care through Congress on a partisan vote. Imagine if Tom DeLay had tried to do that on, say, Social Security. Would Democrats have rolled over?

On the one hand, President Obama and his party say they're hoping to strike a good-faith compromise on health care. On the other, they're threatening this "budget reconciliation" maneuver to coerce Republicans into rubber-stamping liberal policy. And if the GOP won't oblige, Democrats say they'll add a new multitrillion-dollar liability to the federal fisc anyway, using a process that was designed to cut spending and reduce the deficit.

The political game here is that Democrats want to use this threat to peel off a handful of GOP Senators before the bill comes to the floor in June. That would short-circuit this year's health-care debate before it begins. Their targets include the likes of Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, all of whom bowed to the Democrats in 2007 on expanding the state children's insurance program (Schip). But those were minor stakes compared to this year's battle, especially over the so-called public option for health insurance.

This new entitlement -- like Medicare but open to all ages and all incomes -- would quickly crowd out private insurance as people gravitated to heavily subsidized policies, eventually leading to a single-payer system. So Democrats are trying to seduce diffident Republicans with a Potemkin compromise. A "soft" public option would limit enrollment only to the uninsured or those employed by small businesses, or include promises that the plan will pay market rates. As recently proposed by Chuck Schumer, it would pay claims entirely with premiums and co-pays. But if the plan can't force down reimbursement rates through brute force, and doesn't get taxpayer dollars, why bother to "compete" with private plans?

The truth is Democrats know that any policy guardrails built this year can be dismantled once the basic public option architecture is in place. The White House strategy is to dilute it just enough to win over credulous Republicans. That is what has always happened with government health programs:

When Medicare was created in 1965, benefits were relatively limited and retirees paid a substantial percentage of the costs of their own care. But the clout of retirees has always led to expanding benefits for seniors while raising taxes on younger workers.

In 1965, Congressional actuaries expected Medicare to cost $3.1 billion by 1970. In 1969, that estimate was revised to $5 billion, and it actually came in at $6.8 billion. That same year, the Senate Finance Committee declared a Medicare cost emergency. In 1979, Jimmy Carter proposed limiting benefits, only to have the bill killed by fellow Democrats. Things have gotten worse since, and Medicare today costs $455 billion and rising.

Medicaid was intended as a last resort for the poor but now covers one-third of all long-term care expenses in the U.S. -- that is, it has become a middle-class subsidy for aging parents of the Baby Boomers. Its annual bill is $227 billion, and so far this fiscal year is rising by 17%.

Schip was pitched a decade ago as a safety net for poor kids, and some Republicans helped sell it as a free-market reform. But Schip is now open to families that earn up to 300% of the poverty level, or $63,081 for a family of four. In New York, you can qualify at 400% of poverty.

Any new federal health plan will inevitably follow the same trajectory, no matter how much Republican Senators might claim they've guaranteed otherwise. The Lewin Group consultants estimate that 119 million people who now have private insurance could potentially be captured by the government under the Obama public option. This is on top of the 90 million already in Medicare or Medicaid. This would guarantee a spending explosion that would over time lift federal outlays as a share of GDP into the upper 20% range or higher. Republicans would spend the rest of their days deciding whether to vote for tax increases to finance this, or stand accused of denying health care to the middle class.

This doesn't mean the die is cast. Democrats also know that durable reforms in America have typically passed with bipartisan majorities. They understand that a national health plan that passes on partisan lines could be pared back as unaffordable or unfair, the way the "catastrophic" health plan for seniors was repealed in 1989.

As New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg recently told us, Democrats also don't want their swing-state Senators to have to defend such a partisan process in the 2010 election. That's why they're eager for even the veneer of bipartisanship that three or four GOP Senators would provide. And that's why they're willing to threaten a procedural bludgeon to intimidate Republicans to provide that veneer.

This health-care debate isn't like the "stimulus" bill, which was largely about short-term spending and deficits. This one is about whether to turn 17% of the U.S. economy entirely and permanently into the arms of the government. For Republicans, this is about whether they still stand for anything at all.

[Lief 🗽]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_health_overhaul

Specter reversess his position on having a public component in healthcare reform.  Shocked, I'm shocked.

Odds of Senator Sestak drop rather substantively.  Health care is something that could come down to a 59-60 wire and there is nothing more important on the Democratic agenda this year.

Don't we only need 51 votes for that?

[Lunar]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_health_overhaul

Specter reversess his position on having a public component in healthcare reform.  Shocked, I'm shocked.

Odds of Senator Sestak drop rather substantively.  Health care is something that could come down to a 59-60 wire and there is nothing more important on the Democratic agenda this year.

Don't we only need 51 votes for that?

Only if it's ramrodded through in the budget, which neither Reid nor Obama want to do. 

[Lunar]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_health_overhaul

Specter reversess his position on having a public component in healthcare reform.  Shocked, I'm shocked.

Odds of Senator Sestak drop rather substantively.  Health care is something that could come down to a 59-60 wire and there is nothing more important on the Democratic agenda this year.

What do we all think of this Op Ed editorial from the WSJ? 

Reid and Obama have been threatening to do this through reconciliation for a while.

It's less likely now that Specter has switched, depending on what Nelson and Bayh do.  It's a threat that's a negotiating tactic to force the GOP to cede some ground -- accept a moderated form of healthcare reform or let us design it completely.  It would temporarily ruin relations between the GOP and the Democrats, but Obama is determined to get healthcare reform done this year no matter how much unified opposition he faces.

[Torie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_health_overhaul

Specter reversess his position on having a public component in healthcare reform.  Shocked, I'm shocked.

Odds of Senator Sestak drop rather substantively.  Health care is something that could come down to a 59-60 wire and there is nothing more important on the Democratic agenda this year.

What do we all think of this Op Ed editorial from the WSJ? 

Reid and Obama have been threatening to do this through reconciliation for a while.

It's less likely now that Specter has switched, depending on what Nelson and Bayh do.  It's a threat that's a negotiating tactic to force the GOP to cede some ground -- accept a moderated form of healthcare reform or let us design it completely.  It would temporarily ruin relations between the GOP and the Democrats, but Obama is determined to get healthcare reform done this year no matter how much unified opposition he faces.

Ya, but then Obama loses the GOP veneer, and he probably wants a more moderate plan anyway, and just wants GOP fingerprints on the moderation part rather than his. I suspect in the end the Dems would do this anyway, and are unwilling to do more to get a few GOP wets. What they want is the both 1) the deal outlined by the WSJ with a fig leaf of a level playing field to be worn down later, and 2) GOP wet fingerprints on it. Getting number 2) however is just gravy, and not essential.

That is my wild intuition without knowing the details of the specifics being talked about like you may, because you may read all that stuff that you find links for.

[Lunar]

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2009/05/sestak_leaning_towards_run_aga.php

don't ask about the link. 

[Keystone Phil]

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2009/05/sestak_leaning_towards_run_aga.php

don't ask about the link. 

Hahaha! Va bene!

[Lunar]

http://www.pa2010.com/2009/05/scranton-not-running-for-senate/

[Keystone Phil]

http://www.pa2010.com/2009/05/scranton-not-running-for-senate/

As noted elsewhere in this thread. 

He wouldn't have been a threat anyway.

[Lunar]

somebody's trying to not act like a far-right ideologue now that Specter is out.  I think I predicted a while ago that Specter leaving gives Toomey the ability to adopt a more moderate persona if he so chooses -- at the very least it gives Toomey the opportunity to not spend millions of dollars talking about how far-right he is.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0509/Toomeys_expanding_tent.html

[Keystone Phil]

Good thing he wasn't a far right wing ideologue to begin with... 

As I've said, Sestak now gets to be the "moderate slayer." We'll love every minute of it.

[Lunar]

Well, Toomey slew him first.  The difference is of course is that Specter and Sestak would be involved in an aggressive race to the left, and informing the electorate about how liberal they are on the issues, etc. while Toomey just has to stave off a few crazies Luksiks.

[Keystone Phil]

Well, Toomey slew him first. 

But nobody sees that. You're thinking too much like a politico. Your average voter isn't going to remember that Toomey "forced Arlen out" of the GOP primary.

[Keystone Phil]

Only a sort of a debut since he attended their events when he was a Dem before. As you'll see, his wife Joan is by his side like usual. For those that didn't know, Joan was the first Specter victim in GOP politics. She was a Republican Councilwoman At Large until current Councilman Frank Rizzo, Jr. (the son of our beloved late Mayor) beat her in 1995.

http://www.pa2010.com/2009/05/philly-dems-greet-specter/

The Philly GOP Spring event was last night as well. Both parties have major cocktail parties a week before elections. The Philly GOP Spring cocktail is usually not well attended but there was plenty of Specter bashing in attendance.    It made for a great Birthday gift.