Entries for October 2009

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Anyone who follows U.S. politics now accepts as fact the idea that the Republican victories in the off-year elections of 1993 set up the 1994 GOP landslide. According to almost all the analysis, the first real signs that Bill Clinton was much weaker politically than the national media was reporting were the elections of Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey and Republican mayors in Los Angeles and New York City, hardly hospitable territory for candidates of the Grand Old Party.

Jumping forward 16 years, with a similar set of elections having rolled around, both parties are trying to set up the spin on next week's results. The Republicans will argue that any positive results, like winning the Virginia governorship, mean the GOP is on the comeback trail, with how far along they are being dependent on how many victories they post. The Democrats will argue that the re-election of New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, if it happens, or any other good news, means the party remains strong.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The instant analysis of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's healthcare bill shows that not much has changed since Congress broke for the August recess.

The plan Pelosi unveiled Thursday, if passed into law, would generate higher taxes, higher premiums, Medicare cuts, and a decline in the quality of the American healthcare system. According to the pro-taxpayer group Americans for Tax Reform, a simple word search of the Pelosi bill uncovered the word "tax" 87 times, "taxable" 62 times, and found 10 instances of the phrase "excise tax." What she and her fellow Democrats are offering is not "free healthcare"—it is an illusion.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

For a president who promised his inauguration was the beginnings of a period of post-partisanship, the level of Barack Obama's permanent campaign activities is somewhat surprising.

Obama was the victim of the perennial cheap-shot earlier in the week when bloggers pointed out he was playing more golf than his predecessor, George W. Bush—who gave up the game because he believed it was inappropriate for him to be seen on the links while U.S. troops were in the field. And, with healthcare reform moving forward and a string of otherwise favorable coverage in the bank, the White House political team was probably feeling pretty good.

So it must have been quite a shock Wednesday when the Washington Times gave its readers the insider's view of how the White House wines and dines its most prominent and lucrative supporters.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

As de Tocqueville wrote nearly two centuries ago, America's greatness can be found in the spiritedness of its volunteers. It was the volunteer spirit that built this country and it is the volunteer spirit that has sustained it through some of its darkest hours, especially in times of war. And, where America's troops and their families are concerned, that spirit is alive and well.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 8,000 children have lost a U.S. service-member parent as a result of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. To help these children succeed, to help them understand that they are valued and important, a group of folks founded an organization called Snowball Express, "a charity for the children of our fallen military heroes." Its mission is a simple one: to bring families experiencing the loss of a service-member parent together so that they can realize they are not alone.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

DALLAS—The debate over the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is reduced too often to arguments about numbers and throw weights and force projections and politics. And, almost secondarily and from the level of about five miles up, the troops—what they need and what they deserve.

Saturday night I got to see some of them, up close and personal, at an event called Sky Ball, in an airport hangar here. I would challenge any reporter or journalist or blogger to do the same and then remain unaffected by what they saw and what they heard there.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The proponents of healthcare reform claim costs will spiral out of control if the government fails to fundamentally change the nature of the American system. They are quick to point, for example, that the United States spends more per capita and more as a percentage of GDP on healthcare than any other nation. And that these expenditures are, for the most powerful economy in the world, somehow unsustainable unless something is done to, in the words of White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, "bend the cost curve."

President Obama said much the same thing in his joint address to Congress, in which he pledged he would not sign a healthcare bill that added to the deficit. Which is part of the reason—the other is to reduce the total advertised cost of healthcare reform—that Senate Democrats tried to move a piece of legislation that would freeze the automatic cuts in the reimbursements made to doctors and hospitals under Medicare. With that provision included, as I wrote Wednesday, a healthcare reform bill that also included what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refers to as "a robust public option" would do to the spending and deficit targets what the iceberg did to the Titanic.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Under a fig leaf provided by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats who run the House of Representatives are trying to pull a fast one where healthcare reform is concerned.

Back when he spoke to a joint session of Congress, President Obama outlined his vision for a healthcare reform bill that, while he has yet to put anything to paper that has been released to the public, promised a deficit-neutral outcome. None of the three bills currently before the House met that criteria, in no small measure because the so-called public option is a budget buster.