Entries for July 2009

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

It's going to be a long, hot summer for Members of Congress who are headed home to face constituents angry about healthcare reform.

Advocacy groups are engaged in an unprecedented level of spending in an effort to influence the vote, which is now expected to occur no earlier than September. There are big bucks in play, and no wonder: the U.S. healthcare system represents about 17 percent of the annual GDP. There's a lot at stake because, and the cliché is unavoidable here, healthcare is a life or death issue.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership over the U.S. House is in a rocky state.

Back in January, Pelosi backed an effort by fellow California Democrat Henry Waxman to oust Michigan's John Dingell from the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell, currently the House's most senior member, was thought by many on the party's left to be too close to the automakers located in his home state and would, therefore, be an impediment to what the Obama administration wanted to do to curb the production of greenhouse gases.

Waxman, a liberal's liberal from Los Angeles, is a well-known opponent of big business, a friend to the trial lawyers, and someone who was seen as far more sympathetic to the views of radical environmentalists who, like former Vice President Al Gore, regard the internal combustion engine as a threat "more deadly than that of any military enemy" to the continued survival of man.

Putting Waxman in the chair in place of Dingell was a big change—one that had a major impact on much of the important legislation the current Congress has taken up—including Obama's stimulus package, the "cap-and-trade" national energy tax, the Detroit bailout and, most recently, healthcare reform.

The problem for Pelosi is that unlike Dingell, who was and is an acknowledged master of the deal, Waxman, a lead sponsor of the healthcare reform package that has been stuck for days in his committee, just can't seem to get it done.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Until last year, the Commonwealth of Virginia had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, the year LBJ trounced Barry Goldwater. Obama's victory along with his party's back-to-back wins for governor and the election of not one but two Democrats to the U.S. Senate have some conservatives thinking its time for some new ideas.

Enter Bob Marcellus, the president of the Richmond Group Fund Co. Ltd., who is assembling a coalition of business leaders and academics in support of a single, simple idea: the complete elimination of Virginia's corporate income tax.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

It should come as no surprise, as Rasmussen Reports said Tuesday, that the recent government bailouts of General Motors and the Chrysler Corporation have affected public attitudes toward the U.S. automakers. But rather than pitch in to help the struggling manufacturers continue to stay afloat, 46 percent of Americans indicated to Rasmussen that they were more likely to buy a new car from Ford—if they were, in fact, buying a new car—because it did not take government money in order to keep its doors open.

Call it a competitive advantage for Ford. By staying away from the bailout, the company has potentially increased its share of the market place by a significant amount, especially among those who insist on "buying America" as a political statement.

Only 13 percent of those responding in the national telephone survey said Ford's refusal to request government assistance made them less likely to purchase a car from the automaker in the future. But that's less than the 19 percent of Americans who said that someone in their family or a friend chose not to buy from Chrysler or GM because of the government bailout.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Those who would have the U.S. government play a larger role in healthcare like to point to Canada as an example the United States should follow. Their argument, in sum, is that healthcare there is of high quality, is readily available and, because of generous government subsidies, much cheaper. In fact, most Americans know little about the inner workings of the Canadian system other than the anecdotal evidence provided by both sides of the debate. A look at the hard data, however, suggests there is more support for the arguments put forward by the critics of the Canadian system than by those who see it as a model for the United States.

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Intensity matters in politics and, at times, is more important than approval.

It may be, and the ratings certainly suggested this was the case, that the television viewing public preferred Jay Leno to David Letterman when choosing which late-night talk show to watch. From a political standpoint, however, it would do a candidate for elective office little good at the polls to announce he was a "Leno person" or to denounce Letterman. Preference in late-night talk show hosts is simply not an issue on which people vote.

On the other hand there are issues which, while they matter little to the vast majority of the electorate, are of great importance to a minority of voters; indeed these issues do a lot to shape the attitudes of these voters and to direct their behavior in the voting booth.

The issue of Barack Obama's citizenship falls into that latter category.

There are those who, despite ample evidence to the contrary, maintain that Obama was born outside the United States. And that, as such, he is not a natural-born citizen of this country and is not eligible to hold the high office he now occupies. These people—whom my bloleague Robert Schlesinger calls "birthers"—despite some fairly convincing details on the other side of the argument, argue that the copy of Obama's birth certificate that has been made available for public examination is either an outright fraud or some kind of forgery.

It is true that the advocates of this position have raised some intriguing questions but, as yet, there is little if anything that suggests their argument holds water—much like those who alleged throughout the Bush presidency that there was something sinister in the manner in which George W. Bush ended his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard. A series of questions neither an investigation nor a conclusion make. The burden of proof in both cases is to demonstrate the allegations raised have substance. It is not the responsibility of the subject of those allegations to disprove them.

President Barack Obama's prime time press conference having done little to reassure a wavering public, it seems the Democrats hope to create a national healthcare system may once again have slipped out of out reach. The president agrees that his timetable has been thrown off and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says they won't take up the issue before the recess despite the fact that he has a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats behind him. The committee process in the House has ground to a standstill, with the less liberal "Blue Dog Democrats" almost in rebellion against House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., over the cost of the so-called tri-committee health care proposal.

Privately, the word is moving through Washington that the White House is prepared to abandon the idea of the public option that is causing so much concern, particularly in the medical community, which is not likely to endorse anything that leads to further federal price controls on healthcare.