I think they are withholding the CBO score because without the Public Option, cutting back on the excise tax (Cadillac tax, yes they did that by giving Unions a reprieve, and not raising taxes on the wealthy, the House bill is more costly than even the Senate version. In order for it to pass via reconciliation the bill must be cost effective and in the case of this particular bell must cost less than the one the Senate has already passed. Ergo, hold back the CBO report until they can hammer out details that add to the cost to tax payers. Confused? That's what they want.
The Senate bill further entrenches the private health insurance system. It continues the terrible pattern of privatizing our social safety net in such a way that business skims 20% off the top. It makes sure the big, life saving medications of the future remain incredibly expensive, so as to enrich the drug industry. It takes a giant step towards eroding women's reproductive rights. It wastes hundreds of millions to fortify the same, broken health care system that is crushing our economy. The worst part is I don't see anything in this bill that might serve as a path to real reform. There is no public option or Medicare buy-in. There is no proper state single payer waiver. There is no mechanism to move to an all-payer system and/or a clear path to force for-profit companies out of the health insurance market.
Democrats hoped to receive the Congressional Budget Office report on the legislation's budgetary impact late Tuesday night. Because Democrats are using special budget rules, known as reconciliation, to protect the package from a Republican filibuster, the measure must reduce the deficit by at least $2 billion over the next five years and avoid increasing the deficit in any year thereafter. Under normal circumstances, that rule would require the bill simply to contain enough revenue-raising provisions to offset new spending. But, like so much else in the health-care debate, this time it is more complicated.
Instead of being measured against current law, the deficit-reduction potential of the "fixes" package will be measured against the Senate bill, which must be passed by the House before the Senate can approve the fixes. The Senate bill would trim $118 billion from the deficit over the next decade and hundreds of billions of dollars in the following 10 years. For the fixes package to comply with reconciliation rules, it must also promise significant long-term deficit reduction, aides said.
However, the abortion language was always going to be a problem for the Illinois lawmaker, and this is a fairly clear sign that he has returned to the Stupak bloc and out of the "Stupak-curious" realm. So add another no vote to the big board. With leaners, you're at 205-210, with Democrats able to lose only 5 of the remaining uncommitted 16:
Why have we not yet seen a reconciliation bill with a final CBO score? It needs to be made public today if they want to have it online for 72 hours before a planned Saturday vote. The answer seems to be that they are having trouble putting together a reconciliation bill that the CBO will project as saving a sufficient amount of money.
There is, of course, a very easy solution to the House Democrats' CBO trouble. They could add a public option or Medicare buy-in. The CBO projects that even a very weak and restricted public option would save the government $25 billion. A stronger but still restricted public option would save roughly $110 billion. Those savings would be more than large enough to produce an acceptable CBO score.
Of course, Democrats are not going to include a public option because it would ruin bipartisanship, we need Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Dick Durbin would whip against it, the Senate does not have the votes, the Senate has the votes the House does not, it might delay the bill Obama traded it away to the for-profit hospitals in a backroom deal. Instead, I suspect that they will make up the loss by either raising more taxes or cutting much-needed aid to students and community colleges.
Have fun explaining that move Democrats. Go home and tell your constituents that not only did you deny them the public option they overwhelming want, but you decided to take money from low income college students, and use it to protect the profits of the private health insurance industry.
This is GOOD NEWS for John McCain, and it comes at the expense of 42,000 Arizona children. What a sellout maverick.
Roughly translated, McCain and the Arizona GOP's message to sick AZ children would read like this . . . .
Dear Tiny Tim,
SCHIP costs money that should be going to tax cuts for the rich. Get a job and buy private insurance. Until then, don't get sick, and if you do, die quickly.
Tough shit, Sen. John McCain
U.S. Sen. John McCain may finally get his health-care wish, which is less care for fewer of Arizona's children.
The Arizona legislature voted to permanently end the state's participation in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), 13 years after McCain voted against it and 3 years after leading the charge against reauthorizing the popular bi-partisan program.
McCain's home state of Arizona is now the first and only state to ever opt out of SCHIP.
For Immediate Release
Rodney Glassman U.S. Senate
Exploratory Committee
PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Haiti has unveiled the first draft of its grand reconstruction plan, saying 11.5 billion dollars would be needed to help the country rebuild after January's devastating earthquake.
Prepared by the government with the help of the international community, the Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment (PDNA) will provide the framework for discussions at a major donors conference in New York on March 31.
The plan, published online Tuesday, goes far beyond the immediate priorities of post-quake reconstruction and looks at the massive economic and governance challenges Haiti faces if it wants to become a fully functional state.
The fact that Newspapers are folding, left and right, is hardly News. It's a long-term trend playing out, due to the 'Market Forces' of the Internet.
What is News is the effect that Internet Bloggers (aka Citizen Journalists) are having on the long, slow fade of "Traditional" News.
It seems fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for their News, these days -- and WHY should we when we can find it FREE on-line, often with a dash of humor and wit throw-in, for free too!
One Problem though -- Bloggers to maintain credibility, have this little habit of citing those very same "Traditional" News Sources who are quietly fading away, as we speak Type.
I think there is a "Chicken and Egg" thing going on here -- just few of us have yet to realize it.
Could be someday we go out to get our Information Breakfast -- and it turns out that both "nutritional items" have turned up MISSING! (the Blogger and the Source)
(Dennis Kucinich is demonstrating his leadership again by calling for "The Medicare Public Option", the proposal to allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare, to be passed in reconciliation of the current health care bill.
Though as originally introduced on the House floor, Representative Alan Grayson did not expressly ask that the Medicare You Can Buy Into Act (HR4789) be passed immediately, in reconciliation of the current Senate health care bill, he has since suggested that he is interested in this, and there is already a movement growing to do exactly that.
Dennis Kucinich has a new radio spot on this issue ready to go:
"Hi, this is Dennis Kucinich, on REAL health reform. We all know what really needs to be done, to expand what's REALLY working, which is Medicare, in a way that makes common sense, and is fiscally sound. That's why I'M pushing for an up or down vote on The Medicare Public Option, to give people younger than age 65 the OPTION to buy into Medicare, at a fair price, if they WANT to. I don't KNOW what the rest of Congress is going to do, I just want you to know, that as YOUR representative I'm fighting so that you can have a REAL DEAL. I'm Dennis Kucinich, and I approved this message." - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Jane Hamsher, again, says it quite eloquently when she calls out MoveOn.org for attacking Dennis Kucinich for sticking with his promise to not vote for a HCR bill that did not have a Public Option. Rep. Kucinich is being attack by the so-called "liberal" blogosphere that has now veered fo far right that it is unrecognizable to true progressives like Ms. Hamsher.
Last August, progressive groups including MoveOn, DFA and blogs across the country came together to raise over $430,000 for 65 members of Congress who pledged to vote against any health care bill that doesn't have a public option.
Now every excuse made by the President and Congress for not including a public option has crumbled. MoveOn is against Kucinich for keeping that promise, and far from supporting members of Congress who keep that pledge, the unions are them with primaries.
This is going to be an action packed weekend in DC and around the nation. On Friday, there will be protests of Yoo. On Saturday, there will be a massive antiwar demonstration (there will also be demonstrations in Philly, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Dakota, among other places). On Sunday, there will be a large march for immigration reform. And there will be other related events around the country, along with the small protests and events that happen all the time.
So join me below the fold to see how you can effect change this weekend.
(10 am. Co-incident with Dennis' presser. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Well..well.well. Guess who Barack Obama is finally paying attention to? Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Only not necessarily in a good way.
First, Obama chose the State of Ohio as his staged photo-op site for his last public Health Care Rally (apart from D.C. speeches), and guess who was onboard Air-Force 1? Dennis Kucinich. I'll bet Kucinich hasn't even been invited on Air Force 1 perhaps more than 2 or 3 times in his entire career.
But, then Obama put a plant in the audience to yell out "Vote Yes" right on cue, when Obama called out Congressman Kucinich's name.
The goal was to make it appear that RahmobombaMonopolyCare is just so overwhelmingly popular with the little people that Kucinich would have no choice but to drop his principled objections to the Corporate bailout bill, or otherwise face mutiny by his own district, and by his own supporters.
Well done bit of stage craft by Obama (he's slick), but the fact remains that progressives do not like this shabby excuse for "reform", once they are told what is in it (IRS forced mandates and enslavement to the Insurance Monopoly), and what is not going to be in it (cost control, competition, medicare expansion, public choice).
O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!
No more Saint Patrick's Day we'll keep, his color can't be seen
For there's a cruel law ag'in the Wearin' o' the Green.
I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand
And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?"
"She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there for the Wearin' o' the Green."
So if the color we must wear be England's cruel red
Let it remind us of the blood that Irishmen have shed
And pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod
But never fear, 'twill take root there, though underfoot 'tis trod.
When laws can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow
And when the leaves in summer-time their color dare not show
Then I will change the color too I wear in my caubeen
But till that day, please God, I'll stick to the Wearin' o' the Green.
DOHA (AFP) - A booming black market in African ivory linked to Asian crime syndicates may scupper efforts by Zambia and Tanzania to hold a one-off sale of tusks, experts and delegates at a UN wildlife trade meeting say.
At its last gathering in 2007, the UN-backed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted for a nine-year moratorium on exports of African ivory.
The ban went into effect in 2008, after South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe carried out a one-time sale to Japan and China of stockpiled ivory.
This week I decided to declare this Friday, "Building Day".
The distractions I`m posting tonight are meant for you to also build on in your own way.
Building something is always a great way to forget the travails of everyday life.
I`ll start off with the basics.
Here it is, our last report on the disaster that is the Breitbartocalypse. We've got more from our in-the-field reporter, as well as an exclusive interview with the Policy Director of the Institutional Left™:
The White House has the bill it really always wanted. They have their deals with PhRMA, AHIP, and the Hospitals more or less unbroken . . . they have their real goal in sight.
The White House has their individual mandate--a law that will require those without coverage to buy from private health insurers under pain of penalty enforced by the IRS--they have their restrictions on drug reciprocation and direct drug price negotiation intact, and they have kept their word on the handshake deal that they made last spring with the medical industrial complex: no public option.
This is Ground Control,
to Major Rahm,
You've really made the grade . . .
In hiring Emanuel, Obama avoided the mistakes of his Democratic predecessors, who first gave the chief of staff job to besotted loyalists. Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter. Obama's greatest mistake was failing to listen to Emanuel on health care. He opposed the public option as a needless distraction. Had it gone Emanuel's way, a politically popular health-care bill would have passed long ago, leaving plenty of time for other attractive priorities.
Like awarding Dana Milbank a Medal of Freedom, for example.
Nope, it's the start of the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship which should be a little more interesting than the Women's side where I confidently predict the Lady Huskies will romp to their 5th undefeated season and 7th Championship (still 1 behind Tennessee's record 8).
Tonight's Play In game, starting at 7:30 pm on ESPN is between Arkansas (Pine Bluff) 16 - 15 and Winthrop 19 - 13. The winner advances to the South Region 16th seed where they will face Duke Friday in the 7:25 game on CBS.
The round of 64 is happening Thursday and Friday, the round of 32 Saturday and Sunday. The fact of the matter is I'm really not quite sure how to blog it, so if anyone wants to jump in and volunteer I'm more than happy to let them show me the way.
In the interests of full disclosure I'm not much interested in any teams except Syracuse and Michigan State and I expect them both to make early exits. I suppose I'll try and summon some enthusiasm for whatever Big East team lasts the longest, I predict Georgetown because they have another monster Center.
This might be a short diary, and I hope you will forgive me.
You see, one thing bothers me. Columbo style, you might say. You might say it sticks in my craw. Makes me scratch my head in puzzlement. But in order for me to ask it in the most expansive possible fashion you might have to bear with me while I circle, apparently aimlessly, around to my question..
We see these problems in our country. Some of these problems revolve around accountability, others account to a systemic shafting of the middle class, and still others revolve around political will.
We have a country in which a Democratic Senator backtracks endlessly on basic oversight regulation for people who potentially stole or defrauded the American Middle Class out of billions or perhaps trillions of dollars. Yet this is the same country that will have bespectacled IRS Agents showing up at a car wash with threats and demands for 4 cents in back taxes.
(HT/Colorado Is the Shiznit).
We have a country in which the Attorney General's Office of the United States of America will spend lawyers, briefs, and endless uncounted dollars making sure that two people with the same dangly bits can't possibly join their lives together in a manner that might make them eligible for one cent of government benefits -- benefits their taxes paid for.
Yet we have this SAME country where, when even supposedly "respected" mortgage companies defraud millions and millions of home owners, nothing, apparently can be done -- our government, we are led to believe, is utterly helpless to hold them accountable.
We know that accountability does still exist in this country, for some people.
We know, for example, that if I were to go out, with a finger in my jacket, and hold up a liquor store for $50, I would be going to prison for a long long time.
Yet we have this country, that whispers, siren like in our ear -- "Just be a BIGGER criminal. Steal MORE. Then they won't put you in prison, they'll promote you to Secretary of the Treasury."
MONROVIA (AFP) - Liberia's rainforests, once ravaged for blood timber sold to fund one of Africa's bloodiest civil wars, are being primed as a lucrative and legal industry using cutting-edge tracking technology.
One by one an electronic tag -- similar to bar codes used on consumer products -- is attached to trees in the thick woodlands covering 45 percent of the West African nation, a painstaking process that will allow consumers to trace the end-product right back to the stump.
While the use of "blood diamonds" to fund wars in the region is better known, it was timber that propped up armed factions, notably those of former president Charles Taylor, during 14 years of Liberian conflict that left over 250,000 dead.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
This is GOOD NEWS for John McCain, and it comes at the expense of 42,000 Arizona children. What a 
