The daily Progressive Breakfast serves up what progressive movement members need to know to start their day.
Choice of Public Option Still Popular
Speaker Pelosi says only public option will pass House. Bloomberg quotes: "There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option."
W. Post poll still shows support for public option, albeit reduced to 52%, while SurveyUSA poll -- which emphasized "choice" -- shows 77%.
The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder lists reasons for optimism: "When phrased fairly, Americans still support the basic premise of health care reform, and they seem to like the president's ideas. They like the "choice" frame as applied to a public option, especially if they get the choice ... [media elite types] say that reconciliation isn't possible, likely, or feasible. But enough Senate Democrats are beginning to disagree ... There are reliable reports that Democrats outnumber Republicans [at] many events in critical [congressional] districts.
Institute For America's Future releases new report from public plan policy architect Jacob Hacker finding strong public plan in House bills, deems co-ops a disaster.
Media conference with Hacker and top House Progressive Caucus members further emphasizes House won't budge on public option. Coverage from NYT, Star Tribune, AFL-CIO Blog, Talking Union, Tapped, Change.Org's Tim Foley and MinnPost.
NYT conducts Q&A with Hacker: "I’ve yet to find a health policy expert who thinks [co-ops] would work."
Baucus Caucus Spins More Wheels
Baucus Caucus meets again, agrees to make bill even worse. W. Post: "In a conference call, the three Democratic and three Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee agreed to redouble their efforts to craft a less costly alternative to the trillion-dollar initiatives so far put forward in Congress. They discussed the possibility of also reining in the scope of their package, the sources said. The senators rejected the idea of imposing a deadline on their negotiations, and they agreed to talk again Sept. 4." (Take yer time! Who needs health care anyway?)
The Plum Line finds Grassley setting the compromise bar even higher: "yesterday, Grassley added a fifth condition, telling NPR he couldn’t back a 'pay or play' mandate requiring employers to cover workers or chip into a national coverage fund."
Chief Of Right-Wing Lie Machine Held Up To Light
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart exposes the fraud that is Betsy McCaughey, originator of many health care smears:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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NYT publishes two pieces legitimizing unfounded concerns among seniors.
HuffPost's Greg Mitchell spots Sen. DeMint aiding and abetting various lies a town hall.
Wonk Room nabs Sen. Kyl pushing illegal immigrant lie: "It’s not surprising that 55% of Americans wrongly believe that health care reform will cover undocumented immigrants when you have the Senate Minority Whip, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), publicly stating that it’s perfectly 'logical' to think so."
UnitedHealth complains about charges they are sending employees to right-wing Tea Parties, but confirms to Politico it distributed right-wing talking points opposing public option.
Salon's War Room on new "death panels" ad: "The spot features Linda Peeno, a doctor who's a former medical director at Humana Insurance and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and has since turned whistleblower. 'In the spring of 1987, as a physician, I denied a man a necessary operation that would have saved his life and thus caused his death,' Peeno says in the ad. 'I am haunted by the thousands of pieces of paper on which I have written that deadly word, "denial."'"
Climate Update
Special interest funded bus tour to oppose climate bill. Greenwire: "The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan 'Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs' and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania. Today, the tour stops at a county fair in Ohio."
Enviros call for "no more loopholes for King Coal" in oped: "How can the Senate and the White House fix this problem before a bill gets to President Obama? The cap-and-trade approach can help cut emissions, but only if the oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants do their part. That could be accomplished by phasing in requirements that put the oldest, dirtiest plants on a definite schedule to meet emission standards through either retrofitting or retirement. Old power plants that boost their capacity or expand in a way that increases greenhouse gas emissions should also have to meet the standards that apply to new plants."
Breakfast Sides
Cash-for-Clunkers winds down Monday, debate over that means success or failure. LAT: "The program has been so popular, in fact, that it's depleted many automakers' inventories, prompting production increases after months of cuts ... [but] some fear ... auto sales could be even lower in coming months than they would have been otherwise, and that could lead to disastrous inventory buildups once again."
WSJ follows-up on possible WH manufacturing policy point person: "The Obama administration is close to tapping Ron Bloom, who heads the White House's auto task force, to help develop policies to assist the beleaguered U.S. manufacturing industry ... The job hasn't been finalized but the administration wants to create a new position that would allow the White House to coordinate and craft policies of importance to the manufacturing industry. Mr. Bloom would work with different agencies on a range of issues, such as trade, labor and tax policy ... He wouldn't engage in so-called industrial policy, such as dictating how much a factory should produce or the types of products it should make."
Call for tougher derivatives regulation. W. Post: "A top federal regulator has urged Congress to adopt tougher rules to govern betting in exotic financial instruments known as derivatives than the Obama administration has proposed, warning that the administration's new vision of market regulation could contain loopholes ... For example, the administration has proposed exempting certain types of derivatives used to bet on currencies from regulation by the agency. The CFTC worries that traders could structure derivatives that would otherwise be regulated to fit within this exemption."
