The daily Progressive Breakfast serves up what progressive movement members need to know to start their day.
Trigger Proposal Floated By Numerous Dems, Including Speaker
The Treatment's Suzy Khimm speculates what Sen. Snowe's version of a trigger may look like: "First, the government would establish a standard of 'affordability' --yet to be determined--that would gauge whether Americans had access to reasonably priced health insurance, based on their income, family size, employer-backed benefits, subsidies, and so forth. Then, on a state-by-state basis, the government would test to see whether enough people--about 95 percent--had access to affordable coverage according to this standard. And if the private reforms alone weren't enough in a given state, a government-backed "safety net option" (as Snowe prefers to call it) would be introduced into the state's health insurance exchange. The fall-back option--which would essentially be the same government plan wherever it was implemented--would be run by a non-profit organization that would serve as a kind of a hammer over private industry to make sure it will perform. Notably, Snowe wants the government to make this determination as far as a year before the insurance reforms actually go into effect (around 2013 in the Baucus plan/HELP bill). The idea is that private insurance companies would have to release their pricing and bids well in advance, so we wouldn't have to wait and see if the system fails to make coverage affordable."
Robert Reich rips trigger in Salon: "it's impossible to design airtight goals for coverage and cost reductions that won't be picked over by 5,000 lobbyists and as many lawyers and litigators even if, at the end of the grace period, it's apparent to everyone else that the goals aren't met. Washington is a vast cesspool of well-paid specialists who know how to stop anything resembling a 'trigger.' Believe me, they will."
Speaker Pelosi suggests a trigger provision would lead to a stronger version of a public plan option. Politico: "Pelosi also warned insurance companies to accept a public option without a trigger, arguing that a public plan triggered by high premiums or other insurer bad behavior would be much harsher than one negotiated now. 'They’d be better getting a public option now. ... They’ll have a tougher public option to deal with later,' she said."
Another compromise proposal rejected by conservative obstructionists. Politico: "Democrats have floated the idea of a trigger that would impose benchmarks on insurance complanies to put in place certain reforms over a period of time – with the idea that that a public option would go into effect if private industry doesn’t cover enough of the uninsured ... House Republicans, at least, say the idea is a no go."
FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher presses Progressive Caucus: "Please Clarify Your Position on 'Triggers'"
Baucus Waits For Feedback
Baucus tells Gang of Six they have until 10 AM to respond to his proposal reports HuffPost.
W. Post reports Sen. Snowe will wait anyway: "...the Republican considered most likely to sign onto the plan, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), said she will wait to hear what the president has to say. 'I think the speech and our efforts are complementary, not mutually exclusive,' Snowe said. 'I think I'd rather give it a few more days to work through some of these issues.'"
Grassley planning "counteroffer" reports CNN.
Consumer Watchdog rips Baucus' fine print: "The plan would result in a 'race to the bottom' in health care regulation by allowing insurance companies that participate in 'health care compacts' to choose the weakest state law to govern all their policies, regardless of which state the policies are sold in. Currently, insurance companies must abide by the state laws of any state where they sell insurance. The Baucus plan resembles an industry proposal carried by Mike Enzi (R-WY) in 2006..."
Presidential Address Tonight 8 PM ET
Obama tells congressional leaders to be ready to compromise. WSJ: "President Barack Obama, in a closed-door White House meeting Tuesday, told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that Democrats had to be prepared to compromise to get an overhaul of the health care system done this year, saying the party had far more to lose from failure than from bending on key issues, according to congressional aides."
WSJ previews President's address to Congress tonight: "President Barack Obama, in a high-stakes speech Wednesday to Congress and the nation, will press for a government-run insurance option ... as well as say he is open to better ideas on a government plan if lawmakers have them."
Paul Krugman stresses importance of public option: "...what is one to make of the practical, political argument from the likes of Ezra Klein, who argue that any public plan actually included in legislation probably wouldn’t make that much difference, and that reform is worth having even without such a plan? There are three reasons to be suspicious of that argument. The first is that I suspect that Ezra and others understate the extent to which even a public plan with limited bargaining power will help hold down overall costs. Private insurers do pay providers more than Medicare does — but that’s only part of the reason Medicare has lower costs. There’s also the huge overhead of the private insurers, much of which involves marketing and attempts to cherry-pick clients — and even with community rating, some of that will still go on. A public plan would probably be able to attract clients with much less of that. Second, a public plan would probably provide the only real competition in many markets. Third — and this is where I am getting a very bad feeling about the idea of throwing in the towel on the public option — is the politics."
Public option policy architect Jacob Hacker speaks to Salon on why it's so critical.
Newsflash! Accurate report on polling from newspaper! NYT: "...even after weeks filled with seemingly ominous portents for Mr. Obama’s ambitions, there is evidence that public opinion remains basically supportive of him. Despite intense controversy over the 'public option,' a government-backed insurance plan that would compete with the private sector, a CBS poll at the end of August found that 60 percent of Americans still support the idea, down from 66 percent in July."
Bank Reform Battle Heats Up Again
Rep. Barney Frank puts mortgage cramdown back on table. HuffPost: "House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) tells the Huffington Post he plans to revive the effort to give bankruptcy judges the authority to renegotiate home mortgages -- by making it part of this fall's much-anticipated financial regulatory reform bill ... since [its defeat earlier this year], foreclosures have continued unabated and the unemployment rate has continued to climb, increasing to 9.7 percent last month. Both forces feed on each other and create a drag on the economy.
The Hill reports banks are nervous: "Lobbyists for banks big and small expect Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and other panel members to offer measures that would go further than the Obama administration in overhauling the existing regulatory scheme. Community banks that think their regulatory system works well fear Congress will push them under a single regulator with big banks. Large banks don’t want a single regulator either, and argue that stripping the Federal Reserve, which is unpopular on Capitol Hill these days, will take the Fed’s attention away from other critical matters."
Bloomberg reports hearings on SEC overhaul start tomorrow.
CQ envisions slog ahead, reviews biz lobby pushback:
...companies outside the financial services industry are wary of any effort to restrict derivatives markets. Many end users, including airlines and industrial companies, use derivatives to guard against future price increases for fuel and raw materials. Finding a balance between limiting risky speculation and allowing businesses to hedge their risks could prove difficult.
Perhaps the biggest thorn in the side of the process remains the banking and business lobbies.
During the last week of August, one of the more powerful lobbying groups pushed into overdrive its efforts to kill the administration’s proposal to create an agency to regulate consumer-related financial products. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce held a conference call with nearly 200 business organizations to discuss strategies to shut down the House legislation that would create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
The Chamber has been the leading voice against the proposal, creating a Web site built solely to trumpet its opposition and sending out detailed talking points and form letters to members.
It was just the latest in a series of threats to the proposed agency, many of which have been erected by turf-wary regulators and skeptical lawmakers.
Sheila C. Bair, the powerful chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has voiced concern that the agency, while good for consumers in theory, would hurt bank regulation as a whole by eliminating the ability of existing regulators to oversee the safety and soundness of the system.
In addition, the George W. Bush appointee has regularly broken with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner over his proposed expansion of the Federal Reserve’s power to oversee “systemic risk” in the financial system. Bair, along with Mary Schapiro, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has advocated the creation of a council of regulators to oversee systemic risk.
Dodd has said he would prefer a council to an expansion of the Fed’s power, noting that the Fed largely dropped the ball on consumer protection and monetary policy in the years leading up to the country’s economic collapse.
Frank, who initially supported the idea of the Fed as a “super regulator,” said in an interview before the summer recess that the politics of the issue would likely dictate that a council be given a larger role in systemic-risk regulation.
Climate Bill Benefits Beat Costs, Will Senate See Light?
New report finds House climate bill benefit's outweight costs. Change.org's Emily Gertz: "'From almost any perspective and under almost any assumption, H.R. 2454 is a good investment for the United States to make in our own economic future and in the future of the planet,' concludes 'The Other Side of the Coin', which was produced by the NYU Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity. How did the authors tote up the legislation's economic benefits? As Keith Johnson of the WSJ's Environmental Capital blog writes today, the paper examines the 'social cost of carbon:' what a ton of carbon is worth to our society when it isn't in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change's effects on the environment, the economy, public health, and national security. Multiple federal agencies have accepted the estimate that a ton of carbon-not-emitted is worth about $19. So using the bill's targets for how many tons of atmospheric carbon it will avert over the next forty years, the NYU Law analysts calculated that Waxman-Markey would be worth around $1.5 trillion on average. Since bill's costs will add up to around $660 billion, that is a two-to-one return on the dollar. And this, according to the authors, is a conservative estimate..."
Politico on challenges for climate bill to pass Senate: "A significant Senate delay on the climate bill being debated on Capitol Hill would most likely diminish U.S. clout abroad and set back international global warming negotiations scheduled in December, warn environmentalists, Democratic aides and international negotiators ... Last week, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) pushed back a self-imposed deadline to release a climate bill this week, citing the Senate’s focus on health care. They’re not expecting to take action until at least later in September. That leaves just two months before the Copenhagen talks for five other committees to review the legislation and for Democratic leadership to craft the results into a comprehensive bill and secure passage by the full Senate. It’s a particularly ambitious goal, given the vocal skepticism of coal- and manufacturing-state Democrats ... The Obama administration also can demonstrate its commitment to cutting emissions by exerting its administrative power. This fall, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release the final version of a ruling finding that greenhouse gases are a danger to human health and welfare. The endangerment finding forces the administration to begin regulating emissions from power plants, factories and other industrial sources of pollution. Those regulations could take effect as early as 2013, says Weiss."
