Obama Finds Another Gear

Yesterday Congress passed another of Obama's reforms: a fix to the federal student loan program that cuts out the private bank middlemen. That simple step will save taxpayers an estimated $61 billion over ten years.

Earlier this week, news started filtering out that Obama's also on the cusp of signing a major nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Obviously, this could fail to materialize as many proposed treaties do, but if it comes through Obama will add a major foreign policy coup to his record.

It seems as though the health care break through has given Obama and the Dems incredible momentum. Hopefully they'll keep their stride well through November.

Enough About HCR - What About Home Visiting?

I'm glad you asked. As Dave mentioned in his previous post, the President not only signed into law major reforms to the health care system (yawn), he also created the first ever dedicated federal funding stream for early childhood home visitation services.

So starting now (or as soon as HHS issues guidance) $1.5 billion (BILLION!) will go to states over the next 5 years so that they can implement/expand access to high quality early childhood home visitation services. As an example of why this is a good thing, the HV program started by my organization has been proven to:

 Reduce child maltreatment;
 Decrease pre-term, low weight babies;
 Increase utilization of prenatal care;
 Increase access and use of primary care medical services;
 Increase child immunization rates to improve health outcomes;
 Increase school readiness;
 Decrease dependency on public assistance and other social services; and
 Improve parent-child interaction.

There are several other home visiting models out there with similar results, and collectively, we've been working on getting this funding for a long time (5 years for me, 6 years for some of the folks).

Just now starting to sink in that this is really happening. And I wanted to share the good news with my Sassy Family because there is absolutely NO WAY we would be in this position under a different Administration.

Now then, I think I'll go through the Sassy Archives and find those videos from election night.

Holy Crap, It Actually Happened!

As we all know by now, the health care reform bill passed. Jonathan Chait of the TNR puts the victory in perspective: by getting HRC passed and staving off the worst of the economic crisis, Obama has already cemented his place as a "president of great historical import." Feel validated, folks! All of our canvassing, donations, and discussion helped make this happen.

Also of significance: the HRC bill also marked a tremendous professional coup for Bridget. It mandates a significant amount of money for home visiting services--something she's been working on for 5 years!

UPDATE: Krugman also puts things in perspective today. In short, he's happy to see that the Dems' positivity defeated GOP fear mongering. Amen.

Down to the Wire

Nate has two interesting posts about the health care bill. The first suggests optimism that this thing (though maybe not the thing we all hoped it would be) could actually pass this week. Certainly Barack is putting everything into making that happen. And you know what happens when Barack is pissed and motivated.

Also, thought Seana would like to see this.

Also from Nate: Gallup did something pretty cool in connection with their latest health care survey, which was to provide the verbatim responses (.xls) of the rationales given by people who would tell their Congressman to vote for or against the current health care bills, respectively.

In some sense, this is a very old-fashioned debate about the proper role of government. The message that the pro-reform voters have taken away comes through loudly and clearly: 'PEOPLE ... NEED ... INSURANCE', whereas concerns among the anti's boil down to 'GOVERNMENT' and 'COST'.

GOP Plan to Raise Taxes for Most Americans

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones posted a chart that breaks down the income tax effects in Rep. Paul Ryan's vaunted tax and spending road map. As you could expect, he proposes a drastic tax cut for the rich, especially those making over $460,700 a year. But, this would reduce revenues a lot. How does Ryan make up for that? By raising taxes for people making less than $100,000 a year. You know, 90% of the population. Nice.

Krugman on Health Care Reform

Paul Krugman has a short post today in which he actually sounds upbeat. He notes that Intrade now has it more likely than not that HRC will pass and finishes with "And I’m impressed by the passion of this guy Obama who’s campaigning for reform. Where was he last year?" Considering how critical he's been of Barack, that's high praise.

And Now A Word About Reconciliation

From one of my favorite columnists, E.J. Dionne. [side note: the op-ed Dionne is objecting to was in his newspaper, WaPo, which has increasingly come under fire for its conservative views and misrepresentation of fact. Sorry to see my former hometown paper move to the dark side ].

I'm even more disappointed in Hatch--he's been one of the more reasonable Rs in the past and his close friendship with Kennedy made him almost likeable. But his trafficking in lies and repub talking points is unbecoming. Not sure what's happening to people like McCain and Hatch who used to be reliably independent and, dare i say, straight talkers. Something about Obama is bringing out the worst in them.

--Right off, the piece was wrong on a core fact. Hatch accused the Democrats of trying to, yes, "ram through the Senate a multitrillion-dollar health-care bill."

No. The health-care bill passed the Senate in December with 60 votes under the normal process. The only thing that would pass under a simple majority vote would be a series of amendments that fit comfortably under the "reconciliation" rules established to deal with money issues. Near the end of his column, Hatch conceded that reconciliation would be used for "only parts" of the bill. But why didn't he say that in the first place?

Rumor of SCOTUS Bombshell

Huffington Post has an article on rumors that Chief Justice John Roberts is considering stepping down. That would be a huge shock. The article cites the possibility that he has epilepsy but I also imagine that now that he's helped out corporations as much as he could in his few years on the bench he wants to cash in. Still, I suspect that this isn't really going to happen.

Catholic Charities removes benefits for spouses

Wow, as a researcher, I wish I could quantify for them the loss of talent and opportunity they will experience by excluding so many people and their families as potential employees ...

Nonprofit Newswire Catholic Charities Removes Benefits for Spouses
Rick Cohen

March 2, 2010; The Washington Post Is there a way to convey some sense of outrage about the decision of Catholic Charities to deny spousal benefits to new employees in order to avoid having to offer benefits to same-sex spouses (as required by DC government law, if Catholic Charities wants to continue receiving the $22 million it gets from the District)? The president of Catholic Charities, who has been the Archdiocese’s public face opposing the District’s same-sex marriage law is a key player in the metropolitan Washington nonprofit community. In order to avoid having to deal with same-sex couples, Catholic Charities already turned its foster
care program over to another provider. Some people are defending, or at least explaining the Catholic Charities policy as inconsequential because few if any “new” employees will be affected. Archbishop Donald Wuerl’s explanation in another Post article was characteristic: “Employers have the right to frame compensation packages. . . . At the end of the day, Catholic Charities is here serving the needy, after the law has passed, in complete conformity with the law.” That’s the kind of slickly crafted statement that James Mason playing the high-priced lawyer representing the Boston Archdiocese in “The Verdict” (1982) (remember Paul Newman as the everyman lawyer doing battle with him?) would have penned for Bishop
Brophy. The policy is a twofold slap—at same-sex marriages and at the democratic process in Washington, DC which created the law that now applies. Catholic Charities may continue to offer services under its DC government appropriations, but this should lower Catholic Charities’ standing in the DC nonprofit community.—Rick Cohen

SNL Reunion

best part is "Saturday Night" Bill and 41 (you can tell Will Ferrell is trying not to crack up).

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell

Texas Update

Rick Perry won outright. No runoff. It will be interesting to see how far he slides toward the center in the general. He's scary conservative but I believe his craziest moments have come from pandering rather than a true desire to say, secede from the Union. He'll probably still continue Texas on the road to fully mimicking a third world petro-state, though.

Primaries!

It's gubernatorial primary day in Texas! I guess the Dems are having a primary, but it doesn't really matter. The GOP primary promises to be a corker, though. Incumbent Governor Rick Perry has skewed way right--secession talk right--in response to a challenge from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Perry's favored but might not get the 50 percent needed for an outright win because of the surprisingly strong Tea Party candidate, Debra Medina. Medina was actually possibly going to beat Hutchison (despite sharing a name with the second holiest city for Muslims) but lost momentum when she actually made Glenn Beck scoff by not flatly denying 9/11 "truther" conspiracy theories. Anyhow, the race could be tight.

Meanwhile, in our great state, our great party is scrambling to find a viable lieutenant governor nominee. Via Politico, the Illinois Democratic Party is literally asking people to apply online. I need to go update my resume!

Chicago Handgun Ban in Front of Supreme Court

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case challenging our city's handgun ban. Given that the Roberts Court already struck down D.C.'s gun ban, I have to think that ours will suffer the same fate.

Local handgun laws have been held up on the argument that the 2nd Amendment applies only to federal law and that states and localities can restrict gun ownership. In the D.C. case, the SCOTUS directly ruled against that argument finding the right to bear arms an individual right. Granted, most individual rights have some restrictions--you can't yell fire in a crowded theater--but the NRA won't be happy until we all have our own personal concealed AK-47.

We'll see how this impacts Chicago. We already see a tragic amount of gun violence. My only hope is that we get the chance to revisit this upcoming decision if gun violence in the city rises in the next couple years.

UPDATE: It doesn't mention the gun case, but TNR has an interesting article today about the Chief Justice.

That's the Spirit!

Check it out, in a NYT article today, Pelosi insists she will get the votes for health care reform in the House.