Half Changed World

The good news is that the House passed the SCHIP reauthorization bill.  The bad news is that the 265-159 vote margin is not going to be enough to override a veto.  Congress will presumably include SCHIP in the continuing resolution that it will need to pass by September 1, and it will continue at current levels until at least sometime next year, probably until 2009.  That’s going to mean real cuts in some states.

Here’s the roll call.  What immediately jumped out at me is that my representative, Tom Davis, is one of the Republicans who voted against the original House bill but for the compromise bill.  I had been wondering about that after getting his response to my email plea for SCHIP last week, which said, in part:

"H.R.
3162 was not SCHIP.  It was an excessive expansion of a good program, an expansion that could undermine
the program’s effectiveness and a backdoor effort to move toward government run health care….   

Given
the wide range of problems with this legislation I voted against it when it came before me in the House.
It passed, however, by a vote of 225-204.  The Senate passed a narrower expansion of the SCHIP program.
I am hopeful that as we proceed to a conference we will return to the core principles established in
the original SCHIP."

I assume that Davis is going to run for the Senate seat that John Warner is vacating.  I think this vote will hurt him in the Republican primary, but help him in the general election if he gets nominated.  Or maybe I’m being too cynical — many Republican voters support health care for kids too.

Added: I heard this afternoon that there’s been another recall of Thomas trains for lead-based paint.  Unlike the first go-around, we do have some of the affected pieces, and will send them in for an exchange.  But I still wish that the American public was half as outraged about SCHIP as it is about lead in toys.  Nick Anderson got it right a month ago.

I don’t have a lot of energy to post tonight, but I wanted to be sure to share Families USA’s website on how to contact your representatives to urge them to support the bipartisan SCHIP reauthorization against Bush’s veto threat.

Or call tollfree: 1-866-544-7573 — thanks to SEIU.

Some quick points:

• In a country as rich as this one, no one should have to choose between taking their kid to the doctor and having enough to eat, or having the heat turned off.
• Kids with insurance are more likely to get preventative care, more likely to be seen when sick before something minor becomes something big.
• Families with insurance are more likely to get to make doctor’s appointments, rather than have to wait to be seen in a clinic or ER.  That means their parents don’t lose as much pay.
• Covering children is actually remarkably cheap as good public policies go, on the order of $2,000 per child per year.
• In the states that are covering higher income families, they’re requiring families to put up copays and premiums.  It’s not a free ride.
• As far as I can tell, the Bush Adminstration’s main complaint about SCHIP is that it works, and that other people might start asking why they can’t buy into public health insurance pools.
• On the radio this evening, Dennis Smith was claiming that the problem with expanding SCHIP is that it would create adverse selection against private insurance programs, by making the insured pool older and sicker.   Funny, the Administration doesn’t seem to worry about adverse selection when it comes to their proposed tax subsidy solution to uninsurance.
• When the Administration starts talking about crowd-out, they never talk about the quality of the private health insurance plans that people are abandoning.  In many cases, they’re insurance in name only, with overly high deductibles — or worse, ridiculously low annual limits.  In some cases that’s because the employers are being stingy, but just as often, it’s because they’re desperately trying to find a way to keep offering health insurance in the face of constantly rising prices.
• In a country as rich as this one, no one should have to choose between
  taking their kid to the doctor and having enough to eat, or having the
  heat turned off.  Yeah, I know I said it before, but it’s worth repeating.

Update: go read Cecily’s post on health insurance

Are any of you Emily’s List members?  Did you used to be?

I keep getting letters and emails from Emily’s List, asking me to rejoin.  I’m still very sympathetic to their overall mission, but am disinclined to sign up at the moment.

First, I feel like I no longer need a group like Emily’s List in order to identify candidates in other states who are worthy of my support.  Since I’ve never lived in what could be called a swing state — and rarely even lived in a district with a competitive Congressional race — I liked the idea of being able to make a difference in a race that might matter.  I still like the idea, but am more likely to send money to a candidate who someone I trust blogs about than to one endorsed by Emily’s List.

Second, I feel like they’ve so totally drunk the Hillary kool-aid as to lose credibility for me.  I’m not a Hillary-hater, and I’ll vote for her with enthusiasm if she’s the nominee, but she’s not my first choice candidate.  And when they run a major feature on Myths about Hillary Clinton and say "Hillary has repeatedly said that if she had all the facts when she voted for the initial authorization for the war… she would not have voted in favor of the Iraq resolution," my response is to think that maybe if she had read the national intelligence
estimate, she would have had more of the facts.

I think I’m putting my money into the Women’s Campaign Forum instead.

So do you think Bush will sign the Second Chance Act if Congress sends it to him?  God knows.  Worrying about consistency has never been his strong pont.

I’m just sickened that Bush is letting Libby off the hook. It’s not even that I’m so horrified that Libby won’t be going to jail.  If the judge had suspended his sentence pending appeal or something, I would have rolled my eyes, but would have basically forgotten about it the next week.  It’s the evidence that there’s no limit to Bush’s hubris, not from the rule of law, not from public opinion. 

It makes me feel like a dupe, like I was a sucker for ever arguing that we shouldn’t be demonizing the politicians whom we disagree with.

And it scares me, because this Administration has another year and a half to run its course, and at this point I truly believe that they are is capable of anything.  If those British sailors who were captured had been Americans, I think the sailors would be dead and we’d have used nukes on Iran by now.

If you want to send a note to Elizabeth Edwards, the campaign has set up a page for people to write to her.  I know she’ll be in my thoughts and prayers. 

My guess is that John would have suspended his campaign (as was inaccurately reported this morning), but that Elizabeth told him no way.  I hope she stays in good health for as long as possible.  That family has certainly had its share of heartbreak. 

Because of the snow/ice I happened to home this afternoon to receive a call from the Obama campaign asking for a contribution.  The caller said that Obama of course cared about universal health care and getting out of Iraq, but that what was really different about his campaign was that he wanted to change the tone of politics.  I thanked him for the call, but said that the election was a long way away and I wasn’t ready to commit to a candidate yet.

I agree that the tone of politics is truly ugly these days.  I listened to a bit of the radio while cooking dinner tonight, and so caught a Republican Congresswoman saying that voting against the "surge" in Iraq meant that you were in favor of the terrorists winning.   Does she really believe this crap?  I’m not sure which horrifies me more — that she’d believe that half of Congress (and, more importantly, half of the country) supports terrorism or that she doesn’t believe it but thinks it’s politically effective.

And I’m truly appalled by the misogynist and frightening crap that Amanda and Melissa have been taking and that forced them to resign from the Edward’s campaign.  I want to repeat what Melissa wrote, because I think it’s important:

"There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation,
but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting
responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with
vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people
like Bill Donohue or Bill O’Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for
my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who
used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening
ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for
responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation."

Frances Kissling should not be the only religious leader who is speaking out against this, no matter what you think of Amanda’s original posts.

But I’m not sure that the quality of discourse can be elevated one-sidedly.  Obama makes a point in his book of how during his Senate race he told campaign staff to remove from his website language that suggested that all those who oppose abortion are motivated by a desire to control women.  And there certainly are those who truly care about fetal life.  But there’s also a bunch of people who seem to care a lot more about fetal life than about living women or children.  And always assuming that your opponent is decent and well-intentioned is as great a mistake as always assuming that your opponent is evil.

I want to tip my hat to Cecily, who does this about as right as anyone I know — keeping on talking with people who disagree with her on abortion, but consistently drawing the line at abusive language and behavior.  But you can ban trolls from your blog.  I don’t know what’s the right way to deal with trolls who get themselves quoted on NPR and the New York Times.

I’m fascinated to hear that both Amanda from Pandagon and Shakespeare’s Sister have taken jobs with the John Edwards campaign.  Amanda will be their blogmaster and Shakes will be their netroots coordinator.

I’m intrigued both by their choice of Edwards and by the Edwards’ campaign choice of them out of all the bloggers they might have picked. (Maybe it will put to rest for once and all that stupid "where are the women political bloggers" question.)  I’ve been fence sitting, but this might help push me off.  I need to think about it a bit.  (And yes, I know the election is nearly two years away.  My dad keeps nudging me that if I want to do something other than knock on doors, I need to pick a team early.)

It’s going to be very interesting to see how the internet affects this campaign.  It’s amazing how much the political landscape has changed just since the 2004 campaign.  Blogs weren’t ubiqitous and you tube didn’t exist.

I’m watching the state of the union address and trying not to grind my teeth. 

I’m expecting that the most interesting part of the speech will be the health care proposal.   Based on the advance info, it’s a terrible proposal, but I think it’s massively significant that Bush feels a need to have a health care proposal.  12 years after the crash and burn of the Clinton health care proposal, the demand for change seems to have outweighed the ghosts of Harry and Louise.

The one part of the Bush proposal that I agree with is that it doesn’t make sense for employer-provided health insurance to be fully tax exempt, with no limit.  It costs the government a huge amount of money, and mostly benefits the wealthy and middle-class.  I’d be happy to limit it if the funds went to something that was actually going to expand coverage.

But it’s nuts to think that everyone is going to buy health insurance on the individual market.  It’s way too expensive for low-income families (and a tax deduction doesn’t help those who don’t owe income taxes) and out of reach for anyone with a pre-existing condition.  One of my friends who lives in Massachusetts says that the plans there are costing 2 -3 times more than estimated when the individual mandate law was passed.  Health insurance has to involve risk pooling or it’s just a way of smoothing out spending over time.

Some links:

• Urban Institute analysis of the plan.
• Ezra Klein at TAPPED on the plan.
• Paul Krugman’s column and further explanation.  (You can find these copied out from the select wall at Economist’s View which also has a roundup of other comments on the plan.)

Ok.  I was wrong.  The proposal to reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next 10 years is more interesting than the health insurance.  I have no idea how he thinks we’re going to achieve this.

I’m not in the mood to write tonight, so I’ll just share some links:

1) I really liked Rowan Crisp’s comment on the sHillary post at Pandagon:

"I was told recently that “as a feminist” I had a duty to vote for her. I stopped laughing long enough to ask if I had to vote for Condi Rice if she ran, too. Funnily enough, I never got an answer on that one.

"I want someone who will fight for national healthcare. I want someone who will stop wrapping themselves in the flag and the bible to justify horrors. I want someone who will obliterate the movement towards a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I want someone who will ridicule DOMA for what it is: a limitation on the right of legal, consenting adults to contract freely.

"I’d also like a pony. 🙁 "

Hillary isn’t my first choice for the Democratic nominee.  She’s not even my second.  But I feel like there’s a level of vitriol against her on the left that is totally out of proportion to the compromises that she’s actually made. 

2)  Blogging for Choice posts from Cecily and Bitch, PhD.  And Wealhtheow writes about Virginia’s "controversial" bill to ensure that anti-abortion laws don’t ban contraception as well.

3)  And via Funds for Writers: Small Markets, I thought some of my readers might be interested in this call for submissions of speculative fiction about futuristic motherhood. 

What do you imagine the function of motherhood to be? How do you think the image of motherhood will change? How do you think the image of motherhood will stay the same? What possible customs, norms or laws will be in place in the future that would have an impact on changing or affecting mothers? How will science and technology affect pregnancy, birth, and child rearing? How might full social equality affect childcare in the home and workplace? How does a lack of social equality in a highly technological society affect pregnancy, birth, and childcare? How about in a future culture with a highly evolved social order but low technology?

For my birthday, I asked for, and received, Barack Obama’s new book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.  I started reading it right away, but then got started on some other books that were due back to the library, and didn’t pick it up again until the last couple of weeks. 

The book did nothing to change my overall positive impression of Obama.  He comes across as thoughtful, compassionate, well-read, and funny.  He’s clearly been reading many of the same policy briefs that I have, and I can’t name a single policy recommendation that I seriously disagree with.  (I do think some of them are likely to fall well short of solving the problems that they’re aimed at; for example, tying teacher pay to performance is something that I’d be willing to experiment with, but is unlikely to solve all the problems of American schools.)  He’s got the politician’s knack of finding the telling anecdote to bring a problem to life.

But the book itself is a bit of a snoozer.  I found myself carrying it back and forth to work, but choosing to read the newspaper instead of cracking it open.  While the rhetoric soars at times, at other points it reads like a high school textbook, recapping America’s ambivalent relationship to international institutions dating back to the League of Nations.  I’m glad that Obama knows this history — I wish I were more confident that our current president did — but it doesn’t make for a page-turner.  Dreams from my Father is a far more interesting read.