From the days of my youth as a civil rights activist in the 1960s, I have spoken truth to power in many political corridors throughout this nation.  Tonight, as a senior Member of congress, I cast my vote for H.R. 3962 because it goes a long way toward eliminating many of the inequities in our nation’s health care system that I’ve fought against all my life. 

Chief among them is the denial of coverage to people, literally, because they are sick or because of what private insurers refer to as a “pre-existing condition.” My vote, tonight, is a vote for the health care needs of every American citizen, regardless of their ability to pay.

As this bill advances to the next stage of the legislative process it does so with the inclusion of several amendments I authored including an expanded discount drug benefit, under the Medicaid 340B Program (H.R. 444), and school grants that support innovative programs that will inspire the next generation of young people to pursue careers in math, science and nutrition, an initiative designed to address our nation’s medical professional shortage.

I also support this bill because, once it becomes law, my collaborative care network amendment will provide immediate assistance for the uninsured and the most vulnerable patients who will still be left out after this reform.  My hope and prayer is that this bill will continue to advance quickly because every day of delay is one day too many for the uninsured. My vote, tonight, was for them.

Taking candy from a baby: A consortium of Chinese and American companies goes to Washington and announces plans to build a $1.5 billion windmill farm in West Texas using $450 million in U.S. Stimulus funds, which will create 2,330 jobs – 2,000 of them in China. 

The baby – Washington -- doesn’t cry or whine or spit in the consortium’s face. That’s what’s really wrong with this story.

So accustomed to being bought and sold, Washington simply begins processing forms so it can hand over your tax dollars to create jobs in a turbine factory in the city of Shenyang, China at a subsidy of $193,133 each.

It’s like these bureaucrats live in Wonderland. Or an America where the unemployment rate isn’t 10.2 percent. Or where 40,000 American manufacturing facilities didn’t disappear in the past decade. Or where banks didn’t repossess nearly a quarter million American homes in the past three months.

We’ve got a message for Washington: Hell no! We’re not giving tax dollars to China. What’s wrong with these businesses and our government? It is the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It’s not the Chinese Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

It’s bad enough that we’ve off-shored our factories and technology and jobs over the past 20 years.  We’re not off-shoring our Stimulus cash too. In fact, we’re tired of serving as the schoolyard wimp of the world. We need our own industrial policy so we can stand up and compete in the world market manufacturing the likes of wind turbines. And we need it now.

China has an industrial policy. And it uses that policy to dominate.  Here is how Keith Bradsher of the New York Times described China’s policy to become a world leader in renewable energy, which of course, would include construction of wind turbine factories:

“Calling renewable energy a strategic industry, China is trying hard to make sure that its companies dominate globally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automakers to compete in those countries – giving their own automakers time to amass economies of scale in sheltered domestic markets – China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.”


China protects its chosen industries in many ways. It provides low interest loans, some of which don’t have to be repaid. It may give free land on which to construct buildings. And there are other perks that Bradsher described:

“When the Chinese government took bids this spring for 25 large contracts to supply wind turbines, every contract was won by one of seven domestic companies. All six multinationals that submitted bids were disqualified on various technical grounds, like not providing sufficiently detailed data. . . even as Chinese companies that had never built a turbine were approved. . .”

Later, Bradsher describes European disgust at the Chinese treatment:

The debate over health care has reached a fevered pitch in our nation's capital.  Over the last several months, millions of Americans have spoken out at town halls, have called and written in to the White House, and have even made personal visits to their members of Congress to express their strong opposition to government run health care.  Yet Speaker Pelosi has once again ignored their voices.

Speaker Pelosi's health care bill H.R. 3962 was drafted without committee hearings or markups behind closed doors by Speaker Pelosi and a very limited number of her inner-circle.  Weighing in at more than 2,000 pages, Pelosi's bill will cost the American taxpayers $1.2 trillion over the next ten years.

Read more...

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s so-called “mark-up” of S. 1733 last Thursday, which avoided honest debate and constructive amendments, is proof that proponents of cap-and-trade legislation are more concerned with establishing an artificial timetable for legislative process, in advance of December’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen, than with considering the bill’s actual impact on the American economy, American jobs, and American consumers. In the midst of a severe recession with 10.2 percent national unemployment, our economy, the creation of jobs and consumer impact should take much greater precedence over attempts to impress international bureaucrats during an annual convention.

Read more...

Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer some insight into the biggest question burning up the blogosphere today.

Today's question:

What policies could Congress or the president promote that would improve America's unemployment numbers?

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said:

"We have to focus our attention on massive job creation, and I think we need to invest in our infrastructure.  I have a bill which would basically provide 625 billion extra dollars to build our infrastructure.  We also need to step back and focus on an industrial policy that will strengthen manufacturing in America."

Paul Kawika Martin, policy and political director of Peace Action, said:

One step in creating more jobs could be dealing with a bloated Pentagon budget. The U.S. spends around half of its discretionary budget on the military and nearly more than every country in the world combined. Recently, economists at the University of Massachusetts concluded that military spending creates fewer jobs than nearly any form of government activity. Their findings showed that a tax cut or investing in education, mass transit or energy efficiency would create far more jobs. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) echoed these sentiments when he said that we cannot look at military spending as a jobs program right before voting to stop the F-22 jet.

Even if you believe that the current level of military spending is appropriate, you would probably agree with current and former military leaders in cutting Pentagon pork — weapons systems that benefit military contractors and congressional campaign coffers not American's security. A former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan and others urge the cutting of several wasteful programs including the DDG-1000 naval destroyer and "missile defense." This would allow the United States to inject billions into higher job producing programs.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said:

"Abandon the government takeover of healthcare.  That's got a lot of small businesses in particular very worried about hiring because they realize that if they support additional employees, they may be socked with a huge surtax from the healthcare bill."

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said:

"We passed a stimulus package that is working, but working slower than I like.  It's gradually reduced the number of lost jobs, but we're still losing jobs.  We're headed in the right direction and making progress, but not enough.  We need continued support for the stimulus package, which still has a lot of money.  It was designed to pay out over two years.  Economics have indicated that the stimulus package has made a huge difference in the economy."

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said:

Instead of trying to spend money to increase GDP, the government should instead pay workers to work shorter hours. The mechanism can take the form of a tax credit to employers. The government can give them a tax credit of up to $3,000 to shorten their workers’ hours while leaving their pay unchanged. The reduction in hours can take the form of paid sick days, paid family leave, shorter workweeks or longer vacations. The employer can choose the method that is best for her workers and the workplace.If take home pay is left unchanged as a result of the credit, then demand should be left unchanged. If workers are putting in fewer hours and demand is unchanged, then employers will need to hire more workers.

This logic is as simple as it gets. The process is also quick and cheap. In principle, the government can go this route to save jobs at a cost of a bit more than $20,000 per job, far less than the cost per job saved through the stimulus package. Germany has used this policy to keep its unemployment rate at 7.6 percent, about the same as it was before the recession. Imagine workers in the United States, like workers in Germany, were dealing with the recession by putting in four-day weeks (while getting paid for five) or getting an extra two weeks of paid vacation. This sure beats being unemployed.

Seventeen states already have a “work-share” program in place that allows employers to use unemployment insurance money to cover a reduction in work hours, without a corresponding reduction in pay. More than 100,000 layoffs have been prevented as result of this program. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) has a bill that would increase funding for work-share programs and remove some of the bureaucracy. The bill also provides start-up money for the states that don’t have programs. The Reed bill would be a big step towards following the Germany model, taking advantage of a program that is already in place. It could quickly make a big dent in the unemployment rate, by preserving many of the jobs that are now being lost.

In this respect, it is important to clear up a common confusion about the economy. The monthly job growth number is a net figure. Approximately 4 million people leave their jobs every month, half involuntarily. We have job growth if we either create more than 4 million jobs or reduce the number of jobs lost below 4 million.If a work share program reduced involuntary job loss by 20 percent, or 400,000 per month, it would have the same effect as adding 400,000 new jobs. Over a full year, this would generate nearly 5 million new jobs. This would be a quick and effective way to reduce unemployment.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit said:

The biggest problem so far has been "regime uncertainty," as businesses forego investment and hiring because they're not sure what's happening with ever-shifting stimulus, healthcare, and carbon-tax talk. In addition, a growing sense that financial success depends more on connections than on business acumen is shifting investment into the political sphere. That's good news for lobbyists, but not so much for the economy as a whole.

Furthermore, politicized efforts to ensure that the stimulus didn't benefit white males too much mean that the money didn't go to the sectors, like construction and manufacturing, that have been shedding jobs the fastest. All in all, exactly what one would expect of a politicized economic plan from an inexperienced administration.

Simple, predictable regulations, low taxes and freedom from political pressures on capital allocation produce economic growth. Corrupt, bureaucratized, constantly-shifting regulatory regimes do not. As we've moved toward the latter, we've seen less employment. Moving back toward the former would probably fix things.

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was a watershed event for global freedom.  The data from Freedom in the World, the annual report on the state of global freedom published by Freedom House, give vivid evidence of the degree of change.  From a region that stood as an undifferentiated mass of unfree societies, what was then known as Eastern Europe has been transformed into a democratic success story.  The countries of Central Europe and the Baltic region are counted among the world’s stable democracies and today serve as an important soruce of support for democratic dissidents in repressive environments.  Likewise, the countries of the Balkans have achieved the status of democracies after difficult years of  civil war, mass  killing,  and ethnic cleansing.

The events of 1989 were thus unique, revolutionary, and inspiring.  The idea of communism as a legitimate socioeconomic system that represented an alternative to free-market democracy was revealed as an utter fiction. The thesis that revolution would invariably be prosecuted through the barrel of a gun was demolished, as country after country achieved freedom through strikes, civil disobedience, and the voluntary surrender of power by leaders who had come to recognize the futility of one-party rule. The East European revolution provided a showcase for an impressive generation of   democratic leaders: Lech Walesa and his Solidarity activists; Vaclav Havel and fellow Czechoslovak intellectuals; and lesser-known democrats in the other communist societies. And, of course, the example of the satellite countries helped propel similar processes in the Soviet Union, where Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of openness and reform had already provoked a chain of events that would lead to the Soviet system’s final collapse.

Read more...

On October 19, the Committee for Economic Development sent a letter to the Business Roundtable concerning Sen. Ron Wyden's "Free Choice Amendment."  On October 23, the Business Roundtable responded.  Here are excerpts from the letter the Business Roundtable sent to the CED:

Business Roundtable CEOs agree with you on many points. As you know, we are taking a leadership role in the health care reform debate and are deeply committed to public policy changes that will improve our nation’s health care system.

Patchwork measures will not suffice and a market based system with competition and choice is imperative. Consumers must have health insurance options. We believe insuring members of society is the right thing to do, which is why our companies offer health coverage to our employees now, although there is no legislated obligation or mandated requirement to do so. However, we disagree with you as to the proper approach to existing problems and concerns.

While significant and substantial health care reform is critical, we continue to support employer based health care and find Senator Wyden’s approach to be contrary to competition, free market and choice. Although Senator Wyden’s amendment includes the words “free choice,” it imposes new government control on private business negotiations and decisions.

Read more...

The state of the U.S. workplace for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people — transgender Americans in particular — is absolutely shameful. Thankfully, our nation is on the cusp of seriously addressing this injustice: Congress is currently considering the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would prohibit workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing on the legislation today, and got an earful about the dire need to enact these fundamental protections.

There is a growing and widespread feeling of economic vulnerability among people from all backgrounds and all parts of our country. Unemployment is high; folks are having a tough time finding work. Those who do have jobs are fearful of losing them. A few weeks ago, my son’s former teacher — a 20-year veteran who wrestled more productivity from his color-outside-the-lines nature than any previous teacher — was laid off.  These stories are no longer rare. Virtually everyone knows someone who has been pink-slipped in the past year. Accomplished people. Go-getters. People who seemed exempt from the unpredictability of sudden job loss.

President Obama will travel to Japan, Singapore, China, and South Korea beginning next week. Continuing uncertainty in North Korea, the violence in Urumqi, and the ongoing fallout in the wake of the global recession indicate that this could be one of the most important trips of his first year in office. In a live streamed event, experts from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discuss the possible implications and outcomes of the trip for the U.S. strategic and economic relationship with the region.

(Double-click to begin.)