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| Monday, December 21st, 2009 | |
daily_kos
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9:20p |
President Obama Signs Anti-Rape Law
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/uRze5ZsOAVs/-President-Obama-Signs-Anti-Rape-Law Despite objections from 30 Republican Senators, Al Franken's amendment that prohibits government contracts with companies that enable rape has no been signed into law: The White House Press Office sent out a statement today announcing that President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 into law on Saturday: H.R. 3326, the "Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010," which provides FY 2010 appropriations for Department of Defense (DOD) military programs including funding for Overseas Contingency Operations, and extends various expiring authorities and other non-defense FY 2010 appropriations. Within the Appropriations Act is Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) amendment prohibiting defense contractors from restricting their employees’ abilities to take workplace discrimination, battery, and sexual assault cases to court. And while those 30 Republicans will probably take this as an opportunity to continue complaining that they didn't anticipate that there would be political blowback for being corporate sponsors of rape, I'd like to use it to offer kudos to Jamie Leigh Jones for having the courage to come forward and fight.
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daily_kos
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8:30p |
What Baucus and Nelson Got for the Folks Back Home
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/DQmlivG6Pys/-What-Baucus-and-Nelson-Got-for-the-Folks-Back-Home What a victory for the American people! But particularly for the people of Libby, Montana (and they needed one) and Nebraska. Here's the Montana angle: WASHINGTON — Buried in the deal-clinching health care package that Senate Democrats unveiled over the weekend is an inconspicuous proposal expanding Medicare to cover certain victims of "environmental health hazards." The intended beneficiaries are identified in a cryptic, mysterious way: individuals exposed to environmental health hazards recognized as a public health emergency in a declaration issued by the federal government on June 17. And who might those individuals be? It turns out they are people exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont. For a decade, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, has been trying to get the government to help them. He is in a position to deliver now because he is chairman of the Finance Committee and a principal author of the health care bill. Which is not to argue that what happened in Libby wasn't an environmental and human disaster, and that the people of Libby don't desparately need the help. But it sure does help to be chairman, huh? It shows the degree to which these bills come as opportunities for folks who like to rail about "earmarks" and bemoan politics as usual in D.C. take advantage of bringing some legislative love to the folks back home. But nothing compares to Ben Nelson's deal: Nebraska will receive $100 million in assistance for its state Medicaid program under provisions negotiated by Sen. Ben Nelson (D) in the Senate's healthcare reform bill. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) informed lawmakers on Sunday night that the section of the manager's amendment to the Senate's health bill would cost $1.2 billion over 10 years.... "Well, you know, look, I didn't ask for a special favor here. I didn't ask for a carve-out," Nelson said. "What I said is the governor of Nebraska has contacted me, he said publicly he's having trouble with the budget. This will add to his budget woes. And I said, look, we have to have that fixed." Whoo-doggie, that's an interesting contrast to his "I just can't support his budget-busting bill" prior to getting his $100 million for the state. I guess that's the going price for principle these days. But he could teach progressives a thing or two about how to negotiate. Hold your breath long enough and they give you everything you want.
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daily_kos
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7:40p |
Midday Open Thread
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/7-7pTAQhakg/-Midday-Open-Thread - The Republican talking points police are going to kick Tom Coburn's (R-OK) ass:
On January 1st, 2009, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. It now stands at $12.1 trillion. That’s not President Obama’s fault, so don’t confuse this with a partisan attack. My attack is on the Senate, and on the Congress. [...] In January 2009, the unemployment rate was 7.6%, today it’s 10%. That’s not President Obama’s fault either. That’s our fault, it the members’ of Congress fault. - Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight.
- What a shock:
A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy. [...] The man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree. His former lawyer calls him a "habitual liar engaged in fraud." - Last week, were those bankers really fogged in, or did they just blow off their meeting with the President?
- Mike Huckabee goes biblical on Ben Nelson:
Huckabee says the vote on health care reform is a pivotal moment in American history, and he took Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson to task for deciding to support the measure. Huckabee went so far as to compare Nelson to Judas in the biblical story of Jesus' betrayal. He said the last time a deal like the one Nelson negotiated with Democratic leaders was when "30 pieces of silver exchanged hands." - Mary Matalin is her usual charming self, calling advocates for health care reform, "jihadists."
- How sad is it that the airlines needed to be forced into doing this:
The rule, which will take effect next spring, would force carriers to let passengers off planes in most circumstances after a three-hour ground delay. Airlines have been fighting congressional efforts to craft similar legislation. - Scumbags.
- Speaking of scumbags, or in this case, a scumbag singing the praises of a scumbag, Human Events calls Dick Cheney the "conservative of the year" and has John Bolton giving the acceptance speech:
Cheney knows that the personal attacks on him, as offensive as they are, in reality constitute stark evidence that Obama and his supporters are simply unable to match him in the substantive policy debate ... Outside-the-Beltway Americans see him for exactly what he is: a very experienced, very dedicated patriot, giving his fellow citizens his best analysis on how to keep them and their country safe. - Happy Winter Solstice! - DS
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daily_kos
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6:50p |
Congressional Burden Shifting to Obama on HCR
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/vATQDDQJhRc/-Congressional-Burden-Shifting-to-Obama-on-HCR While two Senators are lamenting the lack of presidential intervention in shaping the Senate bill, a House member is demanding he take a direct role in the House/Senate conference. In a statement posted to his Web site yesterday, Russ Feingold points the finger at the White House for the loss of a public option in the bill, but nonetheless pledges his support in the final vote. "I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included. "But while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high...." Likewise, though for potentially different policy reasons, Jim Webb expressed his dissatisfaction with Obama [sub. req.], and he holds out the possibility of voting against the conference report: Over the past year, the process of debating this issue often overwhelmed the substance of fixing the problem. The Obama Administration declared health care reform to be a major domestic objective, but they did not offer the Congress a bill. Nor did they propose a specific set of objectives from which legislation could be derived. Consequently, legislation was developed independently through five different Congressional committees, three in the House and two in the Senate. This resulted in a large amount of contradictory information and a great deal of confusion among our public. As the debate moved forward in the Senate, I and my staff worked through thousands of pages of legislation, and did our best to shape the bill as well as to bring proper focus to key areas. I repeatedly took a number of difficult votes, often breaking with my party, in order to strengthen the bill.... Assuming the bill is passed by the Senate, I will examine closely the conference report produced at the next stage of the legislative process. Significant deviations from the core principles I insisted on this compromise must remain, or I will withhold my support. And on the House side, Elijah Cummings is demanding greater involvement by Obama himself: The president must participate directly in negotiations next month to merge the House and Senate's healthcare bills on "a day to day, hour by hour" basis, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) stressed Monday. Lawmakers in both chambers will have to reconcile a number of differences in their healthcare legislation once the Senate passes its bill, but the process of resolving those debates would be daunting without the White House's input, the congressman added. "I have absolutely no doubt that there will be some changes, and we're going to have to call on the president to get very much involved in this and to get this through," Cummings said. Neither Feingold nor Webb will have much direct involvement in the conference, so the ultimate impact of their drawing lines in the sand now, given that they've both overcome objections to vote for cloture, threats like this one from Webb are a little empty. But it's more likely they're trying to distance themselves from what they see as a potentially unpopular effort, and put it on Obama's shoulders. Ownership of this bill is ultimately going to be Obama's, but there can be little question that the mess the Senate has made of it is why the bill as a whole is polling poorly now, and Congressional approval ratings are in the tank. Cummings admonition to the president is probably also intended as a bit of burden-sharing for the responsibility of this bill. Of course, the House bill is significantly better, so there's actually some credit that could be shared if Obama helps get these stronger elements into conference.
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someposifeed
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7:38p |
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daily_kos
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6:08p |
Axelrod needs some help with history
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/9UsX4vayPi4/-Axelrod-needs-some-help-with-history David Axelrod was all over the teevee on the Sunday morning circuit, walking back his "insane" comments about Howard Dean and his criticism of the health care bill, talking up the legislation and trying to tamp down progressive base frustration with the watered-down measure. Little noticed in the flurry of appearances was his misleading commentary about the hallowed sanctity of the filibuster. James Fallows caught it though, and was disturbed: Good for David Gregory. Just now, on Meet the Press, he asked David Axelrod whether the Senate's " 'majority' equals 60 votes" current operating rules made sense. Not so good for David Axelrod. He immediately says, "These are time-honored rules." Unt-uh. They are "time-honored" only in the sense of having been adopted awaaaaayyy-back at the dawn of time in 1975; and they have been of practical importance only really since the time of Bill Clinton -- and with a sharp increase in the last three or four years. Can the chief political advisor at the White House really not know this about the filibuster? And if he knows the real story, why would he stick with this "time-honored" line? Either explanation is unsettling. Either explanation is unsettling. Indeed.
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daily_kos
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5:16p |
Krugman: Fix the Senate, kill the filibuster
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/H74PhmJI1Gg/-Krugman:-Fix-the-Senate,-kill-the-filibuster Paul Krugman: Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward. It was, however, a close-run thing. And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional. After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster — a requirement that appears nowhere in the Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule — turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the bill. Now consider what lies ahead. We need fundamental financial reform. We need to deal with climate change. We need to deal with our long-run budget deficit. What are the chances that we can do all that — or, I’m tempted to say, any of it — if doing anything requires 60 votes in a deeply polarized Senate? Krugman points to a decades-old proposal -- by Tom Harkin and Joe Lieberman of all people -- that would allow a minority of senators to delay, but not ultimately defeat, legislation. Sixty votes would still be needed to end a filibuster at the beginning of debate, but if that vote failed, another vote could be held a couple of days later requiring only 57 senators, then another, and eventually a simple majority could end debate. Mr. Harkin says that he’s considering reintroducing that proposal, and he should. But if such legislation is itself blocked by a filibuster — which it almost surely would be — reformers should turn to other options. Remember, the Constitution sets up the Senate as a body with majority — not supermajority — rule. So the rule of 60 can be changed. A Congressional Research Service report from 2005, when a Republican majority was threatening to abolish the filibuster so it could push through Bush judicial nominees, suggests several ways this could happen — for example, through a majority vote changing Senate rules on the first day of a new session. Obviously, if such a rule were in place for this Congress, the Senate health care bill could have been much stronger. Whether it would have been much stronger is something we will probably never know, but if Majority Leader Reid and President Obama were to embrace this idea, they'd be putting themselves behind the kind of change our system of government desperately needs. Assuming Republicans continue their filibuster, we're going to end up having to more procedural votes over the next 90 hours, both to advance the same underlying legislation that moved forward last night. The fact that the GOP filibuster is fully within Senate rules, giving a Senator from Connecticut and a Senator from Nebraska effective veto power of the legislation, is all the proof you need that the Senate is, as Krugman says, dysfunctional. It's time to fix it.
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someposifeed
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5:17p |
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daily_kos
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4:28p |
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daily_kos
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3:38p |
The Message Our Elected Dems Need to Send
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/yQ_pT0kpkrU/-The-Message-Our-Elected-Dems-Need-to-Send While the Senate celebrated in the wee hours this morning for getting past another procedural hurdle, hopefully they are checking their triumphalism, and will keep in mind this week and during their holiday recess, as they approach the House conference, the message Tom Harkin sent on Saturday. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) vowed that Democrats will continue to work on health care reform and promised more legislative fixes in the future. "What we’re building here is not a mansion. It’s a starter home. But it’s got a great foundation. ... This is not the end of health care reform, it’s the beginning of health care reform," Harkin said. This is certainly the beginning, and since this bill solidifies the already broken private insurance structure, and at a hefty price, it would best be called health insurance expansion. So Democrats need to be very careful about over-selling his effort, and know that we're going to be holding them to the promise of actually enacting real health care reform. They also need to spend a little bit of time thinking about how in the hell to keep Bart Stupak from blowing the whole thing out of the water.
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daily_kos
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2:46p |
Republicans and what they pray for
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/jCRz7tBvmuc/-Republicans-and-what-they-pray-for Via Think Progress, we learn about the very Christian values Tom Coburn put on display yesterday when he was discussing the upcoming cloture vote on the health care reform bill: What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray. Nice sentiment he's got going there. Dick Durbin was disturbed enough by it to interrupt Sherrod Brown: This statement troubles me, and I’m trying to reach him come back to the floor and explain exactly what he meant about a senator being unable to make the vote tonight. Between praying/wishing his senatorial adversaries into the corn and helping fellow Republicans figure out how to buy off mistresses, the throwback senator from Oklahoma has quite the interesting view of what Jesus would do. (Check out DowneastDem's diary for additional discussion.)
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democracynow
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8:52a |
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democracynow
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8:24a |
US-Led Copenhagen Accord Decried as Flawed, Undemocratic
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/21/us_led_copenhagen_accord_decried_as  The climate summit in Copenhagen came to a close Saturday with the world’s nations reluctantly agreeing to “take note of” but not endorse a non-binding accord President Obama announced Friday night. The twelve-page agreement seeks to limit global warming to a maximum of a two degree Celsius rise in temperature. But it does not specify targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. We speak with Guardian columnist George Monbiot and Lucia Green-Weiskel of the China-based organization Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation. [includes rush transcript] |
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democracynow
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8:09a |
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democracynow
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8:00a |
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daily_kos
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2:02p |
This Week in Congress - Seriously, though, read this one.
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/Q59hsmEFpWU/-This-Week-in-CongressSeriously,-though,-read-this-one.  The House is not in voting session this week.
In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader: Convenes: 12:01am Resume consideration of H.R.3590, Health Care Reform.
Votes:
1:00am cloture vote on Reid-Baucus-Dodd-Harkin amendment #3276: . Well, that's all that's on the schedule. But we already know a bit more about what's going to happen this week, because we know that there remains a checklist of procedural moves necessary to getting to that last vote on passage. The first is that cloture vote on the manager's amendment, formally the Reid-Baucus-Dodd-Harkin amendment (#3276), held at 1 o'clock this morning -- already on the books by the time you read this. Why was it held at one in the morning? Because they're racing the clock against Christmas, and 1 a.m. was the very soonest the rules permitted holding that vote. Cloture procedure is governed by Senate Rule XXII, which tells us that cloture motions ripen (that is, are eligible to come to a vote) "one hour after the Senate meets on the following calendar day but one" -- meaning you start on the day the motion is filed, then wait for a full day after that day to pass, and then you can vote an hour after the Senate next convenes. The manager's amendment was unveiled on Saturday, and a cloture motion on it was immediately filed. One full calendar day following the day of filing has to pass (that was Sunday), and then you can vote one hour after the Senate convenes on the day after that, which is today. And the very soonest you can convene on Monday would of course be 12:01 a.m., meaning the soonest you could have your vote would be 1:00 a.m. And that's just what they're doing. But Rule XXII tells us more: After no more than thirty hours of consideration of the measure, motion, or other matter on which cloture has been invoked, the Senate shall proceed, without any further debate on any question, to vote on the final disposition thereof.... That means that even after they invoke cloture on the manager's amendment, there can be up to 30 more hours of "debate" on it, meaning that if it's all used (as is expected), the vote on actually adopting the amendment can't take place until 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday, December 22. With the adoption of the manager's amendment, all of the changes made to the Senate's version of the bill in order to win the support of the 60 Senators necessary to clear these cloture hurdles will have been agreed to. But even once that's done, the amendments are sort of floating in space. They still need to be plugged into a House-originated bill. Why? Remember Art. I, Sec. 7 of the Constitution: All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. That means the Senate has to resort to one of its favorite tricks in order to chime in with its own original proposals for revenue measures. That is, they can write the provisions, but need a House-originated vehicle to move them in order to be in technical compliance with Art. I, Sec. 7. So what they usually do is take a dormant House-passed bill that's awaiting Senate action, call it up, strip out the entire text of it, and amend it by offering their own bill as a substitute. That gives them their preferred revenue text, but puts it in a House-passed bill as an "amendment," even though it gets rid of everything the House wrote into it. In this case, they have the actual House-passed health insurance reform bill to use as a vehicle, and amending it will give them two versions of the same bill, and thus the opportunity after passage to immediately seek a conference with the House. In this case, the Senate will be substituting everything from their version of the bill and the manager's amendment for the text of H.R. 3590, which started -- as its title reads -- as a bill "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees." And it'll do it with a motion to commit the bill to the Senate Finance Committee, with instructions to report back with an amendment (called the "substitute amendment") containing the text of their bill the way they've amended it to date (including the manager's amendment). In truth, with these kinds of motions to commit, the bill never leaves the floor, and the changes are made instantaneously. But of course, that motion is subject to... the filibuster. Which means the second of the three expected cloture votes will be on the motion to commit regarding the substitute. Cloture was also filed on that on Saturday, so that vote will be "ripe" at 1 a.m. on Monday, too. But they can only vote on one thing at a time, and the manager's amendment needs to go first. Then, once they get cloture on the manager's amendment, they need to run the 20 hour clock. At the end of the 30 hours, they're free to vote on the manager's amendment and move on. And since the cloture motion on the substitute amendment has also ripened and been pending, it's eligible to come up right after the vote on adoption of the manager's amendment. Once cloture is invoked on the substitute amendment, the 30 hour clock starts all over again, running out at around 1 p.m. on Wednesday, December 23, when we get to the vote on substitute amendment (that is, the motion to commit and report back the substitute text). Next up, cloture on the entire bill, now containing all the changes made to it, and grafted onto the shell of a House bill in order to comply with the Art. 1, Sec. 7 requirements. That cloture motion is ripe at that point, having been filed on Saturday, December 19, so it can come to a vote right after adoption of the substitute amendment. But remember, that's still just cloture on the bill. We still have to wait yet another 30 hours after that cloture motion is adopted before we get to the vote on final passage of the bill. That takes us to about 7 p.m. on Thursday, December 24. Got it? - 1 a.m. Monday vote on cloture on the manager's amendment
- 7 a.m. Tuesday vote on the manager's amendment itself
- 7 a.m.-ish Tuesday vote on cloture on the substitute amendment (motion to commit)
- 1 p.m. Wednesday vote on the substitute amendment itself
- 1 p.m.-ish Wednesday vote on cloture on the bill
- 7 p.m. Thursday vote on passage of the bill
What happens in between? Well, for one thing, the Republicans will probably object to dispensing with the reading of each of these amendments. Which means that the reading clerks may have to read each of them aloud. They've already read the manager's amendment, and they may well have to do it all over again with the substitute. For another, there'll be some wacky procedural maneuvering with the substitute in order to wind down a move Harry Reid employed called "filling the amendment tree" (about which you can read more here). Basically, Reid has filed a bunch of amendments that are meant to block other Senators from offering any more amendments, and those blocking amendments will have to be dispensed with along the way. No difficulties are anticipated with this maneuver, and the biggest hurdles are just making sure every one of the necessary 60 votes are in present and in place for the three key votes (#s 1, 3 and 5, above). If nothing else, this week will be a useful demonstration of just what a giant pain in the ass filibusters and cloture voting can be, which will tell you a little something about why Senators are often willing to meet almost any demand to avoid dealing with threats of sustained delaying campaigns. When a "hold" gets put on a bill -- particularly a complex one like this -- you begin to see why Senators sometimes prefer just to honor the hold and let the bill lie, rather than fight their way through it. Especially when there's a full legislative agenda stacking up behind. Anyway, by the time you read this, vote number 1 will be over. Enjoy the rest of the show! Oh, one other thing! There actually is one committee meeting scheduled this week: a 10 a.m. meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Christmas Eve. Well, Christmas Eve morning. I'm sure everyone's real happy with Chairman Leahy about that one. Details on it are below the fold, though at this point, given the length of this story and the brevity of the committee schedule, that tradition is looking kind of stupid.
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daily_kos
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1:54p |
Cheers and Jeers: Monday
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/JxIdZR_-mYU/-Cheers-and-Jeers:-Monday From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE... Dear Santa, Hey there, Jolly One. Here's my annual wish list. Most of these are basically unchanged from the last five years. Gimme gimme gimme... Our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan
A short winter
Federal civil rights for GLBT Americans, including marriage
Someone to fix the damn pothole on the I-295 on-ramp (southbound)
Osama's capture
George Clooney-scented Downy
Honest answers
An energy policy that sets the standard for the rest of the world
Traditional media editorial boards and pundits who give us valid reasons to care about what they think
Time travel!
Decriminalization of marijuana
New healthcare legislation that shows we're smarter and more compassionate than the rest of the industrialized world
Ten million good-paying jobs with benefits
Strict, unwavering corporate oversight, especially among the banksters, so that we don’t teeter on the brink of a second Great Depression again
A new snack food from Frito-Lay: Cheetos wrapped in bacon and covered in fudge...in both a regular and "lite" version
Fundamentalist Christian church leaders who pray to God instead of trying to play God
An end to arrogance And since I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting any of that, I'll settle for becoming a Na'vi avatar. (With a loincloth, please, on account of I'm shy.) Sincerely, Bill in Portland Maine
American-flag Lapel Pin Wearer Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
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daily_kos
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1:16p |
Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/X1K2NwK4xi0/-Your-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up Monday after-the-storm punditizing. is there more clean-up to do after the snow or after the vote? Paul Krugman: Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward. It was, however, a close-run thing. And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional. Senate dysfunctionality is an under-recognized theme of importance. In fact... Greg Dworkin (Arena): The Senate is on the verge of passing health care reform for the first time in decades. The House has a better bill, and committee awaits. While it isn’t everything, it’s something. Those who prematurely wrote off health reform simply got it wrong. Those who recognize how dysfunctional the Senate has become got it exactly right. But as many commenters have noted, the vibrant discussion has been on the center-left as to how to proceed, while the right has had only "death panels, socialized medicine and Hitler". No new ideas, no part in the discussion. Self-exile is painful to watch, and bad for the country. This could have been a better bill with Republican input. Instead, Eric Cantor disease has spread to the Senate, and "Just Say No" substitutes for policy discussion. It’s sad, and it’s also not going to help Republicans get back in power. and
Thomas E. Mann: The much-pilloried Harry Reid led an increasingly undemocratic and dysfunctional institution to a stunning victory for the majority party. He deserves an apology from any number of prominent Washingtonians. His House counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, burnished her reputation as one of the most powerful and effective Speakers in the history of Congress. Together they succeeded in unifying a fractious party representing diverse constituencies and rightfully fearful of the electoral consequences of their action or inaction. Dana Milbank: Going into Monday morning's crucial Senate vote on health-care legislation, Republican chances for defeating the bill had come down to a last, macabre hope. They needed one Democratic senator to die -- or at least become incapacitated. Jonathan Chait: Does the Republican Party have any ideas? ... In reality, both parties have plenty of ideas that they would like to implement if given the political power to do so. Republicans’ policy ideas primarily involve cutting marginal tax rates and regulations. The question isn’t whether the Republican Party has any ideas. The question is whether the party has any relevant ideas. Karen Tumulty: But there is one question about the process that people are likely to be debating for years: Did the road to passage really have to be this rocky? The shape of the legislation — and specifically, the fact that there were never going to be 60 votes in the Senate for a government-run public option — has been clear for months. So why did Reid insist upon taking the public option to the Senate floor as part of the initial bill he introduced, making the fight even messier and at times seriously jeopardizing Dems' chances of passing such a landmark bill?
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daily_kos
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6:34a |
First pass at health care vote breaks 60-40
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/-aOswUYwBbU/-First-pass-at-health-care-vote-breaks-60-40 In the dark of night .... Health Bill Passes Key Test in the Senate With 60 Votes By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON — After a long day of acid, partisan debate, Democrats held ranks early Monday in a dead-of-night procedural vote that proved they had locked in the decisive margin needed to pass a far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s health care system. The roll was called shortly after 1 a.m., with Washington still snowbound after a weekend blizzard, and the Senate voted on party lines to cut off a Republican filibuster of a package of changes to the health care bill by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. The vote was 60 to 40 — a tally that is expected to be repeated four times as further procedural hurdles are cleared in the days ahead, and then once more in a dramatic, if predictable, finale tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Both parties hailed the vote as seismic. After months and months and months of striving for the holy grail of bipartisanship, it comes down to this. As expected.
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cathy_comic
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6:47a |
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daily_kos
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4:29a |
Open Thread and Diary Rescue
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/5v_7GfUqpKE/-Open-Thread-and-Diary-Rescue Tonight's Rescue Rangers are grog, jlms qkw, sunspark says, dopper0189, srkp23, Louisiana 1976 and, back after a long hiatus, claude, in the editor's seat. The Rescue Rangers read every diary posted between 3pm yesterday and 3pm today (PST) looking for good writing that has been over-looked by the community, whatever the point of view. Show these writers some love for their efforts. The Rescued diaries: jotter has Week's High Impact Diaries: December 12-18, 2009 AND High Impact Diaries: December 19, 2009. bronte17 has tonight's TOP COMMENTS (12-20-09): Teach Your Children Well. This is an Open Thread. Remember, we're all on the same side here, so play nice.
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daily_kos
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3:02a |
An Overview of the New Senate Health Bill
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/EVy8peqeCZI/-An-Overview-of-the-New-Senate-Health-Bill What's good? - They banned pre-existing conditions for children starting in 2010.
- That annual cap on benefits that was supposed to have been out of the bill but we found out was slipped back in? The one that the blogs raised hell about? It's out, mostly.
The very first provision of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's Manager's Amendment would explicitly prohibit insurers from imposing either annual or lifetime limits. A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage may not establish—(A) lifetime limits on the dollar value of benefits for any participant or beneficiary; or (B) except as provided in paragraph (2), annual limits on the dollar value of benefits for any participant or beneficiary. The regulation goes into effect in 2014 and prior to that they can still impose them on "non-essential benefits" and "the dollar value of essential benefits only as the secretary shall determine." So there will be government oversight from 2010 until 2014, and up to the Secretary of HHS to determine the outlines of what's allowed. (As an aside, here's an interesting catch by Jon Walker. When Reid's office said the CBO demanded this loophole because premiums would go through the roof without it, well, that's not what the CBO says now.) - Bernie Sanders' amendment to increase funding for Community Health Centers is pretty much an unequivocal good for extending actual care--not just coverage, but care--to people.
- The not quite unequivocal good but improvement is the medical loss ratio, the amount insurers spend out of every premium dollar that doesn't go to care. Rockefeller wanted it set at 90%, it's set at 80% for individual plans, 85% for group plans. Insurers who exceed the limits would have to pay rebates to policyholders. Except, there's this problem as identified by Jon Walker. On page 12 of the bill [pdf]:
(d) ADJUSTMENTS.—The Secretary may adjust the rates described in subsection (b) if the Secretary determines appropriate on account of the volatility of the individual market due to the establishment of State Exchanges. So the Secretary of HHS can gut this requirement at will. But it's better than not having it at all. - One of the better additions, as identified by Ezra, is better reporting by plans on their practices, claims denials, cost-sharing for out of network practitioners, etc. At least we'll be better informed about the plans we're being forced to pay for.
- There is a critical fix to what was a big hole regarding national plans. Originally the bill national plans in which insurers could sell policies in any of the states in the compact. The insurer would only be subject to the laws and regulations in the state where it was based, and wouldn't have to comply with stricter regs in other states. That's been replaced by the OPM provision.
- One entertaining note, the cosmetic surgery tax has been replaced by taxing indoor tanning salons, which some Twitter wits are calling the Boehner tax. On a more serious, and progressive note, it also increases the Medicare payroll tax by 0.9 points for individuals making more than $200,000 per year and married couples earning above $250,000, a much better financing choice than the excise tax (which is still there).
Many of these issues are ones that the blogosphere, particularly Jon Walker at FDL, have been hammering on for weeks, which is instructive for future efforts. Sometimes when you're being exhorted to get on the "pass the bill" bandwagon, it makes sense to counter with "fix the bill." What's still very problematic: Then there's what's still murky, and that gets back to the insurance reforms and just how effective they will be: California recently dropped an attempt to enforce its anti-rescission law against a major insurer, saying that it was financially outgunned by the insurer's legal team. The rescission law, according to the legislation, "shall not apply to a covered individual who has performed an act or practice that constitutes fraud or makes an intentional misrepresentation of material fact as prohibited by the terms of the plan or coverage." Insurers today routinely claim that patients engaged in "fraud" or "intentional misrepresentation" when dropping them from coverage. Much depends on who defines the terms in the bill. It won't be the federal government. There will be no federal agency tasked with overseeing the enforcement of the bill's rules. Rather, a Senate leadership aide told reporters in a briefing Saturday, individual states will police the new system. That's a task the California Department of Managed Health Care was unable to perform when battling Anthem Blue Cross, which has rescinded 1,770 policies since 2004. "In each and every one of those rescissions, [Blue Cross has] the right to contest each, and that could tie us up in court forever," the department's director, Cindy Ehnes, told The Associated Press. A million-dollar fine was announced in March 2007, but has not been enforced. If the enforcement for these regulations falls on the individual states, and the individual states will have to litigate them, which could take a very long time in each case. The regulations are unlikely to be uniformly enforced state to state--some of them have extremely proactive insurance commissioners and strong regulatory structures in place, others don't. And in the states that don't, don't expect insurers to end some of these practices out of the goodness of their hearts. Bottom line, Americans are still going to be forced to buy insurance that for too many people will be unaffordable. As long as that's the case, and until there's a true alternative public option that provides people real choice, the insurance companies shouldn't get that one thing in the legislation they want: the mandate.
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guardiantoons
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1:13a |
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daily_kos
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12:02a |
Phantom Hope: The Afghan Army
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/BeBBkBA8rEA/-Phantom-Hope:-The-Afghan-Army Sometimes you have to wonder if irony, like satire, can actually survive another decade like the one now coming to an end. Last week, the chief of NATO asked the Russians to contribute helicopters as its part of the escalation to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. The image of Russian helicopters used in another fight against Afghan rebels has got to be one of the major propaganda coups of our time. A fitting end to the Zero Decade. If Moscow says yes, the choppers will become part of the expanding effort that we have been told will stabilize that nebulous entity called Afghanistan, weaken the Taliban, shatter al-Qaeda, and turn over control for national security to the Afghan National Army and national police. There’s just one problem. Building an Afghan army and national police force has been tried before. And it’s never, ever worked. Starting in the 18th Century, the British tried it four times. Declan Walsh reported a couple of years ago: 
Each has failed, frustrated by war, invasions or the stubborn ways of conservative tribesmen. Now the west is making the fifth try, and the task is no less urgent, or complicated, than in the past. The British say their most pressing problem is absenteeism. Afghan men value family life and find barracks life strange. Many overstay their leave by weeks, facing no punishment on their return, or never come back. The Helmand battalion is 30% under strength as a result. "We end up sitting here with bated breath hoping they will turn up," said Capt Noel Claydon-Swales. But the historical omens are ominous. It took most European countries between 50 and 100 years to form their national armies, said [the highly respected Afghan scholar] Dr [Antonio] Giustozzi. The Soviet Union tried to fast-track the process in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but failed. "You can keep pumping in money but in the long term it is not sustainable," he said. But surely the situation has changed in two-and-a-half years? The details, yes. But the prognosis? Hardly. Many of the soldiers who have been trained and haven’t deserted or defected are poorly motivated, poorly trained, sympathetic to the Taliban, unreliable in combat, AWOL much of the time, and often brutal, intimidating and criminal in their dealings with the local population. Antonio Giustozzi’s latest assessment appears at the Royal United Services Institute (subscription only), and is titled The Afghan National Army: Unwarranted Hope? He could just as well have left off the question mark. The latest effort to train the Afghan Army began more than seven years ago and was announced to reporters by Gen. Tommy Franks, then commander of U.S. Central Command, "I am pleased that our forces have begun training the Afghan National Army." That was then, and this is now. Nobody needs to be reminded of how the Cheney-Bush administration dropped the ball in Afghanistan and went on into Iraq, which, for years before September 11 "changed everything," was the real first target of the neoconservatives’ Project for a New American Century.  For the moment, focus on the practicality of the mission and forget about whether current U.S. Afghan policy is a righteous project, an unfortunate but necessary evil or just another round in the saga of American empire dating back to the first pronouncement of Manifest Destiny. Because even the most avid foe of the escalation – I count myself on that side – knows in her heart (and experience with Iraq) that not enough opposition will be built in the streets or, ha-ha, in Congress to soon stop the flow of troops to Afghanistan that began last March and will run at least until next November, according to the generals. That being so, the essential question about the policy is: Will it work? Can the Afghan National Army (and national police force) be enlarged and improved enough to take care of the nation’s security on its own in, say, the four or five years that President Hamid Karzai says is needed?
Ample evidence speaks loudly against it. There’s no need to scour left-wing or other objectionist Web sites to come to this conclusion. For starters, one can read the 66-page unclassified version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategic assessment of the situation. Let me interject another caveat. Afghans can fight. The British, the Soviets and others throughout history have learned this the hard way. Cowardice is not the problem. As ranger995, someone who was embedded with Afghan troops, has pointed out, there are Afghans in the ANA, especially younger ones, who have plenty of courage, will and integrity to fight. The problem is, there aren’t enough. And there won’t be enough in the fuzzy time-frame that has been set out for beginning to turn security over to them. That’s the case even though the 4000 U.S. trainers now in Afghanistan will soon be joined by an estimated 4000 more, plus 150 new NATO training teams. The Pentagon has not released any information about whether those 4000 trainers have the special skills needed to do their job effectively. Here’s one reason why, as noted a couple of months ago by Martin Fletcher: Rushed training 'risks turning Afghan troops into cannon fodder': Recruits to the Afghan Army are being rushed into combat with a barely acceptable level of training, according to senior British officers closely involved in the programme. ... "We are close to the wire in the balancing act between quality and quantity," Brigadier Simon Levey, the chief coalition adviser to the Afghan Army’s training command, conceded. The present standard of training was "acceptable, but we must not fall below it". Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Ilic, the head of the British team that is training Afghan officers and non-commissioned officers, told The Times: "We are walking a tightrope and we could easily fall off." Another official, who declined to be named, said: "You could argue that the recruits are being made cannon fodder. Every time we lower the bar it’s the minimum we can get away with until someone says we need to lower it more to speed things up." Speed-up is in the works again as the United States seeks to get 134,000 Afghans into the ANA by next fall. An ambitious goal given what’s happening every day. A month ago, AFP reported: [T]he picture painted by NATO commanders shows that, while international troops suffer increasing casualties, training too is an uphill battle in this country wracked by more than 30 years of war. Out of the some 94,000 Afghan soldiers trained so far, 10,000 have defected, General Egon Ramms, commander of the operational headquarters in charge of the NATO-led International Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), told reporters this week. He also estimated that 15 per cent of the armed forces are drug addicts. If the reporter didn’t mistake "deserted" for "defected," that means Western forces are giving large numbers of the enemy better fighting skills. If Gen Ramms really meant "deserted," he’s low-balled the actual number. From September 2008 to September 2009, the Pentagon and the Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan put the desertion rate at about one in four. More Afghans were recruited than ever before, 35,000. Digging deeper into the numbers, however, as Gareth Porter has done, puts the number of keepers at 19,000. The old 70 square-mile Soviet base that now serves as the Kabul Military Training Center eight miles from the downtown of the capital has put tens of thousands of Afghans through its 10-week training program. But how many of these actually serve on active-duty is unanswerable. So when stories like this appear in The New York Times saying that vast new numbers of Afghans are signing up, readers can hardly be blamed for remaining skeptical at the outcome of this enlistment surge. As Chris Hedges has pointed out, instead of body counts of enemy dead the way "progress" was often measured in Vietnam, the "good news" now is the allegedly swelling numbers of ANA soldiers. Tossing aside for the moment the numbers, there is also the quality of both the trainees and the trainers. It’s not American troops’ fault. They haven’t been prepared for their task. And there is no evidence that the new trainers soon to be on the way to Afghanistan will have any more background in how to train than those troops already on the ground. As Hedges writes: Afghan soldiers are sent from the Kabul Military Training Center directly to active-duty ANA units. The units always have American trainers, know as a "mentoring team," attached to them. The rapid increase in ANA soldiers has outstripped the ability of the American military to provide trained mentoring teams. The teams, normally comprised of members of the Army Special Forces, are now formed by plucking American soldiers, more or less at random, from units all over Afghanistan. "This is how my entire team was selected during the middle of my tour: a random group of people from all over Kabul—Air Force, Navy, Army, active-duty and National Guard—pulled from their previous assignments, thrown together and expected to do a job that none of us were trained in any meaningful way to do," the officer said. "We are expected, by virtue of time-in-grade and membership in the U.S. military, to be able to train a foreign force in military operations, an extremely irresponsible policy that is ethnocentric at its core and which assumes some sort of natural superiority in which an untrained American soldier has everything to teach the Afghans, but nothing to learn." "You’re lucky enough if you had any mentorship training at all, something the Army provides in a limited capacity at pre-mobilization training at Fort Riley, but having none is the norm," he said. "Soldiers who receive their pre-mobilization training at Fort Bragg learn absolutely nothing about mentoring foreign forces aside from being given a booklet on the subject, and yet soldiers who go through Bragg before being shipped to Afghanistan are just as likely to be assigned to mentoring teams as anyone else." While there is a relative handful of men like ranger995 directly involved with training soldiers in the field, most, as Brian Coughley noted in September, are far from that level of skill: In Afghanistan the training course is ten weeks, and 90 percent of recruits are illiterate and language-incompatible with their peers, let alone the foreigners. Afghan instructors are keen but barely effective and the logistics system is a tattered joke. Some foreign instructors may be good, but most are depressingly ignorant of language, culture and customs. It’s hard to know whether the drug problem Gen. Ramms spoke of is truly addiction or just the widespread smoking of hashish among Afghans. Recreational drug use is one thing when you’re sitting at home or around the campfire. It’s something else when you’re expected to be on patrol against people armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. This was made amply clear more than a year ago in this widely seen video:
Then there’s the problem of trying to create a national army out of a mix of ethnicities. Porter writes: The latest report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, issued Oct. 30, shows that Tajiks, which represent 25 percent of the population, now account for 41 percent of all ANA troops who have been trained, and that only 30 percent of the ANA trainees are now Pashtuns. The new figures are less promising than older ones that had suggested that Pashtuns were 40% of troops (about their proportion in the population). Now it seems they are just a third of the troops. To have a Tajik army patrolling and searching Pashtuns could be a bad scene. So too would be a Pashtun denial of the legitimacy of the Afghan National Army. And this is all before there's any discussion about warlords, opium-funded Taliban, the anger of the populace toward foreign occupation (whoever the occupier is), and the deeply corrupt Karzai regime that even the most pollyanna assessment of Afghanistan's future cannot be sanguine about. In the Pentagon and other parts of the Obama administration can be found plenty of people who recognize all these problems. Still, magical thinking has not disappeared. The idea that the United States can somehow overcome all these obstacles and do it on a rapid timetable - obstacles that were there for the British in the 1880s and the Soviets in the 1980s - is just another sad foray into the myth of American exceptionalism.
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| Sunday, December 20th, 2009 | |
daily_kos
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10:06p |
Looking for a New START
http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/iVd6hAGtfqQ/-Looking-for-a-New-START Last week, in the midst of the tense Copenhagen climate conference negotiations, brief news stories began to surface regarding an impending meeting between Presidents Obama and Medvedev. It wasn't to be just any meeting: after nearly a year of complicated negotiations in Geneva between Russian and American diplomats, as well as several well-publicized meetings between Obama and Medvedev, the two world leaders are now dealing with the fact that they failed to reach an agreement on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) by the December 5 expiration date. Regardless of the rumors that flew ahead of their Copenhagen meeting, Obama and Medvedev did not sign a new treaty; they issued a rather generic statement basically saying that negotiations are down to the wire, that they are "quite close to an agreement," and that "there are certain technical details... which require further work...".
Progress, Difficulties with New START I wanted to get a better idea of what might be holding things up, and what we'll be facing in the future with regards to Senate ratification of the New START treaty. With respect to the latter, it appears that the Senate Republicans might be laying the groundwork to make treaty ratification more complicated that it should be. With these questions in mind, I contacted Kingston Reif, the Deputy Director of Nuclear Non-Proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Regarding when there will actually be a treaty, Reif and I discussed how the news reports made it hard to predict. He said: I've seen a lot of different reports, saying different things, in both the Russian press and the US press, to the point where I'm hesitant to predict anything on this anymore. It's become pretty difficult to do that. It’s not going to be this year anymore. It might extend well into January or even February. The U.S. and Russian negotiating teams are heading home for the holidays. They’re not going to start up again until January. When I asked him what he thought the main hold-up was (specifically, regarding verification), he emphasized that he thought verification was the main issue, as well as the "issue of mobile missiles". Specifically: My understanding is that we have agreed to shut down our monitoring at Votkinsk, and that's not going to be in the new treaty. Perhaps the US is still trying to convince the Russians otherwise. The Russians may also be trying to convince the US that since the US doesn’t have mobile ICBMS -- all our ICBMS are at three bases in the western portion of the country, they don't move, they're silo-based missiles, whereas the Russians still have mobile missiles that they might want some means of verification for those that is simpler than the provisions were for mobile missiles in START I, so they may be trying to push the US on that. I think another issue that's a point of contention is the issue of telemetry. START I requires that neither side encrypt telemetry information about their ballistic missile tests. The Russians are claiming "you guys are not building new missiles, whereas we are, so it's one-sided that we have to reveal information from those launches, whereas you don't, because you're not building new missiles. And then finally, I think both Obama and Medvedev have stated that this new treaty is going to limit both delivery vehicles and warheads. The US preference, obviously, is to not follow the START rule of "attributing" a specific number of warheads to delivery vehicles, no matter how many warheads those delivery vehicles actually carry. The US just wants to be able to count the actual number of warheads that it has on its delivery systems, because we've downloaded a lot of warheads from our specific missiles and bombers, such that they don't carry the maximum number of warheads they could carry. We’ve also converted some subs and bombers to conventional-only missions. So, trying to work through how, exactly, you verify the actual number of warheads, if you don't have an attribution rule could potentially be difficult. I think those are some issues that could be holding things up. And it’s interesting to note that the Russians seem to be saying some of the same things about verification that the Bush administration was saying back in 2002 and 2003. The Bush administration kept telling the Russians that we don’t care how you structure your forces, we don’t care about Votkinsk, we don’t care if you build new missiles, if we’re going to have verification provisions at all, they should be much simpler, etc. So the Russians seem to be still clinging to that view. One thing that I hope the lay person can see at this point is why it isn't surprising that Obama and Medvedev couldn't just whip out their pens and sign a treaty in Copehagen. It can't be emphasized enough how complex the negotiations have been. Yes, it's a disappointment that they missed the deadline, but it's also not unexpected; part of the problem is that the George W. Bush administration was not interested in negotiating a treaty to replace START I, as I've explained in a previous post.
Looking To The Future: Senate Ratification Now, the big question is: once we have a new START treaty, what hurdles will it face when it comes to ratification by the US Senate? Last week, we got a hint of what's to come, from a Washington Times article: All 40 Republican senators and one independent wrote to President Obama on Wednesday reminding him that the current defense authorization law links modernization of the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal to further U.S.-Russian arms reductions. The law applies to the not-yet-finished successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expired on Dec. 16. The 41 senators - enough to block formal ratification of a new treaty, which requires 67 votes - stated in the letter that they agree with the defense legislation's language that says modernizing the aging U.S. nuclear stockpile is critical to further U.S.-Russian arms cuts. "In fact, we don't believe further reductions can be in the national security interest of the U.S. in the absence of a significant program to modernize our nuclear deterrent," the senators stated. I've seen a copy of the letter; not surprisingly, Joe Lieberman is the Independent to whom the article refers. "We need new warheads" has been a recurring theme from the GOP side of the fence, especially from Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. I asked Kingston Reif about the letter sent to Obama, specifically if its reference to the defense bill was accurate. Reif told me: First, as you alluded to, Kyl is misconstruing what the Defense Authorization language actually says. Now, the section of the Defense Authorization bill that deals with this so-called linkage, it does require a plan to "modernize" the nuclear weapons complex, but it does not say anything about modernization in the context of the nuclear arsenal, or the nuclear deterrent, which is what this letter does. So, as you hinted, it's important to note that there's no requirement in the bill that the president must deliver a plan to design and build new nuclear warheads, period. It's just not in there. The relevant section of the Defense Authorization Act is here. Note that there's nothing about a new plutonium pit facility, either. Reif explained this very clearly: The bill specifically calls for "a description of the plan to modernize the nuclear weapons complex, including improving the safety of facilities, modernizing the infrastructure, and maintaining the key capabilities and competencies of the nuclear weapons workforce, including designers and technicians." That's what it says. So according to the language, modernization here -- they're talking about making our facilities and weapons safer, more secure, they talk about giving the labs the resources they need to work on various issues, which could include such things as safeguards and dismantlement. But there's nothing specific in there about a new plutonium pit facility. There may be something specific in the Nuclear Posture Review, and the President's FY11 budget request, but there's no specific language on that, to my knowledge, in the Defense Authorization bill. ... [T]he letter, I think, greatly overstates the link between the modest reductions that are likely going to be called for in the new START treaty, whenever it's signed, and on the other hand, maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile and modernizing the infrastructure. I mean, if you buy Senator Kyl's logic that we need to modernize the deterrent, then he should want to do so with or without a new arms control treaty. The Obama administration is going to address the issues raised in the Defense Authorization bill when it releases its Nuclear Posture Review and presents its fiscal year 2011 budget requests. In my view, given the modest first step that New START represents, it's going to have no impact on the health of our stockpile and its supporting infrastructure. Finally -- and this is very, very important -- we talked about how the Washington Times article neglected to mention a recent study by an independent group of defense scientists, the JASON Defense Advisory Panel. The study basically said that what we've been doing to maintain our nuclear arsenal (the Life Extension Program) means the weapons will be good for decades to come. Reif had this to say: The final point to make, too, is that we are, in fact, modernizing our weapons. Now, Kyl and others seem to think that because we're not building new missiles and warheads like the Russians and Chinese, we're falling way behind. That's simply not true... Our arsenal remains second to none. In fact, it's even more capable now than it was during the Cold War. We simply do not need to build new missiles and warheads. I think that sentiment, particularly on the warhead issue, was confirmed by the recent JASON report, which said that the lifetime of today's nuclear warhead can be extended for decades, via the current life extension approach, with no anticipated loss of confidence. Reif recently wrote a fabulous piece on this subject; please click here to read it. We are actually spending $6 billion a year on weapon modernization. However, it doesn't seem to be the kind of modernization that Kyl et al. have in mind. Next year will be a nuclear minefield when it comes to battles in the Senate. It's important to point out that everyone wants a new START treaty; it's just that how the GOP Senators (and Lieberman) have defined "modernization", and what's actually in the Defense Authorization act, that are different. It's my prediction that Senator Kyl will use ratification of the new START treaty to set up his arguments for killing any possible ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which he has vowed to do. I'll leave you with a graph I've posted several times before. This is to give you the big picture about how far we've come with nuclear treaties, and why it's so important that we ratify the new START treaty with a minimum amount of grandstanding and politicization.
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