January 27, 2012

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A CONVERSATION WITH CONGRESSMAN JOHN TIERNEY
SUNDAY, JANUARY 29th, 4 P M
THE WALSH RESIDENCE
33 High Street (near Police Station)
NAHANT
(781) 5988-1177

MARBLEHEAD DEMOCRATIC TOWN COMMITTEE MEETING
MONDAY, JANUARY 30th, 7:00 P.M.
Marblehead Community Center, 10 Humphrey Street

FEATURED SPEAKER REGISTER OF DEEDS JOHN O’BRIEN
He will be talking about the ongoing “Robo” signing scam and foreclosure problems.

January 27, 2012

The Daily Show Elizabeth Warren interview

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January 27, 2012

The Daily Show Elizabeth Warren interview

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January 27, 2012

From hope to teamwork and shared sacrifice

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By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: January 25, Washington Post

It was to be expected that, in the course of his State of the Union address, President Obama would mention the killing of Osama bin Laden, whose death represented the culmination of the battle against terrorism that began on Sept. 11, 2001.
Far less expected was Obama’s use of the bin Laden episode to present a community-minded worldview that contrasts so sharply with the highly individualistic and anti-government message that has been heard over and over from the Republicans seeking to replace him.

At the very beginning of his speech, the president pivoted from “the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s armed forces” to the post-World War II nation of his Kansas grandparents. If the war against fascism was followed by “a story of success that every American had a chance to share,” surely we can find our way again to “an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”
There was a black-and-white, 1940s movie feel to all this. Obama was invoking the experience of the Greatest Generation, Harry Truman and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Later references to science and technology brought the story forward into 21st-century color. But it is plain that, in the historic argument that will engage the country for the rest of the year, Obama, no less than the Republicans, is rooting himself in old American values. But in his case, they are the values of solidarity and fairness.
And lest anyone miss his point, Obama ended his speech by referring to a flag he was given bearing the names of the SEAL team that undertook the bin Laden mission. The lesson Obama drew: “No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. .?.?. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.” It was a long way from the imperatives of the private-equity market.
This was a campaign speech, but so, too, were the State of the Union addresses of Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996, as former Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet pointed out. The comparisons are instructive.
Obama’s was closer to the Reagan model, in form if not content. Reagan laid out what became the major themes of his campaign, including not only the nation’s recovery from economic turmoil but also his central philosophical purpose: a continuing battle against “the tendency of government to grow.”
Obama’s speech was Reagan’s turned on its head. Like Reagan, Obama previewed his election arguments in a philosophically aggressive way. But Obama’s claim was the opposite of Reagan’s. Obama spoke of government’s essential role in ensuring shared prosperity and in creating an America “built to last” — a slogan drawn, perhaps not accidentally, from truck commercials for General Motors, the company whose rescue Obama engineered.
Obama’s speech was chock-full of government initiatives: tax benefits to promote domestic manufacturing, new job-training partnerships between community colleges and businesses, education reform, more work-study jobs, broader opportunities for mortgage refinancing, incentives to hold down college tuitions. Obama used his energy program to make his larger point explicit: “Government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.”
In offering a laundry list of programs large and small, Obama’s address was positively Clintonian. But there was a major difference. In his 1996 State of the Union, Clinton chose to bend to the conservative wind that had blown in with the Republican sweep in the previous midterm election. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton declared in one of his most celebrated lines.
Obama, on the other hand, confronts an even more radical and sweeping assault on government, and so he has decided to take it on, forcefully and directly.
This president has often been lucky in his political life, and so he was again on Tuesday. Hours before Obama spoke, Mitt Romney, the on-again, off-again Republican front-runner, released his 2010 tax return showing him paying a 13.9 percent rate on an income of $21.7 million. Thus did Romney make himself Exhibit A for Obama’s campaign on behalf of tax fairness.
But the president’s speech showed that he is not counting on luck alone. He is pinning his reelection on a big argument and a big cause. It was Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign that promised voters “a choice, not an echo.” We now know that this is exactly what the 2012 election will deliver.
ejdionne@washpost.com

January 26, 2012

Recap of State Of The Union speech

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Rebuilding Our Middle Class

President Obama Rightly Says It Is the Challenge of Our Times

(Reposted from Center For American Progress)


President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, January 24, 2012.

By Gadi Dechter, Michael Ettlinger | January 25, 2012

See also: President Obama Links Middle-Class Prosperity and Innovation by Ed Paisley and Sean Pool; Manufacturing America’s Energy Future by Kate Gordon; Obama’s Clean Energy Plan for an America Built to Last by Daniel J. Weiss; Will Congress Block Infrastructure Spending? by Donna Cooper

President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address last night forcefully articulated an economic policy framework that correctly recognizes revitalizing America’s middle class is the challenge of our times—and the key to long-term U.S. economic prosperity.

The policy blueprint the president laid out builds on two threads that have come together in recent months as the twin components of this administration’s bridge to a better economy:

  • Continued and intense concentration on repairing the Great Recession’s damage to the middle class
  • Focusing long term on the threat that mounting income and wealth inequality pose to our growth prospects and global economic competitiveness

Taken together, these two strains have the potential to finally liberate our economic policymaking system from the counterproductive—but strangely persistent—thinking that the key to growth is strengthening the hands of monied “job creators” rather than boosting the actual job-creating power of a broad middle class.

Among the key initiatives proposed by President Obama yesterday were tax policies that encourage domestic manufacturing and discourage outsourcing of middle-class jobs, tough trade enforcement that gives American companies even footing in the global market, workforce initiatives that reward hard work and education, and a fairer tax code that ensures everyone contributes his fair share to deficit reduction.

Yesterday’s speech also marks an important elaboration of the president’s December 6 speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in which he decried “the gaping inequality” that undermines what we might call the American Promise: If you work hard and play by the rules, you can participate in the American Dream.

While pundits have largely described recent White House statements about inequality and the middle class as a populist shift in political rhetoric, it should rightly be recognized as the expression of a sound intellectual theory that recognizes that a thriving middle class is not the byproduct of a prosperous economy—it is in fact the driver of prosperity.

The middle-class consumer creates the incentives to conceive, manufacture, and sell what our economy produces. That demand drives business opportunities and spurs investment. Entrepreneurship and invention also are rooted in the middle class, and the rise in middle-class worker productivity generates much of our nation’s wealth.

This theory was fleshed out earlier this month by Princeton economist Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, in a speech at the Center for American Progress. Krueger persuasively argued that our economy today would be stronger if not for the troubling rise in inequality in the United States in the last three decades.

The Obama administration’s full-throated support of economic policies focused on the middle class presents a welcome contrast to the failed “trickle down” approach favored by conservatives. Economists and policymakers in Washington and across the country should seize this moment to continue to hammer home the importance of strengthening the middle class, and making it easier for Americans of all backgrounds to join it.

That’s why the Center for American Progress has launched a yearlong series of events and publications on the importance of the middle class to our economy. Here’s hoping that in the next State of the Union address, the president of the United States can look back and thank Congress for recognizing that today’s top-heavy economy is neither good for our country or our economy.

Gadi Dechter is Managing Director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress. Michael Ettlinger is Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center.

January 26, 2012

Voters really like renewable energy investments, really

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Reposted from Climate Progress

Voters just love government investment in renewable energy — much more than their representatives in Washington, it seems.  I was reading an analysis of the State of the Union Address based on the response of “a group of 50 swing voters armed with dial meters” and came across this nugget:

Not surprisingly, the moment in the speech that brought the most positive reaction was Obama’s mention of the death of Osama bin Laden. It drew an average reading of 80 on the 0-100 scale used by the meters. Obama’s call for more investment in renewable energy drew nearly as strong a reaction, however, said Andrew Baumann, another of the pollsters who conducted the study. The passages of the speech that talked about phasing out subsidies for oil companies and competing with China and Germany for new developments in wind power and solar energy did particularly well.

And while small dial groups are hardly definitive by themselves, Climate Progress readers know that poll after poll after poll show the same thing (see Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent and links to polls therein).

This enthusiasm has not waned even with all the attacks on clean energy — see Independents Support Federal Investment in “Green Jobs” 2-to-1 Despite Solyndra Media Storm:

In dozens of focus groups we have conducted this month across the country on a wide variety of subjects, when voters are asked where they would like new jobs in their state to come from, the first words out of their mouths are almost always the same – clean energy and related technology.  Voters believe that the clean energy economy is here and is growing, and they want their state to have a part of it.

And yet in the face of this overwhelming popularity of clean energy, we’re staring at job-killing cuts in federal clean energy investment and tax credits.  Why?  As a German State Minister explained: We Can Decarbonize With Renewables Because “We Don’t Have the … Koch Brothers.”

Again, the Kochs haven’t won over the majority of Americans or even the majority of swing voters — only the majority of that narrow slice of the electorate that drives conservative politics, the Tea Party (see “Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming“).

Some day, some masterful, Churchillian politician will figure this all out and lead the country toward true clean energy revolution. Some day.

 
 

 

January 21, 2012

In The Name Of Reagan

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There They Go Again

By NEIL J. YOUNG

Published in the New York Time , January 19, 2012

A week ago, 150 evangelical leaders meeting at a ranch outside Houston backed Rick Santorum’s candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Presumably, they hoped that their endorsement would pull Mitt Romney back from the front of the race. Saturday’s primary in South Carolina – with evangelicals expected to make up sixty percent of the electorate – provides what seems like a perfect testing ground for disrupting any claims about Romney’s inevitable nomination.

Newt Gingrich is apparently surging once again, taking votes from Romney. Coupled with Rick Perry’s exit, the evangelicals’ blessing of Santorum in Texas could propel him to a surprisingly good showing on Saturday or — who knows? — perhaps even a victory.

Speaking from Texas shortly after the endorsement, Gary Bauer, a prominent social conservative who ran for president in 2000, explained why the evangelicals had rallied behind Santorum: “They were all looking for the best Reagan conservative.”

For nearly twenty-five years, Ronald Reagan has loomed over every Republican contest. During the debates this campaign season, he has been mentioned four times as often as the most recent Republican president, George W. Bush. At the final debate in South Carolina on Thursday, for example, Newt Gingrich said, “When I became speaker, we went back to the Ronald Reagan play book.” Mitt Romney, for his part, didn’t like to hear Gingrich speaking that way. “I looked at the Reagan diary,” he told Gingrich. “You’re mentioned once.”

This is typical. Across the Republican Party’s political spectrum, candidates continually claim the Reagan mantle, depicting themselves as his most steadfast acolyte and the natural heir to his political legacy. Rick Santorum did it, too, suggesting earlier on Thursday that he was the candidate most likely to fulfill Reagan’s political legacy. “We’re going to win or lose this election based on about 10 states,” he said. “I come from one of those states. I come from a background and a town where there were lots of Reagan Democrats.”

The religious right wing of the Republican Party has clung especially close to the memory of Reagan. In Reagan, religious conservatives remember a president who spiced his speeches with Bible verses, fought for their issues, and championed the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage. But memory is an unreliable guide, and history in the service of politics often breeds soothing myths that camouflage inconvenient truths.

In reality, religious conservatives were often dissatisfied with Reagan’s presidency. The Christian right of today – and Republicans generally – must stop using a mythic Reagan as their measuring stick for candidates because it drives them away from viable contenders who fall short of an impossible standard that Reagan himself couldn’t have met.

Believing themselves the key constituency that had guaranteed Reagan’s historic win in 1980, Christian conservatives felt the president owed them for their enthusiastic backing. Reagan had courted the nascent political movement on the religious right with a spirited defense of their most cherished political issues, including promises to restore school prayer, to work against the Equal Rights Amendment, and to attack federal abortion rights, legalized just seven years before.

But once in office, the Reagan administration claimed that it first had to address the nation’s weak economy. The social agenda of Christian conservatives would have to wait. In the meantime, the White House planned to muffle their grumbling. “We want to keep the Moral Majority types so close to us they can’t move their arms,” one Reagan staffer explained to the journalist Lou Cannon.

The complaints piled up. Evangelicals pointed out that Reagan had appointed too few of them to positions in government, despite his campaign promise that evangelicals in his administration would mirror their proportional representation in the American population – about forty percent at the time. In light of that snub, Reagan’s selection of Sandra Day O’Connor — who had made several pro-choice votes during her time in the Arizona state legislature — as his first nominee to the Supreme Court stung sharply.

During the campaign, Reagan had won the National Right to Life Committee’s endorsement by pledging that he’d only nominate committed pro-life jurists to the nation’s highest court. Reagan’s tepid and ineffectual support for key school prayer and anti-abortion legislation in Congress during his first administration frustrated and angered religious conservatives who watched various bills die while the president did little.

As the 1984 election approached, Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, confessed he was “a little anxious that we haven’t had some aggressive support” on issues important to the religious right. Sixty-eight percent of pro-life activists judged Reagan’s first four years as “fair to poor” on the abortion issue.

Many Christian conservatives began to publicly question supporting the president’s reelection bid. “If we balance the budget and we still keep murdering a million and a half babies every year, there’s no way we can say we’re better off than we were four years ago,” Moral Majority’s Cal Thomas commented. “Do not take us for granted,” the fundamentalist pastor Bob Jones wrote the president. “We are not going to vote for you in desperation in 1984.”

Still, these chiding messages were meant to prod the Reagan White House into an aggressive defense of their issues rather than to represent a legitimate political threat. Conservative Christians generously contributed to Reagan’s landslide win in 1984. While disheartened by what they saw as the slim accomplishments of the first four years, many Christian conservatives, rather than hold Reagan personally responsible, blamed moderates in the White House, like James Baker, then chief of staff, for blocking their agenda.

Others contended that Reagan would turn to their priorities in his second term, once he was free to pursue their causes after he’d secured re-election. “With the burden of campaigning behind him for good,” a writer for Christianity Today, the nation’s leading evangelical publication, wrote on the eve of the election, “the president may move vigorously toward his unfulfilled 1980 promises.”

Once returned to office, however, Reagan continued to disappoint conservative Christians by his failure to advance their political objectives. Their anger and frustration with the president soon gave way to grief and disillusionment. Shortly after Reagan left the White House, the influential evangelical intellectual Carl Henry blasted Reagan for having “given little more than lip service” to the concerns of conservative Christians. Looking back on the Reagan presidency and George Bush’s election in 1988, the editors of Christianity Today worried in a headline, “Were Christians Courted for Their Votes or Beliefs?”

The political disappointments and painful realizations that marked the religious right’s rocky relationship with Reagan’s presidency have been replaced by the more powerful seductions of selective memory and wishful fantasy. But like any myth of history, there are small truths within it that alter the memory.

Reagan failed to achieve the religious right’s grandiose objectives, but he delivered on other issues religious conservatives cared about, like cutting taxes and increasing military spending. His full-throated espousal of traditional morals and Christian principles along with symbolic gestures like naming 1983 the “Year of the Bible” looked like crass politics to many observers, but linger as forceful evidence for many conservative Christians of Reagan’s unique example.

If Republicans want to appeal to an American electorate that increasingly has little direct connection to Ronald Reagan, they need to let go of romantic memories that produce only unrealistic expectations. Part of Reagan’s appeal came from his insistence on his own limitations, so Republicans would be wise to stop looking for a savior among a field of mortals.

In reflecting honestly on their own fractious history with Reagan, religious conservatives and other Republicans alike might better evaluate the candidates that stand before them rather than hopelessly praying for the second coming of a president who never really was.

Neil J. Young is the author of the forthcoming book, “We Gather Together: The Rise of the Religious Right and the Challenge of Ecumenical Politics.” He teaches at Princeton.

January 18, 2012

Six Politicians In Search Of A Fact

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Summary From Factcheck.org 

Truth took a punch or two at the first of two GOP debates before New Hampshire’s critical presidential primary.

  • Romney, talking about taxes, said federal, state and local government consume 37 percent of the economy today compared with only 27 percent when John F. Kennedy was president. In fact, taxes now consume only 27.4 percent of GDP.
  • Paul blasted Gingrich for avoiding the draft during Vietnam, and Gingrich said Paul had a “long history” of inaccuracies. The truth is Gingrich was both a student and a father at the time, and probably would have failed the physical anyway, according to his stepfather, an Army man.
  • Santorum said the term “middle class” implies class warfare and is one “I don’t think we should be using as Republicans.” The fact is his own campaign used it in an Iowa flyer, and he has used it in the past himself.
  • Paul attacked Santorum as a “high-powered lobbyist.” Santorum was never registered as a lobbyist, though he earned more than $200,000 working as a consultant for a lobbying firm and an energy company.

Candidates also recycled some false or doubtful claims we’ve gone over before. Romney repeated his misleading claim that his firm Bain Capital invested in businesses that “have now added over 100,000 jobs.” Huntsman again claimed Utah was “No. 1” in job creation while he was governor, which isn’t true according to the standard statistical measure for employment. And Santorum again put words in President Obama’s mouth by claiming that the president “supported” the results of a disputed election in Iran.

And finally, Gingrich, Santorum and Romney were all a bit confused about which sports teams were playing an important game on another network. Perhaps they had more important matters on their minds.

Analysis 

The six remaining major GOP candidates debated the evening of Jan. 7 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. The debate was sponsored by ABC News, Yahoo! News and WMUR. The candidates were scheduled to slug it out again 12 hours later on a special edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Jan. 8.

Romney’s Fast Shuffle on Tax Figures

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gave some inaccurate and misleading figures to support his view that “taxes are too high.”

Romney: Taxes are too high. Government at all levels during the days of John F. Kennedy consumed 27 percent of our economy, about a quarter. Today it consumes 37 percent of our economy. We’re only inches away from no longer being a free economy. And our Democrat friends want us to just keep raising taxes ‘just a little more; just give us a little more.’

But the fact is that federal, state and local government taxes are only slightly higher now than they were during Kennedy’s time in office.

In 1961, 1962 and the first three quarters of 1963, current government receipts were never higher than 26.4 percent of gross domestic product, according to historical figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. And today, the figure is 27.4 percent, as of the most recent quarter on record, which ended Sept. 30.

A Romney spokesman said he was actually giving figures for spending. If so, Romney still was misleading his audience. He used the word “consumes.” And he sandwiched the figures between references to taxes, never making clear that he had switched from talking about taxes to giving figures on spending and back to talking about taxes again.

Furthermore, current government expenditures never exceeded 24.7 percent of GDP in any quarter while Kennedy was president, and never were as high as Romney’s 27 percent figure. Also, during the July to September quarter last year, spending was 35.7 percent, lower than Romney’s 37 percent figure. (The figure did reach 36.5 percent in the second quarter of 2009, when the economy was shrinking. But that was then, not “today,” as Romney claimed.)

Correction, Jan. 10: We used figures based on BEA’s “current expenditures” and “current receipts.” (Lines 1 and 15 of BEA’s Table 3.1.) Our original story incorrectly referred to “total” receipts and expenditures, and we have corrected it.

Update, Jan. 10: After our original story was published, a Romney spokesman pointed us to two different measures: BEA’s “total” expenditure figures and the historical tables published annually by the Office of Management and Budget. Each uses somewhat different accounting, but both still tell essentially the same story as the figures we cited.

BEA’s “total” figures show federal, state and local expenditures averaged 27.5 percent of GDP during Kennedy’s time in office, and had risen to 37.2 percent in the most recent quarter on record. Those are roughly the figures Romney used. But again, spending figures are not the most relevant when discussing taxes.

BEA’s “total receipts” figure (a bit broader than the “current” receipts figure) averaged 26.3 percent of GDP under Kennedy. But it was 27.5 percent in the most recent quarter on record. So even BEA’s broadest measure shows only a small rise in taxes, fees and other receipts, and not a dramatic jump.

One of the most widely used measures comes from the historical tables published annually by the Office of Management and Budget. These are less up to date, and cover fiscal years which don’t exactly match presidential terms of office. But they lend even less support to Romney’s argument for lowering taxes.

OMB’s historical figures show that all federal, state and local revenues ranged from 25.4 percent to 25.8 percent of GDP during the fiscal years that fall wholly or partially within Kennedy’s time in office. (See OMB Table 15.1; in those days fiscal years ran from July 1 to June 30.)

But the figure was actually lower than that — 24.7 percent — in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2010, which is the most recent fiscal year covered by OMB’s historical tables. No wonder Romney didn’t use tax figures to argue for further tax cuts.

As for OMB’s measure of total government spending, during the four fiscal years when Kennedy was in office, it did indeed amount to more than 27 percent of GDP. But in fiscal 2010, it was 35 percent, somewhat lower than fiscal 2009?s 36.5 percent — (see OMB Table 15.3) — and also below Romney’s 37 percent figure.

Dodgy Draft Claims

Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tussled over Paul calling Gingrich a “chicken hawk” for not serving in the military during the war in Vietnam. Paul boasted that “I went when they called me up.” Gingrich suggested Paul was not telling the truth about Gingrich’s draft deferments.

The truth is, however, that Paul was an Air Force flight surgeon — not exactly front-line duty. And Gingrich’s stepfather, an Army man, has said his stepson’s flat feet and nearsightedness probably would have disqualified him from military service even if he had not been deferred as a student and father.

“I think people who don’t serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments, they have no right to send our kids off to war,” Paul said, adding that “at least I went when they called me up.”

Gingrich, who referred to himself as an “army brat” whose father served in that branch of the military for 27 years, said that Paul had a “long history” of saying inaccurate things. “The fact is, I never asked for a deferment. I was married with a child. It was never a question.”

Paul retorted: “When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids. And I went.” Gingrich counted: “I wasn’t eligible for the draft. I wasn’t eligible for the draft.”

At the time, Gingrich was in college and had a child. And though Gingrich didn’t mention it, he most likely would have been refused even if he had reported for a physical. A 1996 PBS “Frontline” documentary quoted Gingrich’s stepfather, Bob Gingrich — the Army veteran Gingrich talked about — saying: “He is very nearsighted. … He has two of the flattest feet that there ever was. He was never physically capable or qualified to be military.”

Gingrich attended Tulane University from 1966 to 1970, working on a Ph.D. in history. Gingrich said at the debate and earlier this week in New Hampshire that he got the deferment because he was a father. “I had two children during that period, I never asked for a deferment because during the period I was a father, and it was automatic,” Gingrich said, according to the Concord Monitor.

Paul said that he “was married and had two kids” when he was drafted, and he served.

Indeed, fathers, unless they were doctors, like Paul, had a much smaller chance of being drafted during Vietnam than men without children. According to a March 16, 1963, United Press International report, “President Kennedy … ordered the Selective Service deferment of all fathers except doctors, dentists and veterinarians.”

Paul’s website includes a bio written by his wife, Carol. She says they were married in 1957 and had two kids while Paul was attending medical school at Duke University. Paul later became a flight surgeon in the Air Force when he was called to duty.

Santorum’s ‘Middle Class’ Inconsistency

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum chastised Romney for using the term “middle class,” even though Santorum’s own campaign uses it currently and he has used it himself not so long ago.

Here’s what Santorum said during the debate:

Santorum, Jan. 7: The Governor [Mitt Romney] used a term earlier that I shrink from, and it’s one that I don’t think we should be using as Republicans: “Middle class.” There are no classes in America. We’re a country that don’t allow for titles. We don’t put people in classes. Maybe middle income people. But the idea, somehow or another, that we’re going to buy into the class warfare arguments of Barack Obama is something that should not be part of the Republican lexicon. That’s their job. Divide. Separate. Put one group against another. That’s not the language I’ll use as president. I’ll use the language of bringing people together.

Someone in Santorum’s campaign apparently did not get the memo. A flyer circulated by the campaign in Iowa boasts that “Rick Santorum has called for significant tax rate cuts for middle-class Americans and will cut wasteful spending to pay for it.”

We couldn’t find any recent instances of Santorum uttering the term “middle class,” but he used it at least three times in public statements in 2005 and 2006. (See here, here and here.) And while Santorum says “middle class” is a phrase that ought to be wiped from the Republican lexicon, it has been used repeatedly during the Republican debates by Romney, Gingrich and Michele Bachmann.

Paul’s Inaccurate ‘Lobbyist’ Claim

Paul called Santorum a “high-powered lobbyist” — which is not technically correct.

Paul: And also where did he get — make his living afterwards? I mean, he became a high-powered lobbyist on — in Washington, D.C. And he has done quite well.

After leaving the Senate in 2007, Santorum became a consultant — not a registered lobbyist — for several firms. One of those companies was the lobbying firm American Continental Group. The personal financial disclosure statement Santorum filed as a presidential candidate shows that Santorum earned $65,000 in 2010 as a consultant for the American Continental Group, which reported earning about $6.6 million in lobbying fees that year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Santorum last year also earned $142,500 as a consultant for CONSOL Energy. But he is not and never has been registered as a Washington lobbyist.

Romney’s Dubious Jobs Claim, Again

Romney repeated the claim that he created over 100,000 jobs through his work at the private equity firm Bain Capital. That’s an unproven and questionable claim, as we wrote earlier this week.

Romney said that 100,000 jobs was a “net-net” figure that included jobs gained and lost at more than 100 businesses in which Bain invested. When moderator George Stephanopoulos questioned that, saying analysts had said Romney hadn’t subtracted jobs lost, Romney responded, “no, it’s not accurate.” He said he was “a good enough numbers guy to make sure I got both sides of that.” But this week, the Romney campaign sent us as support for the claim a thin list of jobs gained at just three companies: Staples, The Sports Authority and Domino’s. No other companies were included in the list, and no jobs lost were mentioned, either. We have asked the campaign again for the detailed count that Romney said exists.

As for the three companies the campaign has cited, it’s true that they have added more than 100,000 jobs since Bain invested in them. But does Romney deserve credit for all of those jobs? He admitted at the debate tonight that the total includes jobs up until the present day, long after Bain’s initial involvement, and that other firms had invested in them as well. As we reported earlier, The Sports Authority was started with help from Bain, William Blair Venture Partners, Phillips-Smith and Marquette Venture Partners. William Blair and Bessemer Venture Partners invested in Staples. And both companies, of course, had founders and CEOs spearheading their launches.

Huntsman’s Dubious ‘No. 1? Claim, Again

Jon Huntsman repeated his claim that when he was governor, Utah was No. 1 in job creation, better even than Texas, where Rick Perry was governor at the same time. Huntsman’s statistic is true according to data based on household surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But according to the most commonly used yardstick for job growth, payroll data, Utah was actually No. 4, behind Texas.

As we pointed out when he made similar claims in previous debates, Huntsman is citing a ranking based on BLS data from surveys of 60,000 American households. Using that data, jobs in Utah grew by 5.9 percent, tops in the country. Most economists, however, cite BLS statistics derived from payroll data to assess job growth. According to the BLS payroll data, the number of employed people in Utah went from 1,124,900 to 1,178,800 during Huntsman’s term. That’s a 4.8 percent increase. That’s much better than the national average, which saw jobs decline by 1.8 percent over that same period. But it’s not best in the nation. Using that data, Utah ranked fourth, behind Wyoming, North Dakota and  — notably — Texas.

And, we should note, Huntsman frequently points out that Massachusetts ranked 47th in job creation during Romney’s term as governor. That’s a ranking based on payroll data numbers.

Santorum Misquotes Obama on Iran, Again

Santorum repeated his misrepresentation of President Obama’s response to the 2009 reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying in an ABC/Yahoo! News debate that Obama “tacitly supported” the results of the election and immediately afterward called it a “legitimate” election. Actually, Obama said he could not “state definitively one way or another” whether the election was legitimate, because the U.S. did not have election monitors in Iran.

Iran’s presidential election was June 12, 2009, and President Ahmadinejad declared victory — triggering protests in Tehran. On June 15, Obama said at a press conference: “We weren’t on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can’t state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election. But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed.  And I think it’s important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.”

Obama issued a statement five days later again condemning Iran’s post-election “violent and unjust actions against its own people” and asserting that the U.S. “stands with all who … exercise” the “universal rights to assembly and free speech.” It was one of many such statements.

Obama was criticized in some circles for being too cautious with his statements about the election results, but as we noted when Santorum made a similar claim about Obama’s response on “Meet the Press,” Obama never said it appeared to be a legitimate election.

America’s Favorite Pastime: Foot(in mouth)ball

Even in lighthearted moments the candidates struggled with the facts. In one of those softball questions designed to humanize the candidates, debate moderator  Stephanopoulos asked what they would be doing this evening if not debating.

Gingrich fumbled the answer. Santorum booted it. And Romney followed along.

Gingrich: I’d be watching the college championship basketball game.

Santorum (correcting Gingrich): Football game.

Gingrich: I mean, football game. Thank you.

Santorum: I’d be doing the same thing with my family. We’d be huddled around, and we’d be watching the championship game.

Romney: I’m afraid it’s football. I love it.

Stephanopoulos: Football?

Romney: Yeah. I love it.

Certainly, there was no college basketball championship — as Santorum was quick to point out in “correcting” Gingrich. That would be in March (hence the term “March Madness”). But Santorum, too, was wrong. As every red-blooded American knows, the college football championship wasn’t played last night. LSU plays Alabama for the national championship on Monday night.

Now, there was an NFL wild card game last night. The Saints beat the Lions. Is that what Romney meant? His answer was sufficiently vague on this issue of national importance.

Update, Jan. 9: For more debate coverage, please read our Jan. 8 item, “New Hampshire Debates, Take 2,” on the  NBC News/Facebook debate.

– by Brooks Jackson, Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, Lori Robertson and D’Angelo Gore

Sources

Rick Santorum campaign flyer. “An Unmatched RecordFighting for Conservative Values.”

Press Office of Sen. Rick Santorum. Press release: “Santorum Holds Town Hall Meeting with Doctors, Nurses and Administrators at Reading Hospital and Medical Center.” 20 Apr 2006.

Project Vote Smart. Transcript: Santorum statement on Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005. 13 Feb 2006.

Project Vote Smart. Transcript: Santorum statement on Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. 07 Mar 2005.

White House website. Remarks by President Obama. 15 Jun 2009.

White House website. Statement from the President on Iran. 20 Jun 2009.

U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Executive Branch Public Disclosure Financial Report. Filed by Rick Santorum on 2 Aug 2011.

Annual Lobbying by American Continental Group. Citizens for Responsible Politics. Accessed 7 Jan 2012.

Kercheval, Nancy. “New Orleans Saints Beat Detroit Lions 45-28 in NFC Wild-Card Playoff Game.” Bloomberg News. 7 Jan 2012.

United Press International. “Kennedy Gives Fathers Draft Exempt Status.” Lodi News-Sentinel. 16 Mar 1963.

Connors, Molly A.K. “Gingrich: ‘I never asked for a deferment’ during Vietnam.” Concord Monitor. 4 Jan 2012.

Moody, Chris. “PBS releases 1996 documentary ‘The Long March of Newt Gingrich’ for the Web.” Yahoo! News. 19 Dec 2011.

Paul, Carol. “The American Dream.” Ronpaulforcongress.com. accessed 8 Jan 2012.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, “National Income and Product Accounts Tables” Table 1.1.5. Gross Domestic Product; Table 3.1. Government Current Receipts and Expenditures. Accessed 8 Jan 2011.

American’s Favorite Pasttime: Foot(in mouth)Ball

Posted on January 8, 2012

Even in light-hearted moments the candidates struggled with the facts. In one of those softball questions designed to humanize the candidates, debate moderator George Stephanopolous asked what they would be doing this evening if not debating.

Gingrich fumbled the answer. Santorum booted it. And Romney followed along.

Gingrich: I’d be watching the college championship basketball game.

Santorum (correcting Gingrich): Football game.

Gingrich: I mean, football game. Thank you.

Santorum: I’d be doing the same thing with my family. We’d be huddled around, and we’d be watching the championship game.

Romney: I’m afraid it’s football. I love it.

Stephanopoulos: Football?

Romney: Yeah. I love it.

Certainly, there was no college basketball championship — as Santorum was quick to point out in “correcting” Gingrich. That would be in March (hence the term “March Madness”). But Santorum, too, was wrong. As every red-blooded American knows, the college football championship wasn’t played last night. LSU plays Alabama for the national championship on Monday night.

Now, there was a NFL Wild Card game last night. The Saints beat the Lions. Is that what Romney meant? His answer was sufficiently vague on this issue of national importance.

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January 18, 2012

President Obama’s Bridge To A Better Economy

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By Michael Ettlinger | January 17, 2012, Center For American Progress

The state of our economy will be an important subject in next week’s State of the Union address by President Barack Obama. A recent set of speeches and announcements by the president and other senior administration officials mark out important new economic initiatives likely to underpin the president’s speech before Congress. These new initiatives build on the two threads that have run through the president’s economic policy since he first took office and began to bridge the abyss of the grim economy he inherited to get to the economy our nation desires.

The first thread of the administration’s economic policy has been an intense concentration on the immediate devastation wrought by the Great Recession: massive job loss, widespread home foreclosures and “underwater” mortgages, crushed industries, and vanished credit. While addressing that havoc was the front-and-center job as the president came into office, there was also a widespread recognition that the crash tumbled an economy already standing on a weakened and weakening foundation. Strengthening that foundation has been the second thread of the administration’s policy.

These two threads, although distinct in some ways, are closely linked both economically and politically. Economically, some of the best ways to immediately create jobs are to spend public resources on infrastructure, energy transformation, education, and other investments that are also part of building the nation’s economic fundamentals. The two threads are also linked economically because strong foundations can’t be successfully built on quicksand. With massive unemployment, too many Americans are losing job skills. With too many families facing huge debt overhangs and reduced incomes, weak demand in our economy eviscerates interest by businesses to invest. And with entire industries failing, we risk losing those industries forever. These are not just drags on our immediate economic situation but also problems that must be resolved for the sake of our long-term economic prospects.

Politically, too, the economic crisis and the possible bridges toward sustainable long-term prosperity are linked. One of the challenges in gaining support for the economic stimulus measures that have been needed over the past several years is the sense that they are just quick nitro-fueled boosts that, once the initial rush fades, leave us little farther down the road economically, but much more in debt. Notwithstanding the legitimate economic pedigree for such actions—the need to get out of the quicksand—this worry is understandable. Economic stimulus is meant to be a bridge over an economic valley to a brighter long-run future. But if there’s no description of what the other side of the valley looks like, it can feel like a bridge to nowhere—even when it isn’t.

President Obama has worked to address both the economic crisis and the problems with our economic foundations. A recent set of important speeches and announcements flesh out the approach he will take in 2012 to build up our economic fundamentals.

The first of these was the president’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on December 6. In that speech the president articulated the debilitating strains that income and wealth inequality put on our economy and, notably, the importance of a strong middle class for economic growth. This was the clearest expression yet of a key piece of the philosophy that has implicitly underpinned much of what the administration has done to help the economy. It was also a clear signal of the president’s priorities going forward.

The importance of inequality and the middle class is twofold. First, there is the small matter of the continuing validity of the American Dream. Even in the decade before the Great Recession, it was becoming harder and harder for those who worked hard and played by the rules to get ahead. As the president said, “This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try.”

The second broad point made by the president was that “when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom.” Last week, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, the highly regarded economist Alan Krueger, gave a speech at the Center for American Progress where he further fleshed out how inequality is threatening our economy. Krueger stated that “the rise in inequality in the United States over the last three decades has reached the point that inequality in incomes is causing an unhealthy division in opportunities, and is a threat to economic growth.”

He went on to discuss more specifically how inequality and a weak middle class are standing in the way of progress. He discussed the “cost to the economy and society if children from low-income families do not have anything close to the opportunities to develop and use their talents as the more-fortunate kin from better-off families who can attend better schools, receive college prep tutoring, and draw on a network of family connections in the job market.” He pointed out that the huge shift in income from the 99 percent to the 1 percent amounted to $1.1 trillion in 2007 alone and described how, making some reasonable assumptions, the magnitude of that shift suggests downward pressure on aggregate consumption on the order of $440 billion, amounting to a 5 percent drop. Krueger’s conclusion: “These calculations make clear that the economy would be in better shape and aggregate demand would be stronger if the size of the middle class had not dwindled as a result of inequality.”

Krueger also noted other evidence of the negative consequences of inequality and a weakened middle class on the broader economy, including research showing:

  • The connection of “more equality in the income distribution … to more stable economic growth”
  • The adverse effect of greater concentrations of income on governmental economic decision making
  • The impact of greater inequality on worker productivity

Strengthening the middle class, however, is not the only focus of the Obama administration’s long-term economic vision. Earlier this month Secretary of Commerce John Bryson unveiled a report on the competitiveness of American businesses and workers that highlighted three pillars where federal government policy is key: basic research, education, and infrastructure. The administration has enhanced investments in all three of these areas and the report indicates that further policy proposals are forthcoming.

Then, last week the White House held a daylong forum on the phenomena of “insourcing” where more and more companies are moving jobs from overseas back to the United States. The president spoke at the forum with several corporate executives from companies such as The Masterlock Company, Siemens, and Lincolnton Furniture standing behind him. Insourcing is encouraged by broad economic growth policies including the focus on inequality and the middle class. But it is also a key, perhaps the key, objective of policies aimed specifically at improving our country’s global competitive posture.

Finally, this past Friday the president announced a “crucial step toward a thoughtful and far-reaching plan to reshape the federal government to more effectively focus on ensuring U.S. long-term economic competitiveness.” The plan addresses the problem that the organization of the federal government is an impediment to a coherent and coordinated long-term strategy for our economic competitiveness and to its implementation. Specifically, the plan takes the step of combining six federal departments and agencies focused on business and trade. The goal is to make the government’s business-focused policies more effective and to enable a long-term strategy for garnering investment in American businesses, greater exports, and more jobs.

This set of recent efforts builds on things the Obama administration has already done in support of long-term economic growth, among them:

  • Investments in building and repairing roads and bridges, clean energy, and other measures adopted to create jobs and address the recession that will also, as alluded to above, have a longer-range impact
  • Financial regulatory reform, including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to put our financial markets on sound footing for providing the private capital required for growth
  • Enactment of the Affordable Care Act, which is not usually described as an economic initiative but is clearly intended to make one of the largest sectors of our economy much more efficient as well as address one of the greatest challenges facing the middle class
  • Education policy initiatives from the earliest grades through college, all of which boast an obvious economic import
  • The National Export Initiative and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both of which are designed to improve the long-term trade posture of the United States

Additionally, there are other previously announced efforts, including tax and budget proposals, immigration reform, the transition away from fossil fuels, and a range of government-efficiency measures that are incomplete but are still part of the administration’s agenda.

All of these initiatives, then and now, are part of the two economic threads that define the Obama administration’s efforts to build a bridge to a better economy. At the start of the Obama presidency, the highest priority was dealing with a massive economic collapse. In the month the president took office, the economy lost more than 800,000 jobs. This called for a fast, big, aggressive, emergency intervention. That stopped the collapse: We’ve had 22 consecutive months of private-sector job creation and 2011 saw more job growth than any year since 2005. But there is much more to be done. With the addition of its most recent initiatives, the administration is offering us a clear vision of the economy that can be spotted on the other side of the valley—with a roadmap on how to get there by strengthening the middle class and supporting the competitiveness of American companies and workers.

Michael Ettlinger is Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress.

To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact:

Print: Katie Peters (economy, education, and health care)
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January 10, 2012

Affordable Health Care Update, It’s Working

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2011 Annual Report President’s Message—Health Reform’s First Year: Supporting the Rollout

December 20, 2011

Authors: Karen Davis, Ph.D. Commonwealth Fund

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When the first provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect over a year ago, they heralded the promise of better access to health insurance coverage, financial relief, and health security for millions of Americans. Already health care spending is growing slower than experts originally anticipated. Further significant savings should materialize for government, employers, and families as provisions aimed at transforming health care financing and delivery lead to lower insurance administrative costs, fewer avoidable hospitalizations and hospital-acquired infections, and better management of chronic conditions.

The need for health reform in the United States is irrefutable. The ranks of the uninsured and underinsured continue to swell, even as health care spending consumes almost a fifth of the nation’s economic resources—yet without producing health outcomes as good as those in countries that spend half as much per person as we do. The health reform law has the potential to reverse these trends and put the nation on a path to a high performance health system that provides affordable access to high-quality, efficient care. Over the last year, The Commonwealth Fund’s work has centered on three major goals:

  • Helping health care leaders and the American people understand the Affordable Care Act and what it means for them;
  • Supporting implementation of the new law and assessing its potential to move the U.S. along the path to high performance; and
  • Laying the groundwork for future health care delivery system change and policy action.

The Fund has strived to clarify the implications of the Affordable Care Act, bring expertise to bear on its implementation, and help health care organizations respond to the opportunities embodied in the legislation.

EXPLAINING HEALTH REFORM AND ITS IMPACT

In the past year, the federal government made considerable progress in rolling out the first provisions of the health reform legislation:

  • According to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Affordable Care Act is already benefiting this group: since September 2010, when a policy allowing children to remain on their parents’ insurance plans through age 26 took effect, approximately 2.5 million more young adults ages 19 to 25 have coverage, compared with the number who would have been insured without this policy.
  • Seniors and disabled individuals no longer face a “doughnut hole” in their prescription drug coverage. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that more than 2.2 million people have saved in excess of $1.2 billion on their prescriptions this year, for an average of $550 per person.
  • Financial barriers to preventive care services have been removed.
  • Tax credits are now available to help small businesses offer affordable coverage to their workers.

Still, many members of the public—and even a number of policymakers—do not understand what is in the Affordable Care Act or how the law will improve health care in the U.S. That’s why The Commonwealth Fund launched its online Health Reform Resource Center last spring. Here, visitors can find reader-friendly summaries of all the law’s provisions, a tool for sorting through the provisions, an implementation timeline, and links to federal regulations and related Commonwealth Fund research, analysis, and commentary. Every month since its launch, the Health Reform Resource Center has been one of the most-viewed pages on our Web site.

To explain the impact that reform will have on our health system, we introduced a new series of issue briefs, Realizing Health Reform’s Potential, to explore how the Affordable Care Act benefits different populations and groups, such as women, young adults, and small businesses, as well as how it will improve insurance coverage and help transform the delivery of care. For example, once the law is fully implemented in 2014, nearly all the 27 million working-age women who went without health coverage in 2010 will gain affordable, comprehensive insurance benefits. Health reform will accomplish this by expanding Medicaid to those with the lowest incomes, providing premium tax credits to middle-income individuals, requiring health plans to offer comprehensive benefits like free coverage of preventive care services, issuing tax credits to small businesses, offering new affordable coverage options, and instituting insurance market reforms—for example, by banning gender rating, which contributes to higher premiums for women in the individual insurance market.

Along with greatly expanding access to affordable, comprehensive health coverage, the reform law also aims to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health care delivery. By making major investments in primary care, including preventive services and chronic disease care, the law will shore up an undervalued part of our health system. The Commonwealth Fund’s Realizing Health Reform’s Potential series explores how provisions in the law will help to expand and train the primary care workforce, improve reimbursement for primary care services, and support innovative approaches to delivering care, including the patient-centered medical home model of accessible, coordinated care.

A new series of Commonwealth Fund webinars is also enabling communication among researchers, policymakers, and other health system stakeholders. Featuring expert panelists including senior officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the webinars are a rich source of information and analysis about state insurance exchange implementation, the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Program, and the impact of health reform on boomers. Likewise, a series of briefings conducted with the Alliance for Health Reform in Washington, D.C., has offered additional opportunities to educate policymakers and their staff about the law.

As federal regulations are released to implement provisions of the Affordable Care Act, we have also kept stakeholders informed through timely posts to The Commonwealth Fund Blog. For example, we posted an analysis of a proposed regulation to establish a process for the annual review of “unreasonable” increases in premium rates by insurance carriers across the country. According to the new rule, increases above a 10 percent threshold will be publicly disclosed, along with the insurer’s justification. Insurance companies charging unreasonable premium increases may lose the opportunity to participate in the new health insurance exchanges. A recent Commonwealth Fund report had underscored the need for such transparency, finding that employer premiums had increased an average of 50 percent across the states between 2003 and 2010.

INFORMING AND SUPPORTING REFORM’S IMPLEMENTATION

Over the past year, several important pieces of the health reform law have been rolled out, including allowing children under age 26 to stay on or join their parents’ health insurance plan, the establishment of state-based insurance plans for people with preexisting health conditions, and the availability of tax credits for small businesses that provide coverage to their employees. The Commonwealth Fund has offered guidance for implementing the coverage expansion provisions, and we have attempted to assist federal and state officials tasked with creating health insurance exchanges—the new marketplaces where small businesses and individuals without employer health benefits will be able to gain access to expanded coverage options. Grantee Timothy Jost, J.D., a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of  Law, provided timely recommendations for resolving such thorny issues as exchange governance and preventing adverse selection.

The federal government also launched a number of the Affordable Care Act’s health care delivery reforms, notably the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Among the new approaches to care delivery that the Center will be testing on a rapid basis are: Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations, which will assume responsibility for coordinating patient care and improving treatment of complex conditions; bundled-payment models to incentivize health care providers to improve transitional care for patients discharged from hospitals and to reduce the likelihood of rehospitalization; and an initiative that will support primary care practices in coordinating care for patients with chronic conditions, other serious illnesses, or disabilities.

As part of our effort to assist reform implementation, The Commonwealth Fund has considered how the Innovation Center can optimize its efforts to test and disseminate innovative payment and delivery methods. Soon after the Center was formed, we published recommendations to enable it to do its job quickly and effectively. These include: granting the Center more flexibility to develop initiatives with a minimum of administrative delay; trying out a variety of payment reform initiatives, such as global and bundled payment; and encouraging innovative models developed by states and private-sector entities.

Global payment methods, in particular, would encourage hospitals, physician practices, nursing homes, and other providers to work together and would reward those that offer appropriate, high-quality, and efficient care. The question of who receives the global payment, however, remains. The Affordable Care Act helps address this by establishing a new form of health care provider within the Medicare program—the accountable care organization, or ACO. The ACO organizes physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers into a group that becomes accountable for each patient’s entire continuum of care and, in return, shares in any cost savings it generates for Medicare.

While the managed care experience of the 1990s illustrates the risks associated with creating large provider groups, there are a number of successful contemporary models, such as the Medicare Physician Group Practice demonstration and organizations like Community Care of North Carolina, to look to for guidance. The Commonwealth Fund’s Commission on a High Performance Health System identified 10 essential principles, among them a strong primary care foundation, well-informed patients, and quality reporting, to help ensure the spread of ACOs.

The Commonwealth Fund also aims to assist leaders in health care delivery that are seeking to join the vanguard of early innovators. One of our many case study series focusing on those at the forefront of care innovation, for example, highlighted some of the early leaders in patient safety and their approaches to training, coaching, and motivating staff to engage in safety improvement and their tools and systems for minimizing errors and maximizing learning. Likewise, our quality improvement Web site for health care professionals, WhyNotTheBest.org, has expanded its tracking of an important patient safety measure, central line–associated bloodstream infections data, at the hospital level. Such detailed data can help hospitals pinpoint where performance can be improved.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR CHANGE

As The Commonwealth Fund’s 2010 Biennial Health Insurance Survey demonstrated, the recent recession and continued poor economic climate have had a profound impact on Americans’ ability to retain their employer-sponsored coverage. The survey found that in the last two years, a majority (57%) of men and women who lost a job that came with health benefits became uninsured. Combined with the focus on deficit reduction, current economic conditions underscore the importance of slowing health spending growth, clearly one of our most pressing issues over the next decade.

Many leading budget deficit proposals, however, focus on reining in federal spending rather than combating the underlying growth in overall health care costs. By ignoring the latter, such proposals would cap federal budget outlays while putting beneficiaries and other payers at full financial risk for rising costs. Medicare beneficiaries with limited incomes already bear significant costs in the form of medical expenses and premiums. And given the dire fiscal situation in which most states find themselves, federal policymakers must avoid shifting Medicaid costs to them in responding to the continuing budget crisis. In light of the important roles states play in health reform and in efforts to control health care costs, The Commonwealth Fund, through its Federal and State Health Policy Program (formerly the Federal Health Policy Program), has expanded its investment in state–federal dialogue.

To address the especially acute risks faced by some Americans in times of economic hardship, the Fund has created two new programs: the Vulnerable Populations program and the Dual Eligibles initiative. Ensuring that low-income families and economically disadvantaged minorities have access to quality care, and that people dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid enjoy well-coordinated care, would not only improve health outcomes but achieve important savings as well.

As the U.S. attempts to reform its health system and control spending, it would do well to look to other industrialized countries, which spend far less of their gross domestic product on health care, for learning opportunities. The Commonwealth Fund’s International Symposium on Health Care Policy, “Achieving a High Performing Health Care System: Realizing the Promise of Health Reform,” brought together health ministers and leading policy thinkers from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. to examine approaches for addressing shared problems. Participants also discussed findings from the Fund’s latest International Health Policy Survey, which found that adults in the U.S. are the most likely to forgo care because of costs and to have trouble paying medical bills.

While the challenges are great, there is no reason why the U.S. cannot achieve far better results that it does. The nation already commits substantial resources to health care, and there are much better data available today about areas of care that are amenable to improvement, as well as data on provider performance (including information captured by the Fund’s WhyNotTheBest.org Web site). Moreover, many health care leaders, if not responding specifically to opportunities in the Affordable Care Act, are following the spirit of that law, as evidenced by their pursuit of the three-part aim of better care, better patient outcomes, and lower costs.

We at The Commonwealth Fund are committed to tracking progress in health reform, informing the policies required to align incentives with performance, and helping spread successful innovations and best practices. We fully anticipate arriving at a turning point within the not-too-distant future when a half-century of rising uninsured is reversed, and when life expectancy in the U.S.—a nation that devotes so many resources to health care—no longer lags that of most other industrialized nations.

In the year ahead, we look forward to serving as a key resource for federal and state policymakers, as well as private-sector health care leaders, as the process of health reform continues to unfold.

Citation

K. Davis, Health Reform’s First Year: Supporting the Rollout, The Commonwealth Fund, December 2011.

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