As of today, Congressional Democrats have exactly one week to get healthcare reform passed -- that is, if they want to make the latest deadline that President Obama has set for them. Of course, there have been a number of blown deadlines in this process already; it seems like that pattern won't change now. Indeed, there's still a real question about whether Democrats can get a bill passed at all.
The Senate has been the focus, and the sticking point, for much of the debate over reform. Now that Democrats have finally settled on using reconciliation to avoid a filibuster in that chamber, however, the real action is in the House. In order to prevail there, Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to pull together 216 votes, which constitutes a majority since there are currently four open seats in the House.
At first glance, it seems like that shouldn't be a problem -- the House's bill did get 220 votes last fall, after all. But two Democrats who voted for the bill, Reps. Neil Abercrombie and Robert Wexler, have resigned in the interim, and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., another "yea" vote, died. On top of that, the lone Republican to vote for the legislation the first time around, Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, now opposes it. That brings the total down to the bare minimum of 216 votes. Plus, Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-N.Y., who voted for the bill in the fall, now says he's going to vote against, meaning that knowing what we know right now, Pelosi doesn't have enough support to pass the bill.
There's still time for both sides to whip votes, though, and a fair amount of members are up for grabs. Opponents of the legislation are -- and should be -- cheered by the continued opposition coming from Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who says he has about a dozen votes that will move away from the bill if his amendment restricting funding for abortions isn't included in the bill. Other Democrats who voted "yea" last year are wavering, too.
On the plus side for Pelosi, the fact that President Obama's proposal involves essentially passing the more conservative Senate bill, with fixes that remove some of its more unpalatable provisions, means some moderates who were no votes the first time around can probably be swayed.
Republicans, meanwhile, have adopted a new strategy for fighting against the bill, one that could actually prove effective: They've all but started taunting House Democrats. Among other things, they're working hard to exploit the divide that already exists between Democrats in the House and the Senate, trying to convince members of the lower house that their Senate colleagues won't deliver on their promises to fix their bill through reconciliation. That would leave vulnerable Democrats in the position of having to explain to voters why they voted for a bad bill that included things like the "Cornhusker Kickback." They're also pressing hard on abortion, reminding members that reconciliation rules won't allow for a fix to the Senate's language on the issue.
We should know more about how all of this is going to go after today, when House Democrats are slated to meet and go over provisions of the final legislation. More importantly, the Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its scoring of the package; once that happens, the markup process will begin in committee and things will really shift into gear.
The House on Wednesday soundly rejected an effort by anti-war lawmakers to force a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
The outcome of the vote, 356-65 against the resolution, was never in doubt. But the 3 1/2 hours of debate did give those who oppose President Barack Obama's war policies a platform to vent their frustrations.
Opposing the resolution was easy for almost all Republicans, who have been solidly behind Obama's decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan from 70,000 to 100,000. Only five Republicans supported the measure.
It was a harder vote for some Democrats, particularly in an election year where opposing the war can be equated with opposing the troops. Several expressed discomfort with a war that has lasted 8 1/2 years and cost the nation more than 930 American lives and the treasury more than $200 billion, but said they were voting against the resolution because it was ill-timed and unrealistic.
Among the 'no' voters was Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., who gave an impassioned speech. The U.S. policy of needlessly sending troops into harm's way was "shameful," Kennedy said. He also lambasted the national media, calling their lack of attention to the loss of life in Afghanistan "despicable."
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, authored the resolution that would have directed the president to remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan within 30 days of its adoption. If the president deemed that deadline unsafe, he would have had until the end of the year to end U.S. military presence in the nation.
Obama has said he wants to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan starting in July 2011.
Kucinich based his resolution on the 1973 War Powers Act, passed during the Vietnam War era to require the president to obtain congressional approval when he sends troops to a conflict for more than 90 days.
Congress authorized the use of military force to fight terrorists in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, but Kucinich said both the Bush and Obama administrations had wrongfully used that authority as carte blanche to circumvent the role of Congress in sending Americans to war.
"Unless this Congress acts to claim its constitutional responsibility, we will stay in Afghanistan for a very, very long time at great cost to our troops and to our national priorities," Kucinich said.
Republicans warned that a precipitous withdrawal would be a serious mistake, allowing the Taliban to regain power and assuring that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would again have a staging ground to launch attacks against the U.S. and the West.
"In the case of Afghanistan, President Obama has demonstrated great responsibility and a sense of the national security interests of the United States," said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla. "He deserves our support."
In the middle were Democrats such as Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who voted against the resolution despite "profound reservations" about committing troops and vast resources to one of the world's most corrupt nations. He said the debate was essential, "even though I don't agree with the resolution that somehow we're going to be able to pull the plug and be able to end this in 30 days or 30 weeks."
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The bill is H. Con. Res. 248.
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President Obama has signaled support for putting immigration reform back on the agenda of Congress between now and the midterm elections in November. Whether Democrats on Capitol Hill want to take on such a contentious issue in the aftermath of the healthcare debate remains to be seen. What is needed is not another rush to produce ill-considered legislation on an artificial deadline, but the emergence of a consensus on the principles of sound immigration reform.
There are four main problems with contemporary American immigration policy: Our immigration laws are not adequately enforced; most of the 12 million or more illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. should be allowed to become citizens; guest-worker programs create a two-tier labor market with an ever-expanding category of indentured servants; and emphasis needs to be shifted from unskilled to skilled immigration. To address these problems, any acceptable immigration reform should include the following four elements:
Strict and effective enforcement of federal immigration laws: There is no point in enacting immigration reform at all if the new provisions are not going to be enforced.
Experts may debate what combination of national I.D. verification, tough penalties for employers of illegal immigrants, local police enforcement of federal immigration laws, border fencing and expedited deportations would replace the rule of scofflaws with the rule of law in this critical aspect of American public policy. But there would be no point to an amnesty for many of the illegal immigrants already here unless, following the end of the amnesty period, the government permanently cracked down on subsequent illegal immigration. Otherwise, what would deter employers from simply firing the newly legalized immigrants and hiring new illegal immigrants?
A rapid path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants: The federal government is not going to arrest and deport more than 12 million illegal immigrants who are already incorporated into American workplaces and communities. Just as unworkable is the "attrition" strategy favored by some on the right -- make life miserable for millions of illegal immigrants until they go home.
Two goals are in tension. On the one hand, we want to replace a huge and harmful black market in labor by incorporating former illegal immigrants into a one-tier labor force consisting of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents with identical rights, including the right to join unions. That means the quickest possible amnesty.
On the other hand, we do not want to punish immigrants who have not violated U.S. laws and have waited patiently in line, in many cases for years. Amnestied illegal immigrants should go to the end of the line of those awaiting legal permanent resident status (green cards). One solution to this dilemma, which I have proposed elsewhere, is that the naturalization process from getting a green card to obtaining full citizenship be reduced from five years to two years.
The faster the legal-immigrant backlog is reduced, the sooner amnestied illegal immigrants can be naturalized, and the more rapidly we will approach the ideal of a one-tier national labor market where almost all workers share the same economic rights.
Abolishing indentured servitude among immigrants: Adam Smith, who thought little of the morality of business elites, observed that any rational employer, given the opportunity, would prefer slaves to wage workers. Following the abolition of chattel slavery by the 13th Amendment, unscrupulous American employers began to import indentured servants in the form of contract workers or "coolies" from Asia to replace and compete with American workers, including freed slaves.
The first great triumph of the U.S. labor movement -- marred, to be sure, by a strain of xenophobia -- was the outlawing of immigrant contract labor in the late 19th century. Labor and liberals triumphed again in the 1960s, when Democrats abolished the exploitative Bracero Program that brought in Mexican "guest workers" to labor in serf-like conditions on Southwestern ranches and farms.
In recent decades, however, some American industries have tried to replace the free labor of citizen-workers and legal immigrants with indentured servants in the form of so-called guest workers who are brought in to work for a specific employer and must leave the U.S. if they are fired. Needless to say, workers who are dependent on their employers to remain in the U.S. are afraid to assert their rights or protest against abuses.
The main beneficiaries of indentured servitude today are Silicon Valley, which relies heavily on professional guest workers under the H1B and other programs, and some sectors of American agribusiness, which have re-created Bracero-style programs on a small scale.
We need not take seriously the self-serving argument of agribusiness corporations that we will all starve if they are forced to hire Americans to harvest crops for decent wages instead of bringing in serfs from other countries. The tech industry, many of whose entrepreneurs and inventors are foreign-born, makes a legitimate case for admitting more skilled immigrants, including foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. universities.
But those skilled immigrants should be legal permanent residents who are free to quit one job and take another, not information-age coolies indentured to particular companies. Once a point system for skilled immigrants is adopted (see below), guest worker visas should be limited to short-term visitors, such as visiting professors, and abolished entirely in the case of unskilled labor.
Shifting the basis of immigration from nepotism to skills: The single biggest category of U.S. immigrants includes relatives sponsored by U.S. citizens. At the moment this nepotistic policy happens to increase Latin American immigration to the U.S., but in theory it could benefit any group with large families, a characteristic that tends to be associated with premodern social attitudes and lower educational and income levels.
Most other advanced democracies have adopted or are debating a "points system" under which immigrants with high levels of education, desirable skills and competence in the host-country language would be given preference in immigration. Combined with the limitation of family-based immigration to the children and parents of U.S. citizens, an American points system would reduce unskilled immigration at a time when mass unemployment has hit less-educated Americans and legal immigrants particularly hard.
At the same time, a points system would enable the U.S. to compete with its economic rivals in luring skilled immigrants from every part of the world. A points system would not be "anti-Latino," any more than it would be "anti-Filipino." (Mexico and the Philippines are the two biggest sources of immigration to the U.S. today.) On the contrary, it would make immigration to the U.S. easier for Mexican or Filipino scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and professionals who lack relatives already living in the U.S.
Would admitting more skilled immigrants drive down wages and fees for educated professionals? In some industries, like tech, more talent gathered together may produce greater growth of the industry as a whole. In other areas, like medicine, increased skilled immigration might well reduce average incomes. American doctors make roughly twice as much on average as European doctors. Doubling the number of doctors in the U.S. while cutting their compensation would benefit most Americans.
If we are concerned about polarizing inequality in the U.S., then a shift from unskilled to skilled immigration that leads to lower salaries for college-educated professionals and higher wages for janitors, nursing aides and other less-skilled workers can produce a more equal America without the need for massive after-tax redistribution.
The immigration reform program I have sketched out is in the tradition of the pro-labor, egalitarian, Rooseveltian liberalism that traditionally has viewed immigration as a labor market issue.
The two commissions on immigration reform appointed by Democratic presidents, the Hesburgh Commission (1981) and the Jordan Commission (1997), came up with similar proposals, including crackdowns on employers of illegal immigrants, reductions in unskilled immigration in the interest of America's working poor, curtailment of guest worker programs and greater focus on skilled immigration.
A recent report by former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) belongs in this venerable pro-labor tradition. Traditionally, business-class conservatives have sought to prevent enforcement of immigration laws and have supported mass immigration in the hope that it would avert tight labor markets that would lead to higher wages and greater bargaining power for American workers. Plutocrats who live off their investments also tend to favor using high levels of immigration to keep wages down, for fear that wage-push inflation might erode the value of their financial assets.
Unfortunately, beginning in the 1980s, some post-New Deal progressives began to view immigration through the lens of anti-racism rather than labor policy. Along with some civil libertarians of the left, they attacked the enforcement of federal immigration laws as inherently racist or authoritarian, at the price of helping unethical businesses evade laws designed to protect American workers.
Some otherworldly academics and pundits even wondered whether discrimination in favor of America's own workers against would-be immigrants is not itself an unjust form of discrimination against the rest of the human species. In their innocence these would-be citizens of the world never asked themselves why the late Robert Bartley, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, regularly called for a one-sentence constitutional amendment: "There shall be open borders."
Most important, many Democratic strategists, having written off the white working class that used to be the party's base, decided to oppose any immigration reform that would incidentally reduce the number of immigrants from Latin America, in the hope that a growing Latino vote, by replacing the lost non-Hispanic white Reagan Democrats, would help create a permanent Democratic majority. Some, but not all, leaders of organized labor have bought into this agenda, abandoning traditional liberal concerns about the effects of unskilled labor and illegal immigration on wages and inequality.
Progressive journals have sacrificed truth to partisanship, refusing to publish articles pointing out harmful economic effects of unskilled immigration (one liberal editor refused to publish a commissioned essay of mine on various factors influencing wage stagnation, saying, "I won't publish anything critical of immigration.") Center-left pundits and scholars have been silent on the contribution of unskilled immigration to poverty in the U.S., even though, according to Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution (PDF), "All of the increase in the U.S. poverty rate between 1979 and the mid-1990s was due to immigration. The poverty rate of Americans in non immigrant households remained unchanged."
Among prominent left-of-center opinion leaders, only Paul Krugman has had the courage to break with conformist center-left groupthink on this issue.
The generation-long mutation of the Democrats from a broadly based working-class party dominated by private sector unions into an ethnic patronage party funded by Wall Street explains why in 2007 most congressional Democrats teamed up with George W. Bush and John McCain to support a profoundly illiberal version of "comprehensive immigration reform."
In return for getting a too-punitive version of amnesty, the Democratic leaders of Congress caved in to cheap-labor employers who demanded a new category of several hundred thousand new indentured-servant guest workers a year. Even more Orwellian was the way that Democrats in Congress, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, attacked a proposed skill-based points system. Much to the delight of the plutocratic wing of the Republican Party, the "progressive" position of 2007 was the exact opposite of the liberal position of Barbara Jordan in 1996 and Theodore Hesburgh in 1980.
Most progressive editors and editorial pages supported the monstrous 2007 bill as mindlessly as they support pro-corporate healthcare "reform" today. If Bush, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi had succeeded in passing comprehensive immigration reform, then employers in 2010, in a period of mass unemployment, would have been allowed to import several hundred thousand unfree contract workers from abroad a year instead of hiring Americans.
Immigration, like healthcare, is an issue where traditional, principled progressivism devoted to the long-term public interest is at odds with short-term Democratic electoral calculations. If and when Congress does turn to immigration reform, the Democrats who let the insurance industry write healthcare legislation and let the financial lobby write financial reform legislation may come up with a bill as bad for America as the 2007 legislation, stitched together from pay-offs to favored ethnic constituencies and business lobbies.
If so, then the next round of immigration legislation may provide a test of whether there is a principled progressive movement in the United States, or merely a squad of cheerleaders for a lobby-driven political machine in Washington.
WASHINGTON -- This hasn't been a great week for Democratic claims to be running the most ethical Congress in history. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., was forced to step down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., announced he wouldn't seek reelection -- due to health reasons, but also amidst questions about allegations he sexually harassed a member of his staff. (UPDATE: Massa will now, reportedly, resign on Monday.)
Still, that doesn't exactly mean Republicans have clean hands themselves. Democrats won the House majority in 2006 in part by running against what they called a "culture of corruption" in the GOP establishment. The villains in that election -- people like ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., ex-Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas and ex-Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. -- may be gone. But quite a few Republican lawmakers who are still in the House have come under scrutiny of their own. The House Ethics Committee doesn't confirm whether it's looking into members, but news reports have made clear ethical questions aren't only a Democratic problem.
Here are just a handful of members whom you probably won't hear the GOP talking about quite so loudly as they discuss Rangel in the months before the November elections:
WASHINGTON -- A key House progressive says President Obama blamed the Senate Thursday for the fact that a public insurance option has been dropped from healthcare reform legislation -- but promised to push for one in the future, after the current bill passes.
"The meeting with President Obama today was productive and necessary, and I was glad to hear him speak frankly about where we stand on healthcare legislation," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a statement after meeting with Obama Thursday. Grijalva had told Salon Wednesday he might not vote for the healthcare bill, in part because the public option had been dropped. The meeting at the White House Thursday was aimed to keep him and other liberals on board. "He said the public option -- a well-known and long-standing progressive priority -- lacks enough Senate support to be included in the final package. However, he personally committed to pursue a public option after passage of the current bill."
Grijalva's statement was much less skeptical than he had sounded in person on Wednesday. "I remain concerned about elements of the bill, but was encouraged by the president’s outreach and interest in a substantive discussion," he said. "We agree that expanding health care access and quality, while bringing down costs, is a top priority this year, and I intend to continue playing a constructive role until Congress holds its final vote."
Senate Democratic aides tend to agree with Obama's assessment; though the public option is popular with voters, and has the support of most House and Senate Democrats, it may not actually have the 51 votes it would need to pass through the budget reconciliation process. A group of progressive organizations is trying to push Senate Democrats to support it, and has 35 lawmakers on the record backing the idea.
The promise to push for a public option later isn't likely to convince them to drop the pressure; in fact, if Obama says the Senate is the problem, that's likely to increase it.
UPDATE: Adam Green, a co-founder of one of the groups pushing the public option, just e-mailed Salon the White House is on the wrong side of the debate. "Obama is telling America, 'No, we can't,'" Green said. "But as Senate moderates like Tim Johnson, Tom Udall, Jeanne Shaheen and 32 other senators joined the call for the public option in the past two weeks, the truth became increasingly clear: 'Yes, we can.' If President Obama doesn't think the votes exist in the Senate, he needs to name which senators would oppose it. If he's too weak to stomach that, than he needs to get out of the way and let those who know how to fight lead the charge."
For House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, keeping liberals happy is a top priority as they search for the 217 votes they'll need to pass the Senate's version of the healthcare bill, and then a separate reconciliation measure to "fix" it with some changes. The meeting at the White House today was the first one liberals have had with Obama on healthcare since Oct. 27. But it might not be the last one in the next few weeks. The administration wants the House to vote on the Senate bill by March 18, before Obama leaves for a trip to Asia.
Despite doubts among many lawmakers that it'll create many jobs, the House on Thursday passed legislation giving companies that hire the jobless a temporary payroll tax break.
The measure passed 217-201 on a mostly party-line vote. The bill also extends federal highway programs through the end of the year.
Some Democrats feel the approximately $35 billion jobs bill is too puny, while others say the tax cut for new hires won't generate many new jobs. However, the pressure is on to address jobs and deliver a badly needed win for President Barack Obama and a Democratic Party struggling in opinion polls and facing major losses in the upcoming midterm elections. Further jobs measures are promised.
"If that's the only thing that I can vote on ... I'll vote for it, obviously," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. "We've got to get something moving. We've got to get something done."
"It's really not a jobs bill," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. "It's one small piece." Lee said she instead wants money in the legislation for job training and youth summer jobs.
The House had passed a much larger measure in December that contained almost $50 billion in infrastructure funding, $50 billion in help for cash-starved state governments, and a six-month extension of jobless aid.
The Senate responded last week with the far smaller measure that the House is reluctantly accepting. The House amended the measure Thursday to conform with so-called pay-as-you-go budget rules that have become an article of faith among moderate Democrats. The rules require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with either cuts to other programs or equivalent tax increases.
The minor tweak means that the notoriously balky Senate would have to act again before Obama could sign the bill into law.
The $35 billion bill -- blending $15 billion in tax cuts and subsidies for infrastructure bonds issued by local governments with the $20 billion in transportation money -- is far smaller than the massive economic stimulus bill enacted a year ago.
Across the Capitol, the Senate is debating a far more costly measure to clean up a lot of unfinished business from last year. The $100 billion-plus bill would extend unemployment assistance, revive a bevy of expired tax breaks, help states with soaring Medicaid costs and prevent doctors from having to absorb big cuts in Medicare payments. The popular initiatives are traditionally extended on a bipartisan basis for brief periods of time, which hides their long-term costs.
The Senate plans to act on the jobs bill after wrapping up the unfinished-business bill, which means it probably won't be sent to Obama until next week.
The jobs bill contains two major provisions. First, it would exempt businesses hiring the unemployed from the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax through December and give them an additional $1,000 credit if new workers stay on the job a full year. The Social Security trust fund would be reimbursed for the lost revenue.
Second, it would extend highway and mass transit programs through the end of the year and pump in $20 billion for the spring construction season. The money would make up for lower-than-expected gasoline tax revenues.
Small businesses would continue to be able to write off equipment purchases as a business expense, which .
Several lawmakers in both parties criticized the payroll tax break, saying that it wouldn't do much to create jobs and that the bulk of it would go to employers for new hires that would be made anyway.
"It simply encourages conduct that would occur anyway," said Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.
Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, said he asked businessmen at town meetings in his Rust Belt district whether they would hire people based on the payroll tax holiday. "Nobody raised their hands," LaTourette said. "This is not going to create one job."
"It's an insipid, weak piece of legislation," said Jim McDermott, D-Wash.
But economists such as Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com say the new hiring tax credit could spur creation of about 250,000 new jobs. The economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.
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Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.
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