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Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

Republican fund-raisers are treating Americans like little children, as if the GOP knows best and must shelter the youngsters from the truth.

It’s like when a kindergartner asks his father if mommy is coming home soon, and the widower replies that she’s on a long business trip. The parent is attempting to shield the child from the cruel truth, afraid the little one can’t handle it.

That’s what Republican campaign fund-raising groups are doing by concealing their donors from the public. The GOP does not trust Americans to handle the information. Republican operatives want to shield voters from knowing who is actually paying for GOP attack ads. The GOP fears the consequences if Americans know the truth – exactly which giant corporations and Wall Street banksters are funding vicious screeds against Democrats because those covert donors believe Republicans will deliver for big business.

The secret GOP benefactors are right about one thing: A Republican majority will work for the rich. In a study of income growth post WWII, Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels determined that earnings rose faster at all income levels under Democratic administrations, but especially for the middle class and the poor. Under Republican presidents, the wealthiest benefited the most, increasing income inequality.

After the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down decades of precedent in January in its Citizens United ruling, defining corporations as “persons” and permitting them to pour unlimited cash into political advertising, Democrats offered legislation to temper that newly-granted corporate power. Called the DISCLOSE Act – for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections — it would have required revelation of corporate donations.

Republicans wanted concealment of their corporate sources, however, and scuttled the DISCLOSE Act. This freed private political fund-raising groups to take as much money as they can from corporations while providing a cloak of anonymity.

The Republican and Democratic parties still must disclose donors, and unions like the United Steelworkers (USW), which get their political action committee contributions from American members, must provide detailed information on how much they spend, which candidates they support, and the names of people who supply in-kind services as well as the value of the services.

The story of health insurers’ disclosed contributions to political parties reveals why Republicans prefer to keep Americans in the dark about gifts to GOP private fund-raising groups.

Public reports show that last year, the health insurance industry split its donations  between the two parties, but this year, after passage of health insurance reform, the contributions are running three to one for Republicans. The insurance corporations have made their demands clear to Republican beneficiaries. They want Republicans to retain in the law the financial windfalls for insurance corporations – that would be mandates that uninsured Americans get coverage and fines for those who don’t.  And they want Republicans to delete aspects that will cost insurance companies – that would be benefits for Americans like requirements that insurers cover sick children and injunctions against dropping policy holders when they get sick.

Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna Corp., one of the nation’s largest health insurance corporations, told Noam N. Levey of the Chicago Tribune:

“The industry would love to have a Republican Congress. They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington.”

Voters need to know that insurance corporations overwhelmingly favor Republicans and what the industry expects to get from the GOP. But Americans will not know how much money insurers and other corporations give to shadowy Republican fund-raising groups and what those donors demand.

A New York Times investigation provided some insight into one GOP shadow group, the American Future Fund. It has spent $6 million so far on ads attacking Democrats in 13 states.  The Times discovered that Bruce Rastetter, CEO of Hawkeye Energy Holdings, one of the nation’s largest corn-based ethanol companies, provided the seed money for American Future Fund. The Times determined that American Future Fund money is funding ads to defeat Democrats who sit on legislative committees that directly affect the ethanol industry and agricultural subsidies.

Two other secretive Republican groups, American Crossroads GPS and the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce, plan to spend $145 million to crush Democrats while concealing their funding sources from Americans.

American Crossroads GPS, brainchild of Republican operative Karl Rove, plans to spend $70 million. Mel Sembler, a shopping mall magnate, told the New York Times that wealthy donors have given the GPS group six and seven-figure checks, and Republicans said one donor, who they refused to name, gave several million dollars. Sembler told the Times why clandestine giving is so attractive to corporations:

“They want to be able to be helpful but not be seen by the public as taking sides.”

What they don’t want to be seen doing is lining their pockets by buying Republican politicians. Neither do the Republican beneficiaries.

Like GPS, the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an elephant-sized player in the secretive Republican support game. It has spent $25 million on more than 8,000 ads slamming Democrats and backing corporate Republican candidates. It plans to spend $50 million more.

Oddly, the commerce group calls itself the U.S. Chamber while admitting foreign firms and soliciting funds from corporations in places like Bahrain, India and Singapore whose interests may conflict with those of American companies and American citizens. An investigation by Think Progress, a project of the non-partisan Center for American Progress Action Fund, revealed that the so-called U.S. Chamber has accepted at least $885,000 from 84 foreign firms, money that it placed in the same account from which it draws funds to sponsor ads attacking Democratic candidates.

The so-called U.S. Chamber denied that it illegally co-mingles money it gets from foreign corporations with funds it uses to attack Democrats. When Think Progress and others asked the so-called U.S. Chamber to divulge the account’s firewall to the public, the so-called U.S. Chamber responded by repeating its assurance that it does nothing wrong and asserting, “We are not obligated to discuss our internal procedures.”

Basically, the so-called U.S. Chamber is saying, “trust us,” to the American public. On the other hand, the “U.S. Chamber” and groups like American Crossroads GPS don’t trust the American public to know their donor lists. What they don’t trust is that Americans will do what the GOP wants on Nov. 2 if Republicans’ corporate donors are exposed.

The USW challenges the “U.S. Chamber” and GOP funding groups like American Crossroads GPS to show their trust in the American people by disclosing their donors.

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Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

When Herbert Hoover ran for president in 1928, the Republican party promised his victory would assure the prosperity of  “a chicken in every pot.” This week, Republicans proffered a similar pledge to America.

Hoover won, and in 1929, after a decade of GOP rule in Washington, Republicans did deliver something foul to Americans. It wasn’t the much-anticipated cooking hen. It was the Great Depression.

Now in the Great Recession, also delivered during a GOP presidency, Republicans have presented a new promise. They pledged to withdraw all unspent Recovery Act money to prevent it from employing even one more worker; kill health care reform to stop 30 million Americans from getting affordable insurance; slash $100 billion from federal programs protecting the middle class; preserve tax cuts for the rich and cut government regulation — like oversight of Gulf-oil-gusher-BP and contaminated-egg-producers Jack and Peter DeCoster.

This time, the GOP downsized the “chicken in every pot” promise. Instead they’re pledging a salmonella-poisoned egg.

In 1932, Americans wisely rejected re-electing Republican Hoover, who is regarded as one of the nation’s most inept leaders, and chose instead Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, revered as one of the best. This fall, it’s crucial that Americans choose sagely again, selecting Democrats intent on reforming Washington and protecting the nation’s middle class.

Eight years of Republican rule in Washington climaxed with the worst recession since the Great Depression. Since that downturn officially began in December of 2007, poverty, unemployment and foreclosures have risen while middle class income and health insurance coverage have fallen.

The poverty rate increased to the worst level in 16 years, with 3.7 million people slipping from the middle class to the ranks of the poor in 2009. One in seven Americans now is impoverished. More than 8 million workers have lost their jobs, and 2.3 million families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Nearly one in four mortgage holders is under water, meaning they owe more on their house than it’s worth. Also, last year, the number of uninsured Americans rose by 4.4 million to 50.7 million — 16.7% of the population. It was the largest annual increase since the government began collecting comparable data in 1987.

By contrast, on Wall Street, where unrestrained and unregulated bankster recklessness caused the recession, happy days are here again. The banks that taxpayers bailed out have resumed paying million-dollar salaries and bonuses. The nation’s top 25 hedge-fund managers each took home an average of $1 billion (BILLION) last year. Those hedgers are among the nation’s richest 1 percent, those whose take home pay grew so fast between 1979 and the start of the recession in 2007 that nearly 39 percent of all income growth went to that tiny number of super-wealthy. Only 36 percent went to the bottom 90 percent of the nation’s population.

Democrats, keenly aware of the diverging experiences of the nation’s sucker-punched workers and its well-heeled elite, have worked to aid the beleaguered middle. They passed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated created between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs by July.

Democrats reformed health insurance so that children with pre-existing conditions can’t be denied insurance; senior citizens won’t have to pay for “donut hole” medications; young adults up to age 26 may remain on their parents’ plans, and insurance companies can no longer choose doctors or place lifetime limits on coverage or drop the sick. On top of all that, the Democrats’ reform will lower federal deficits by $138 billion.

Now, Democrats are fighting to preserve income tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating breaks for the rich. The Democrats would continue to lower by $1,132 a year the taxes of median wage earners, those with incomes of about $50,000 a year. Under the Democrats’ plan, the super rich – those taking home more than $1 million a year — would still get a tax cut of $6,349 – six times that of the middle class. But Democrats would have the super rich pay $97,651 in taxes a year that they now pocket.

Democrats think the rich have an obligation to pay those taxes. To get where they are, in the top one percent income bracket, they’ve used tax-subsidized public services at significantly higher rates than the other 99 percent of Americans. That includes services such as roads and airports, civil courts, the U.S. patent office, the U.S. Department of Commerce and professional licensing, regulation and inspection departments.

Republicans don’t agree. They believe the middle class should pay so the rich can continue getting breaks. The GOP believes it is fine to give tax cuts to the rich that will cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, but not pay for them. Conversely, Republicans have refused to extend unemployment insurance for the middle class jobless unless that’s paid for. The GOP believes it’s appropriate to continue tax breaks for multi-national corporations that ship jobs overseas but it’s not to extend aid to the middle class unemployed to pay for health insurance.

In their Pledge to America, Republicans promise to take care of the rich. They said they’d change Washington by decimating the very regulation that protects middle class workers and their families and by cutting off money that is providing jobs to the unemployed.  The GOP pledges to undermine middle class America.

It might be called a turkey, but even that would inflate its value. It’s a rotten egg hurled at middle America.

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Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

Marc Stier

By Marc Stier
Executive Director, Penn Action 

Over the next month, Penn Action will be sponsoring a series of events around Pennsylvania, some in conjunction with other groups, that aim to build a strong progressive movement to get voters who share our ideals out to the polls in November and then to keep the pressure on our elected officials to support progressive legislation over the next two years and beyond.

Why we need to take action now.

Why are we doing this? Because two years ago, we all worked together to elect a progressive President, and a Congress who would support him.

And, in the last two years, we’ve kept working as we helped President Obama and the Democrats in Congress pass a stimulus package that avoided a second Great Depression, a strong financial reform bill, and health care reform legislation that will go far in making quality health care affordable for all.

We have accomplished more for working people in the last two years than the last two Democratic Presidents accomplished in 12 years.

But we haven’t attained all we wanted.

The stimulus was not big enough to keep unemployment from rising to terrible levels. The financial reform bill was not strong enough. And the health care reform bill did not include a public option. And the reason we have not done more is that, while we elected a President and Congress in 2008, we haven’t built a movement strong enough to attain all we progressives want. (more…)

Dean Baker

By Dean Baker 
Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Most people are familiar with the concept of “chicken hawks.” Chicken hawks are the politicians who are anxious to send other people to risk their lives in war, but somehow managed to avoid service when they had the opportunity to fight themselves. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney and former President George W. Bush are the leading members of the chicken hawk society.

It turns out that we have a similar story with budget policy, where there appears to be a large contingent of budget deficit chicken hawks. The deficit hawks have been filling the news lately. These are the folks who are yelling that something terrible will happen if we don’t reduce the deficit. Most of them seem to have missed the fact that something terrible is now happening. We have almost 15 million people unemployment and 9 million underemployed, with several million facing the loss of their home in the next few years.

People of all ages are seeing their lives wrecked by a economic disaster that was entirely preventable, if the folks running economic policy were not too incompetent to notice an $8 trillion housing bubble. In fact, one of the reasons that this bubble did not get noticed was that even before the bubble burst – creating large deficits — the deficit hawks were running around yelling about the deficits. These deficit hawks were able to get far more attention for their whining than the people who were warning about the dangers posed by the housing bubble.

Now that we have seen this collapse, rather than supporting action to get the economy back on its feet, the deficit hawks are again yelling about the long-term deficit. But, what is really striking is that many of the people who whine loudest about the deficit are the most reluctant to take steps to reduce the deficit – at least when it involves powerful interest groups. (more…)

Mike Hall

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

Back in January, as the fight over health care reform was in high gear, the National Journal pinned down what most of us suspected all the time: The nation’s biggest health insurers had been funneling money—about $20 million—quietly to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to air lie-filled, scare-mongering ads about health care reform.

That revelation flew in the face of the insurance industry’s claim that it really supported health care reform, but they were just dickering over the details. While the facts about the secret funds were on the record and not disputed, the big insurers didn’t address the issue.

That is, until Wednesday, when representatives from Health Care for America Now (HCAN) at CIGNA’s annual shareholder meeting in Philadelphia got a confession out of CIGNA CEO David Cordani. The HCAN members were admitted to the meeting in an arrangement with several shareholders and so could question Cordani.

Marc Stier, Pennsylvania state director of HCAN, said Cordani confirmed the company contributed secret funds over the past year to the industry trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and to the Chamber to wage a duplicitous anti-reform campaign while industry lobbyists were professing to support reform. But Cordani would not say how much CIGNA slipped to the Chamber for the propaganda blitz. Said Stier after the meeting:

Today, for the first time, CIGNA admitted to making secret payments to the Chamber. They won’t tell even their own stockholders how much money they sent through the Chamber, but there is now no question they did so.

Who knows why he “fessed up,” but they say confession is good for the soul. Maybe he was trying to salvage a little bit of CIGNA’s rep for dumping customers who file expensive claims, a practice known as “purging.” According to HCAN, Cordani told shareholders CIGNA will continue the practice.

Salvation may be a ways away.

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Re-Posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog

Mike Hall

 By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

Arrogance allows you to do just about anything and think you can get away with it. For years, health insurers have swaggered about, callously raising premiums through the roof, dropping sick people from coverage and refusing to cover folks with pre-existing conditions. They got away with it. But not yesterday.

After media reports surfaced that big insurance companies claimed a loophole in the new health care reform law would allow them to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, the—well you know—hit the fan. Picking on sick kids is like kicking a dog or stealing Grandma’s purse. It doesn’t sit well with most Americans.

After mounting public outrage and a strongly worded letter from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the insurance industry quickly reversed course and promised to cover kids with pre-existing conditions beginning Sept. 23 as the new law requires. In a letter to the industry group American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Sebelius wrote:

Health insurance reform is designed to prevent any child from being denied coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition…Now is not the time to search for nonexistent loopholes that preserve a broken system.

To ensure that there is no ambiguity on this point, I am preparing to issue regulations in the weeks ahead ensuring that the term ‘pre-existing condition exclusion’ applies to both a child’s access to a plan and to his or her benefits once he or she is in the plan.

In response, AHIP President Karen Ignagni wrote:

We await and will fully comply with regulations consistent with the principles described in your letter.

But she also wrote that insurance companies would be analyzing how much it would cost to comply-code words for “rate hike.”

At FireDogLake David Dayen lays out a likely scenario.

You can pretty much figure out AHIP’s game here. With no restrictions on cost until 2014, the industry can raise their premium prices almost at will. Even the bad publicity suffered from that 39 percent rate hike of Anthem Blue Cross plan has stopped that scheduled increase from taking effect in May. And when outrage is expressed by families facing double-digit rate hikes, AHIP will clear their throats and blame the pre-existing condition exclusion for exclusion for children, forcing the poor insurance companies to take on a sicker risk pool and raise prices to survive.

It takes a long time to beat down world class arrogance.

Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

Few presidents get a second honeymoon of their own making. (George W. got one when terrorists attacked the United States.) Barack Obama’s victory on health care reform has breathed new life into his administration, recharged the Democratic base, and given the rest of America a sense of someone who fights for average working people.

The question now is: What does he do with his second honeymoon?

Some say it should be used to enact financial reform. Most Americans despise Wall Street and want to be assured there’s no repeat of the grotesque sequence of river-boat gambling with the economy followed by a taxpayer bailout followed by seven-and eight-figure bonuses. Democratic strategists would love to let Republicans hoist themselves on their own petard by defending Wall Street.

Financial reform surely needs bucking up. The bill passed by the House last year was riddled with loopholes, delays, and cop-outs for the Street. The one that’s emerging from the Senate Banking Committee is only slightly better. It still allows a world of unregulated derivative trading and hands the ball over to the same regulators who punted last time. It doesn’t even include Paul Volcker’s watered-down remake of the Glass-Steagall Act. And the Senate bill is likely to get even worse as Harry Reid and Chris Dodd troll for Republican support. In an election year when Wall Street money is flowing freely to both parties, watch your wallets.

Notwithstanding all this, the biggest Next Big Thing ought to be jobs.

Including all those who have entered the job market since the bottom fell out, the nation is about 11 million jobs short. The President ought to use his second honeymoon to get a jobs bill that will make a difference.

Although the official rate of unemployment for the third of Americans with college degrees — the kind of people who inhabit executive suites, the media, and Washington — is now down to 5 percent, most Americas inhabit a different job planet. The unemployment rate is 15.6 percent among Americans with less than a high school diploma and 10.5 percent for those with only a high school degree.

Even these rates understate the problem. Add in people working part time who’d rather it be full time, those too discouraged even to look for work, those working in a full-time job at fewer hours, and those who lost their jobs and have settled on new ones paying far less, and more than one in four of those without high school degrees are unemployed or underemployed; 22 percent of people with only high school degrees.

Considering that most households now rely on two wage earners (and most people tend to marry or cohabit with people who have roughly the same level of education they do) the situation is dire. A growing number of households have now sold off all their assets and exhausted their capacity to borrow from friends and relatives. That’s why the bad loans are still mounting: Households can’t meet their mortgage payments, can’t pay the rent, can’t meet payments on their credit cards and cars.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s this way because companies and consumers aren’t able or willing to buy nearly enough to get people back to work, and government hasn’t yet filled the shortfall. The stimulus was too small to begin with and its peak level of spending is now over.

In recent weeks, Congress and the Administration have been working on a bunch of proposals called “jobs bills,” but they’re so small relative to the size of the problem they should be called “almost jobs bills.”

One, recently passed, lets employers avoid paying payroll taxes for the rest of the year on each unemployed worker they hire (at a salary under $106,800), who has been out of work for at least 60 days. If the new hire remains at the job for at least 52 weeks, the employer can get a $1,000 tax credit on its 2011 tax return. The Congressional Budget Office estimated a similar payroll tax holiday proposal — not limited to workers who had been jobless for 60 days – would generate about 200,000 new jobs. With the 60-day limit, though, the number of hires is likely to be half that. Remember: The nation needs 11 million jobs just to catch up.

On Wednesday, House Democrats passed several other morsels they called “jobs bills,” whose likely effect on unemployment is even smaller. One would bestow about $3 billion of tax breaks on small businesses. Another would further expand what are known as “Build America Bonds,” designed to help states and cities with new construction projects. The tab here is about $13 billion. It’s a worthwhile effort but given that the states and cities are running up deficits of some $125 billion this year alone and firing everyone in sight — even teachers — it’s smaller than small potatoes. It’s a lima bean.

On Friday, the White House will announce a new program requiring lenders to temporarily slash or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for many borrowers who are unemployed, to no more than 31 percent of a borrower’s income (about what the borrower would be getting in unemployment benefits, if qualified), for up to six months. It’s another worthwhile step. But it deals with the symptom rather than the disease. The reason so many households can’t pay their mortgage is because someone has lost a job.

There is no great mystery about what the federal government needs to do. It must mount a frontal attack on unemployment proportional to the problem. At least another $300 billion in stimulus money is necessary. Some should go to the states and cities to restore cuts; some should be applied to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure; a portion should go to direct hiring (a new WPA).

This should be the Next Big Thing.

It won’t be easy. Most Americans don’t differentiate between temporary federal spending that’s necessary to get jobs back (which enlarges the current deficit) and permanent spending that’s built into federal programs (and creates big debt problems for the future). Many “moderate” Dems won’t even consider a second stimulus.

To accomplish it will require the President draw on his new store of political capital, mobilize his newly fired-up base, and capitalize on his renewed stature as a fighter for the people. But what’s a second honeymoon for if not for something the nation desperately needs?

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Cross-posted from Robert Reich’s Blog

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Robert Reich served as the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor and now is a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book, “Supercapitalism,” is out in paperback. For copies of his articles, books, and public radio commentaries, go to www.robertreich.org.

Leo W. Gerard

 By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

When President Barack Obama signed the historic health insurance reform bill, he said it was, “Change we can believe in.” He noted that his party has sought reform for more than half a century. The effort began long before President Harry Truman recommended to Congress on Nov. 19, 1945 a comprehensive health program, noting: “People with low or moderate incomes do not get the same medical attention as those with high incomes. The poor have more sickness, but they get less medical care.”

The legislation Obama signed will tax the wealthy – those earning more than a quarter million dollars a year – to help pay for extending insurance to millions of poor and working people and for guaranteeing insurance companies can’t deny access to those with pre-existing conditions or withdraw coverage from those who get sick.

Republicans have vowed to overturn or repeal this law that would aid tens of millions of Americans. House Republican leader John Boehner yelled, “hell no” repeatedly to the reform proposals and described them as “Armageddon.”

Every historic moment in this country – from the Revolution and the Civil War to the enactment of Social Security and Civil Rights legislation – compelled Americans to assess their values and choose sides. In the case of Civil Rights legislation, for example, some, including the late Republican senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, stood with the Klu Klux Klan and other hate-mongers seeking to deny civil rights to black people. By contrast, others favored peaceful enactment and enforcement of what they perceived to be fair civil rights laws enabling black adults to vote and black children to receive the same quality education as white youngsters.

This is such a moment. Americans must decide what is just and decent in the richest Democracy in the world. They must choose whether to side with the rich and the hate mongers or to align themselves with working people and hope.

“The bill I’m signing will set in motion reforms that generations of Americans have fought for and marched for and hungered to see,” Obama said during the ceremony in the East Room of the White House. That makes it a landmark bill, but it’s also historic because this measure is the first government attempt in thirty years to halt rising income inequality, the New York Times reported a day after the signing.

The wealthy – those earning more than $250,000 a year – will pay for part of the reforms with tax increases. For example, those in the $1 million salary, perks and bonuses club will pay an additional $46,000 a year in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. This million dollar club is the very group that has benefited most over the past eight years from the Bush tax cuts for the rich.  

The richest one percent in this club now take in 23.5 percent of all income in this country – the largest percent since 1928, the year before the Great Stock Market Crash and the onset of the Great Depression. Then it was 23.9 percent.  Income inequality has risen since the 1970s, when the fortunes of the nation’s rich began skyrocketing while middle class wages stagnated. Simultaneously, the rich got tax rate breaks much larger than those given the middle class and poor.

Beyond taxing the rich, the bill contributes to reducing income inequality in another way. New York Times reporter David Leonhardt described it:

“In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual’s misfortune — illness, death, fire, flood — across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.”

During his presidential campaign, Obama promised to reform health insurance, and signing this bill fulfilled that pledge. Here’s how: It ensures that children with pre-existing conditions get insurance, that adults with pre-existing conditions have access to insurance from a temporary high-risk pool, that senior citizens get help paying for prescriptions during the “donut hole” in their Medicare drug coverage, that every insured person gets free preventive care, that children up to age 26 can stay on their parents’ insurance plans, that no lifetime limit on benefits may be imposed by insurance companies.

It provides for approximately 24 million people who don’t have access to affordable coverage through their employers to get tax credits to buy insurance from new state-based exchanges. It enables everyone who earns less that 133 percent of the poverty level – approximately 16 million people – to get Medicaid. It gives small businesses tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to help make coverage affordable for their workers.

And, a benefit for everyone — even the rich — is that the bill will lower the national deficit by $100 billion in the next decade, a determination made by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are intent on preventing Americans from receiving these benefits. Republicans in Congress contend they’ll try to repeal the law. A dozen Republican state attorneys general filed suit seeking to overturn it.

Those opposing health insurance reform don’t mention the benefits. Instead, they call names, engage in vandalism and incite violence. Sarah Palin posted a map on her sarahpac website marked with 20 gun sight crosshairs on the congressional districts of Democrats who voted for health insurance reform. The Republican National Committee posted on its website a photo of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surrounded by flames and urging her firing.

The FBI is investigating death threats made since the vote against Democrats and their families. A brick was thrown through the office window of a New York congresswoman who supported reform and bricks shattered glass doors at a New York Democratic committee office. An Arizona Democrat’s office was vandalized after the vote. Opponents of the bill spit on one Democratic congressman and shouted racial and homophobic slurs at others before the vote and afterward faxed to a black Congressman the image of a noose. Conservative commentators including Glenn Beck compared the reform measure to the devastation on 9/11.

Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain said that because the measure passed, “there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year” from the GOP. Republicans made good on that threat, using an obscure Senate rule to prevent hearings past 2 p.m., forcing cancellations.

Republicans in the Senate have announced they will do everything in their power to prevent passage of a package of amendments adopted by the House to improve the Health Insurance Bill. These amendments include elimination of perks given several states, including the so-called Corkhusker Kickback and the Gator-Aid, both of which Republicans have attacked for weeks. Still, Republicans say they’ll attempt to retain those deals in the final bill by blocking the amendments. Similarly, the package of amendments provides a method to close the donut hole in the Medicare prescription program, providing financial relief to millions of senior citizens. The Republican’s plan to prevent passage of the amendments would force senior citizens to pay nearly $4,000 extra each year for prescriptions.

With their anger and vitriol, Republicans and Tea Partiers are banking on Americans rejecting health insurance reform. But their plan is in peril. Americans appear to be embracing hope and change in health care.

Before the vote, polls showed a majority opposed the bill. Many argued that could be explained by the fact that a significant number of those counted as opponents simply wanted stronger reform, such as a public option. Poll results are different now. A Gallup Poll taken after the House vote found 50 percent enthusiastic or pleased, while only 42 percent were angry or disappointed. Similarly, in that poll, 49% thought the reform measure to be good for the country while 40% thought it was bad.

Hate and obstructionism are ugly. Americans prefer to see themselves and their country as hopeful, constructive and goodhearted.

Robert Borosage

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future

House Republican leader John Boehner’s final rant against health care reform, featuring the refrain of “hell no,” aptly summarized the temper and the substance of the general Republican position as the run up to the fall elections begins. (Rumors that the normally phlegmatic Boehner was incensed because a tax on tanning salons is the only tax in the health care bill that will kick in this year are unfounded. Democratic aides gleefully dismiss allegations that the tax was aimed personally at the perpetually tanned Boehner, a congressman from Ohio. )

Republicans pivoted immediately from “kill the bill” to “repeal the deal.’ Reacting to defeat in the manner of a spoiled child taking away the ball after losing a game, Senator John McCain, once known for his independence, led a chorus of Republicans vowing “no cooperation” on any future issue. It will be hard to tell the difference. Most Americans are only beginning to sense just how unified the Republican minority has been in obstruction. Record filibusters in the Senate. Unprecedented holds on Obama appointees. Not one vote from Republicans for health care reform in the House or Senate. Not one Republican vote in the House for financial reform. Not one Republican vote in the Senate banking committee. Republicans even filibustered the recovery plan after their members had worked to weaken it. They bet early and often on Obama’s failure – and it appears to be paying off.

Republicans have been salivating about their prospects in the fall elections. Newt Gingrich predicts they will take control of both Houses. Prognosticators expect big gains. If Republicans gain significant seats, what will be the mandate? What are they for? You can’t tell from this Congress. They’ve chosen simply to stand in the way.

This isn’t an accident. It is, as George W. Bush would say, “strategery.” You may think elections should provide voters with a clear choice, each candidate detailing where he or she would take the country, but today’s politics are defined by the 30 second attack ad, not Lincoln-Douglas debates. (And that’s the tame part. The health care debate was punctuated by racial and homophobic slurs, a brick through the home office window of a Democratic legislator, death threats and more)

Republicans believe, as corporate lobbyist and conservative strategist, former Rep. Vin Weber, summarized, “this year will be a referendum on Democrats. We need an alternative agenda [for the presidential race] – but that’s not the principle objective in off-year elections.”
“Hell no” will do fine.

A Republican Party pro, former Rep. Tom Davis, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, and former head of the Republican Congressional Committee, recently spelled out the strategy for Republicans in Politico.

The Democrats’ fate, he argues, depends on “events on the ground,” primarily the economy. If the economy comes back, Dems will be rewarded; if not, they will be punished.

But, he warns, Republicans shouldn’t “count their chickens.” “Voters fired Republicans in 2006 and 2008 and are not eager to put them back in charge.” Luckily, in a two party election, Republican candidates will get the protest vote. That’s a vote to check Obama, for divided government, and “American voters like divided government.” [This curious notion is conventional wisdom, but while Americans may end up with divided government, they don't like gridlock. They are looking for solutions to big time problems]

Davis urges Republicans to be careful: don’t fall for “traps set by Democrats to make the elections a choice between competing visions.” If it’s a choice, Republicans will get hurt. A choice election would motivate the Democratic base.

“Republican leaders should remember that they need not offer specifics,” Davis writes. “Specific programs are targets.” They let Democrats pose a choice; they can “drive away wary voters.” Also, Davis warns, Republicans need to “measure their words and actions” so they don’t drive away independents. Obviously, those angry tea partiers will need to be put in the closet. “Red meat is more likely to awaken the Obama surge voters than to prompt additional turnout among Republicans.”

So the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference came and went, with Republican pre-presidentials lining up one after another to indict Obama and demonize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, without revealing much of what they actually were peddling. The current conservative darling, Marco Rubio, running for the Senate seat in Florida, was a classic example. After detailing the corporate and top end tax cuts he supports – eliminating taxes on estates, capital gains, dividends and interest (the unearned income that accrues largely to the wealthiest Americans) and lowering corporate taxes, he called for “serious measures that show that we are serious about getting control of our federal national debt,” while mentioning nary a one.

The perils of policy are clear. A leading Republican conservative, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has had the courage to step up and offer an alternative “Roadmap” for America’s future. He decided it was important to show Republicans had the policies to lift us from this crisis.

His plan, like Rubio’s speech, features steep tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, elimination of corporate tax while raising taxes on middle income Americans through a value added tax, a hidden sales tax on consumers. He would cut and privatize Social Security, terminate Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, replacing them with vouchers of decreasing value over time. He’d move to supplant employer based insurance with a refundable tax credit so individuals can experience the delight of bargaining with insurance companies on their own for coverage — without any of the protections in the health care reform bill. He’d freeze domestic discretionary spending for a decade. This would reduce federal spending to a level not seen since the 1950s when Medicare and Medicaid did not exist and the poverty rate among the elderly was at 50 %.

In Ryan’s world, millionaires would pay taxes at a lower rate than middle income earners. More seniors would end in poverty. The healthy might afford health insurance; the sick would go without. The nation’s sewers and bridges would continue to collapse. Its schools remain unrepaired and overcrowded. And, after all that, the national debt would still soar to 175% of GDP by 2050, adding literally trillions in deficits.

House minority leader John Boehner said he couldn’t think of anything to disagree with this program, but noted not all Republicans support it. Once analysts got a hold of it, Boehner disavowed it as “Ryan’s plan.” So Republicans will follow Davis’ advice. Offer a protest, not a choice, and hope Americans don’t look behind the curtain.

The logic of the Republican strategy is clear. With unemployment high, incomes stagnant, and Wall Street cashing million dollar bonuses, voters have much to be mad about. And they generally discount complaints about the minority’s obstruction; voters sensibly expect the president and the governing party to deliver and punish them if they don’t.

But the cynics may be mistaken this fall. Americans are hurting and know the country is in trouble. They are looking for answers. They know Washington is busted, dominated by entrenched corporate lobbies, big money, and partisan politics. Republicans have linked arms with the worst special interests to stave off reforms. They’ve stood with the insurance companies against health care reform. They are soliciting Wall Street money while fighting to gut consumer financial protection. Their plan for jobs is to peddle more of the conservative policies that put us in this hole.

If Democrats focus on creating jobs while pushing to curb the financial casino and protect consumers from abuses of credit card companies, payday lenders and mortgage brokers — and Republicans continue their obstruction — voters might just decide the election is a choice: between those struggling for change and those standing with the entrenched interests against it. That’s a choice that just might arouse the Obama base enough to make a difference. If the jobs don’t come back and Democrats decide its easier to cater to the banking lobby than to buck it, then, despite the historic achievement on health care, the Republican strategy of “hell no” might just work.

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Robert Borosage and Campaign for America’s Future Co-Director Roger Hickey are co-editors of the book, The Next Agenda: Blueprint for a New Progressive Movement