Once again, I reminded of Will Allen Dromgoole's poem, "The Bridge Builder," in which an old man crosses a river only to start building a bridge across it. (A "bridge over troubled water," if you will.) Asked by a traveler why he's building a bridge over a river he's already crossed, the old man speaks of one who will pass that way after him. "I am building this bridge for him," he explains.
With Mitt Romney’s hold on the Republican nomination looking secure, the Tea Party will soon have to face the reality that despite pushing the Republican Party and its nominee to the right, they’ll wind up losing the fight in the end. This isn’t the first time. The Tea Party leapt to national prominence in August 2009, when its activists held angry and often ugly protests in town hall meetings held by Democratic members of Congress. But in the end, the biggest impact was to stiffen Republican resolve to refuse any compromises on health care while the legislation continued to make its way through Congress.
How many lives does health care reform have? The law has survived a slew of near-death moments, but 2012 brings new lethal traps for the first-ever law that makes health coverage a right for almost all Americans.
First up is the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hold three days of hearings on various aspects of the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act at the end of March. Sometime before July 4 we will learn whether the law — in whole or in part — survives that challenge.
The next potentially lethal threat to the health care law will be the presidential and congressional elections. If a Republican wins the presidency, he’ll be obligated to try to kill the health care law. Even if President Obama wins reelection, an unfavorable Supreme Court decision may force new legislative action, throwing major parts of the law into doubt.
Sometimes a policy idea has the power to shape history. While the “public option” did not make it into the final health care reform bill, the idea of providing a choice of regulated private insurance or a public insurance plan was crucial to building the movement to enact the Affordable Care Act. Without the public option, progressive groups would have remained torn between reform plans that offered either exclusively private or public insurance. The public option provided a point of unity that became a foundation for the coalition and grassroots campaign to enact health reform law.
Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
It is no surprise that the 2013 federal budget proposal that President Obama released today is deemed "dead on arrival" in Congress. Most White House budget proposals are. more »
It was just one month ago when conservatives were complaining that ABC's George Stephanopoulos was displaying his "bias" while moderating a Republican presidential debate by being "obsessed" with cont more »
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With Mitt Romney’s hold on the Republican nomination looking secure, the Tea Party will soon have to face the reality that despite pushing the Republican Party and its nominee to the right, they’ll wind up losing the fight in the end. This isn’t the first time. The Tea Party leapt to national prominence in August 2009, when its activists held angry and often ugly protests in town hall meetings held by Democratic members of Congress. But in the end, the biggest impact was to stiffen Republican resolve to refuse any compromises on health care while the legislation continued to make its way through Congress.
