Progressive Breakfast: Public Plan Compromise?

Can There Be Effective Health Care Compromise?

Baucus and Conrad telling Bloomberg that WH wants them to compromise with GOP: [1] "White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met last night at the U.S. Capitol with Senate Democrats and told them Obama is 'open to alternatives' to a new government insurance program in order to get legislation overhauling the health-care system to his desk, said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. 'His message was, it’s critical that you do this,' Conrad said. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana said Emanuel urged the senators to seek Republican support and didn’t discourage them from pursuing the use of non-profit cooperatives, an idea Conrad has proposed."

Jonathan Cohn notes Obama has never made public plan option non-negotiable: [2] "Obama refused--first implicitly and then explicitly--to say he'd veto a bill that lacked a public insurance option. This isn't exactly a break with the past. He's generally refused to draw lines in sand on health care, except to say that any reform must control costs while delivering relief to the uninsured and underinsured. Nevertheless, for those who hope reform will emerge without a public plan, this is good news."

Ezra Klein sees positives in Obama's response at press conference: [3] "he defended the plan's substantive merits. His answer was, in other words, an effort at persuasion rather than diversion. The implication was that he, at the least, is genuinely convinced by the case for a public insurer."

Ezra Klein also says a good compromise can be reached: [4] "If you've got [national structure and purchasing power] -- and if Schumer wins on the permanent board -- then you really are in a situation where it doesn't matter if you call this a co-op or a public plan."

Conservatives only want co-ops if they can't do anything. W. Post: [5] "There appears to be little room for compromise. The more bargaining power and other advantages that co-ops are granted, the less appealing they become to Republicans, many of whom had welcomed the concept of a co-op as promising. And the more the co-ops' authority is diluted, the more Democrats are likely to protest. "

Politico adds: "[Sen. Chuck Schumer] has been trying to negotiate a deal on an alternative to the public insurance option [6] ... But Schumer said Republicans haven’t been open to making changes to the nonprofit insurance cooperative model, which is considered the last hope to avoiding an impasse."

W. Post offers misleading analysis of own poll about public plan option, reports: [7] "62 percent support the general concept, but when respondents were told that meant some insurers would go out of business, support dropped sharply, to 37 percent." BUT actual poll question hypothesizes more drastic result: [8] "What if having the government create a new health insurance plan made many private health insurers go out of business..."

NYT flags CBPP criticism of Baucus funding proposal: [9] "Under the proposal ... employers would have to pay half the cost of providing Medicaid for any of their low-income employees in that program. Employers would also have to pay the full cost of subsidies for workers who buy coverage through a health insurance exchange and qualify for assistance because they have low incomes. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ... said this proposal 'could unintentionally discourage the hiring of lower-income people,' by adding a new 'health surcharge' to the cost of employing them."

Senate Finance hacking their proposal down to help less people. The Hill: [10] "Senate Finance Committee members working to bring the cost of healthcare reform below $1 trillion are getting closer but have not reached their goal ... Conrad said the bipartisan group of Finance Committee members working on the bill were looking in a 'wide array of places' to reduce spending. Foremost among them is reducing the subsidies available to assist people with purchasing health insurance."

Wonk Room rounds up yesterday's congressional testimony [11] supporting public plan option.

Change.org's Tim Foley on testimony from impassioned small businesswoman: [12] "You hear a lot about how small businesses would get crushed by raising taxes on the wealthiest 1%, or how small business will be crushed by excessive regulations, or how small business would be crushed by a carbon tax or cap & trade. But those same people who claim to stand up for small businesses disappear when we’re dealing with something that does crush small businesses – the no-win scenario of either letting the employees who feel like your family go without benefits, opting for the 'split the baby'solution of getting a high-deductible or high cost-sharing plan that you know will be insufficient, or subjecting to yourself to the slings and arrows of outrageous insurance monopolies, where the only safe prediction is that your costs will go up."

CQ: [13] "The two Senate committees writing health care overhaul legislation are drawing closer to having mostly complete products ready after the July Fourth recess ... The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is marking up its draft bill this week, but no longer with the intention of finishing before the recess."

Rural Deal Struck on Climate Bill, House Vote Friday

Time's Jay Newton-Small: an agreement was finally reached Tuesday evening with the Blue Dogs and Rural Caucus over the final sticking points. [14] Ending a turf war, Waxman ... allowed the Agriculture Department, not the EPA, to oversee a potentially lucrative program of energy offsets for farmers (Peterson allowed that the Obama Administration could weigh in on the EPA's role in the issue, if any). And Waxman agreed to bar the EPA for five years from calculating how much greenhouse gas emissions are generated when forests are converted to crop fields for ethanol and biofuels. The move helps get ethanol and biofuels counted as renewable energies, thus benefiting from a big renewable investment in another part of the bill that aims to see 20% of U.S. energy derived from green sources by 2025. When asked Peterson said he believed the bill would enjoy 'broad support' and even 'draw a few Republicans.'"

Climate Progress' Joe Romm not concerned about biofuel compromise: [15] "Waxman has kicked the can down the road for 5 years (on an issue that was probably going to take years to resolve scientifically anyway) and not given up anything of much actual consequence. Hard to lose any sleep over this one."

TNR's Brad Plumer on permits: [16] "This won't affect the overall carbon cap, but it's a pretty sleazy giveaway. On the other hand, Waxman really needed farm-state Dems support (since few Republicans will vote for this bill), so he had little choice. More liberal Dems and environmental groups, meanwhile, don't seem interested in playing Peterson's brand of hardball, so it's unlikely the bill will get strengthened."

The Hill reports Sen. Reid is reaching out to rural Senators now [17] to avoid similar snags

The Hill reports LCV drawing red line: [18] "The League of Conservation Voters (LCV), an environmental group that is an active player in political campaigns, said it would not endorse any member of the House who opposed the climate bill scheduled to be voted on this week."

Wonk Room reports "EPA: Waxman-Markey Will Lower Electricity Bills": [19] " In 2007, this would have saved the average residential user $84, or 23 cents per day ... CBO [earlier] determined 'that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or about $175 per household.' CBO did not evaluate the impact of the energy efficiency measures on consumer spending on utilities."

Greenwire counts heads: [20] "Pelosi can count on about 170 reliable supporters in a push to achieve 218 votes. There are another 108 fence-sitters, including 81 Democrats and 27 Republicans."

Financial Reg Fight Brews

Robert Borosage stresses need for aggressive Pecora Commission [21] if we are to win strong financial market regulatory reform

Politico lays out areas of contention: [22] "The Obama plan calls for the Fed to take on expansive new authority to serve as a systemic risk regulator of all large financial institutions whose collapse could pose a threat to the entire system.But the Fed’s secretive ways and inscrutable pronunciations on monetary policy rub an increasing number of lawmakers the wrong way ... The idea [of a consumer protection agency] seems to resonate with the public, but industry has vowed to fight the creation of a new bureaucracy to police the relationships between customers and financial institutions, wary of federal intervention in its most profitable business lines ... [And] it’s not entirely clear how systemic risk regulators will interact with the insurance industry"