Progressive Breakfast: Taxing Health Benefits Losing Traction

Congressional Dems Push Back on Baucus, Rahm

Baucus gets blowback from fellow Senate Dems. Bloomberg: [1] "Senate Democratic leaders are pressing Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus to reconsider a plan to tax employer-provided health benefits because they say it would hurt too many consumers, a Democratic aide said ... Some Democrats at the meeting also voiced misgivings that Baucus is working too hard to attract Republican support..."

Politico reports WH reassuring House Dems on public plan option: [2] "...a chastened White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met with the House Democratic caucus Tuesday night and sought to assure them that Obama hasn’t abandoned his preference for a public insurance option in any final bill, said lawmakers who attended the meeting. The reassurance came after Emanuel suggested in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal article that that the public plan option was negotiable. After the article appeared, Obama issued a statement from Russia reasserting his support for the proposal — an unspoken but unmistakable rebuff of his chief of staff. Rep. Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee charged with paying for health care reform, said Emanuel 'made a hell of a mistake. He made a hell of a mistake and he knows it.'"

The Treatment's Jonathan Cohn doesn't see Obama's statement as much of a rebuff: [3] "Notwithstanding the White House statement and private assurances administration officials are giving reporters, I assume Emanuel's statement is an accurate reflection of the administration's thinking on the matter ... it's not as if the White House push actually contradicts what Emanuel said to the Journal. In other words, that fact that Obama supports a public plan and hasn't bargained it away yet doesn't mean that, at the end of the day, he wouldn't embrace a compromise on it."

New Health Dialogue furthers speculation of a CBO score of the House bill: [4] $150 billion/year, paid for in part with a soda tax and surtax on familes earning $250K+.

Wonk Room's Igor Volsky spots new attack line from conservatives: [5] "After initially claiming that the preliminary CBO estimate of the bill was too high, today during markup, Sens. Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) argued that the new score — which for the first time included an employer mandate and brought the cost of the bill to around $600 billion — included a tax on hard-working American families and businesses ... to characterize the employer and individual mandates as new taxes is highly disingenuous ... Both policies are part of a larger strategy designed to lower health care costs."

Time reports abortion may become a flashpoint: [6] "While current versions of the legislation do not address the abortion issue at all, late last month 19 anti-abortion Democrats in the House sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, warning 'we cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan.' ... Abortion rights advocacy groups are pushing back. On Monday, the National Women's Law Center released a poll of 1,000 likely voters conducted by the Mellman Group indicating that 71% favor including reproductive services such as birth control and abortion as part of health reform."

NYT runs critical analysis of series of cost-savings deals with private health industry: [7] "The deals, trumpeted loudly by the White House, would each help pay for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system. First, it was a broad consortium of health industry groups — doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurers, all promising to slow the growth of medical spending by 1.5 percent. Then, it was the big drug makers, promising savings of $80 billion over 10 years, by lowering the cost of medicine for the elderly. On Wednesday, it will be major hospital associations, pledging to save more than $150 billion over a decade. And a deal with doctors is said to be on tap next. In each case, the Obama administration hailed the agreements as historic. But what has been little discussed is what the industry groups will be getting in return for their cooperation, whether or not the promised savings ever materialize."

W. Post piece accuses Dem leaders of failing to address how to limit unnecessary care: [8] "The bills being written would put new emphasis on evaluating treatments according to their 'comparative effectiveness,' or weighing the risks and benefits of different types of treatment for the same illness, but the bills stop short of incorporating cost-benefit analyses into the findings or of requiring that providers abide by conclusions."

Senate Begins Work on Climate Bill

Grist's Kate Sheppard [9] (and myself [10]) speculate on possible nuclear deal to pick off GOP Senators on climate bill [10].

ClimateWire on Dem leaders trying to figure out a path to 60 Senators: [11] "Majority Leader Harry Reid yesterday insisted that he wanted to get a sweeping energy and global warming measure onto the Senate floor between mid-September and early October. But the Nevada Democrat and his lieutenants were less specific when it came to defining their strategy for crossing the all-important 60-vote threshold ... Conrad [cited] his continued concerns about how climate legislation will deal with several North Dakota-specific issues, including agriculture, oil and coal production ... Landrieu did not rule out voting in favor of the Senate climate bill. But she said that her price for support would entail at least setting aside specific allocations for the oil and gas industry, as well as greater domestic energy production ... There are also a handful of moderate GOP lawmakers who are seen as fence sitters on climate legislation given their past voting record on the issue."

NYT on friction at the G-8: [12] "[European leaders] fear that the United States is working toward an independent deal with China outside the global negotiating framework ... Europe is also unhappy with the Obama administration’s reluctance to accept aggressive near-term goals for cutting greenhouse gases and its refusal so far to formally accept language that would limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels."

Bloomberg reports G-8 may not agree on long-term target: [13] "The developing countries say mature economies should agree to trim greenhouse-gas output by at least 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. The European Union, the largest bloc of industrialized countries in negotiations, has asked for a 30 percent drop in that period. Legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would trim discharges 17 percent in 2020 from 2005 levels, or about 5 percent compared with 1990. The nations meeting in Italy dropped a pledge to halve emissions targets by 2050, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a European official."

Second Stim Split

Bloomberg reports conflicting statements from Dem leaders: [14] "Democrats who control the levers of power in Washington are divided over whether to push for more deficit spending to end the recession and stem job losses, complicating the possibility of a second stimulus bill. 'We need to be open to whether or not we need further action,' House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters yesterday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada countered that 'there is no showing to me that another stimulus is needed.'"

Mark Zandi explains to W. Post why more stim is needed: [15] "[Zandi] calculates that the government made $242 billion in stimulus funds available for various purposes through the end of June and paid out about $110 billion. In a recent analysis, Zandi predicted that 'the maximum contribution from the stimulus should occur in the second and third quarters of this year,' when it will add more than three percentage points to overall economic growth. 'It's pretty much according to plan in terms of the payout and in terms of its economic impact. This is in the script,' Zandi said. The problem, he said, is that 'the economy has been measurably worse than anyone expected,' with a surprisingly sharp 'collapse in employment and surge in unemployment' that caught most economists off guard."

Education stim funds only enough for schools to tread water. AP: [16] "The Government Accountability Office, in a report to be released Wednesday, says the stimulus is keeping teachers off the unemployment lines, helping states make greater Medicaid payments and providing a desperately needed cushion to state budgets. But investigators found repeated examples in which, either out of desperation or convenience, states favored short-term spending over long-term efforts such as education reform."

Bank Reforms Debated

Bloomberg on private meeting between Treasury and key House members: [17] "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged lawmakers to quickly pass legislation enacting President Barack Obama’s overhaul of U.S. financial rules, as Democrats pushed back on plans to expand the Federal Reserve’s powers. "

Bank complain about proposed capital requirements. FT: [18] "Private equity investors have objected to a new rule proposed by regulators that would require them to inject nearly four times the minimum capital normally required into troubled banks in which they invest."

Toxic assets plan not yet launched. McClatchy: [19] "Geithner is expected to announce this week the names of asset managers he's decided to let participate in government-backed auctions of these troubled bank assets. Initial bold estimates of up to $1 trillion in asset purchases, however, have been scaled back to between $20 billion and $50 billion. Even that's questionable because banks may not want to part with assets voluntarily if they find the auction bids too low. Banks think that the assets have value, but until the housing market stabilizes, it's difficult to price them ... So the status quo remains: banks with bad assets, a Treasury program to fix it that isn't operational and isn't expected to yield much once it is, and an economy stuck in quicksand in part because of it."

Terrance Heath contributed to the making of this Breakfast