The healthcare reform debate brewing in the U.S. Senate may cause dyspepsia for some special interests.
    
But the mere prospect of reform could be making the American public feel better already — about health coverage, at least. That’s according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a nonpartisan philanthropic organization devoted to health and healthcare issues.
    
The foundation’s consumer confidence index for healthcare climbed to a new high of 104.4 points in October, as the debate gathered pace in the Senate and House of Representatives.
    
Why? There was a big jump in people’s confidence about future access to care and coverage. Fewer worried about losing their insurance and concerns about future affordability dropped, too.
    
“During a month when there was considerable momentum around health reform, including the passage of a reform bill by the Senate Finance Committee, the American public appears to be more confident about the future,” Robert Wood Johnson Foundation president and CEO, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey said.
    
“Americans of every ideology know that our health care system needs to be fixed and want some type of reform,” she added.
    
That last remark — “some type of reform” — could prove prophetic.
    
Republicans seem to think reform is a terrible idea and appear to be in lock-step opposition to it.
    
That leaves it to Democrats and allied independents to forge a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority to push legislation through. Despite sharp differences within their already frayed coalition, Democratic leaders appear to be betting that the whole bunch, in the end, will opt for “some type of reform” rather than returning home empty handed for the holidays.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol)

“…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
    
Charles Dickens never met U.S. senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. But he may have inadvertently captured the partisan spirit of the U.S. healthcare reform debate when he published his novel, “A Tale of Two Cities,” with its famous introduction, 150 years ago.
    
Democrat Chuck and Republican Kay made clear on NBC’s Today show how many in their respective parties see the sweeping overhaul legislation that reached the U.S. Senate floor over the weekend. And by the sound of things, Washington could be two different cities. 
    
Chuck seemed to present healthcare reform as a vehicle for economic salvation: “The future of the country depends on getting something done or the government will go broke, private businesses will go broke and people will go broke.”  

Or could reform lead in that other direction?    

Here’s Kay: “We are in a jobless situation in our country, an economic crisis. You are going to put taxes and mandates on business that are going to make that situation even worse. One in 10 people in America today do not have a job. Now you’re putting mandates and taxes on every individual who doesn’t have healthcare and every business that we want to ask to hire people. And yet you’re putting taxes and mandates on them that makes this unaffordable. This is a terrible idea at this time.”
    
Of course, partisan differences will mean little if Democrats can retain the same 60-vote, Republican-filibuster-proof sense of community that got the bill to the floor in the first place.
    
Chuck seems confident: “We will come together for this reason. The healthcare system is broken in this sense: Medicare will be broke in seven years, private insurance doubles every six years (and) tens of millions will lose it. If we don’t do anything, that is the worst situation. And we have a good bill that cuts costs, reduces the deficit and covers more people.”
    
Either way, it’s bound to be one dickens of a debate. 

Photo credits: Reuters/Chip East (Schumer); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Hutchison)

He probably won’t run for New York governor but might for the U.S. Senate … or will he?
     
That’s the speculation swirling around Rudy Giuliani, the Republican former New York City mayor who walked tall after the Sept. 11 attacks and ran for U.S. president in 2008.
    
A spokeswoman says the 65-year-old former federal prosecutor has made no decisions.
    
But the New York Daily News, the New York Times  and the New York Post  all report that Giuliani has decided not to run for New York governor in 2010.
    
Analysts think he could defeat Democratic incumbent Governor David Paterson without much fuss. But overcoming a possible challenge from New York’s Democratic attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, could be have been difficult. Cuomo has not announced his candidacy.
    
The Daily News reports that Giuliani is strongly considering a Senate run against Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to fill out the remaining two years of Hillary Clinton’s term. Clinton, who lost in last year’s Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama, is now U.S. secretary of state.

The Daily News cites poll numbers showing Giuliani losing to Cuomo 53 percent to 43 percent in a race for governor,  but beating Gillibrand 54 percent to 40 percent for the Senate.

But the Senate speculation may not last long.

The New York Post quotes people close to Giuliani as saying a run for the Senate is unlikely.

And even the Daily News  seems to be hedging its bets with a story saying Giuliani doesn’t need to run for the Senate because he already has plenty of money and influence and a private life that’s working out just fine.
    
Giuliani ran for the Senate in a 2000 campaign that pitted him against Clinton. But events and declining poll numbers were against him and he withdrew after a quick succession of revelations: he had prostate cancer, he had a girlfriend, and he was separating from his second wife.
    
Giuliani has since beaten cancer, divorced his second wife, Donna Hanover, and married his former girlfriend, Judith Nathan.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder (Giuliani)

Dubbed “the world’s most exclusive club and deliberative body,” the U.S. Senate is packed with white-haired lawmakers, many of whom have served in the chamber for decades.

While Americans generally retire in their mid-60s or so, about half of the 100 senators are 65 years or older.

And one of them, Democrat Robert Byrd, 91, of West Virginia, set the record on Wednesday as the longest serving member of the U.S. Congress ever — 20,774 days.

Byrd made it clear he has no thoughts of leaving anytime soon. “I look forward to serving you for the next 56 years and 320 days,” he said in a statement to mark his historic day.

“I am so deeply grateful to the people of the great state of West Virginia for demonstrating such confidence,” added Byrd, who has been elected to an unprecedented nine full six-year Senate terms.

“My only regret is that my beloved wife, companion and confidant, my dear Erma, is not here with me,” Byrd said. “I know that she is looking down from the heavens smiling at me and saying, ‘Congratulations my dear Robert — but don’t let it go to your head.’”

Byrd broke the record for congressional longevity previously held by the late Carl Hayden, who like Byrd served in the House of Representatives before going to the Senate.

Democratic and Republican colleagues saluted Byrd for his many achievements, which include holding a number of leadership posts over the last half century as a bona fide Senate giant as well as a living legend.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted records are routinely broken, but predicted many of Byrd’s will stand the test of time, such as having cast more than 18,500 Senate votes. “There will never be another senator like Senator Byrd,” he said.

To be sure, Byrd doesn’t hold all the records. At least not yet. Among the records yet to match is the mark as the oldest senator ever. That was set in 2002 when Senator Strom Thurmond, a month before retirement, turned 100.

On Friday, Byrd turns 92.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Byrd arriving at Capitol in February)

Sarah Palin says on her Facebook page that the healthcare overhaul passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week should be “Dead on Arrival” in the U.S. Senate. 

The House-passed bill, which includes a new government health insurance plan, may not be what the Senate passes. But the far-reaching healthcare reform backed by President Barack Obama is far from dead. At least one influential Republican senator believes Congress will enact sweeping legislation.

“I think a bill is going to pass,” said New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg. In an interview with C-Span’s “Newsmakers” that will air on Sunday, Gregg said Obama has invested too much political capital in his top domestic priority to allow it to fail. Gregg once considered joining the Obama administration, but now has become a major critic of Obama’s proposed healthcare reform and its impact on the country’s mounting debt.

“We’re on an unsustainable path, it is that simple,” Gregg said.

Gregg said he does not see Democrats scaling back the legislation in the face of eye-popping, record deficits.  On the contrary, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid struggling to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the bill in the 100-member Senate, Gregg sees “more baggage” being added to it in an effort to win votes.

The bill that initially passes the Senate is not likely to include a new government-run health insurance program, Gregg said. But he said the legislation will likely “move to the left” once Senate and the House negotiators meet to work out their differences and develop a single bill. He said he expects the final bill to include some version of a new public insurance option.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Senator Judd Gregg in his office)

Former President Bill Clinton is due to visit Capitol Hill today to talk healthcare reform with Senate Democrats and their independent allies.

The meeting’s important because Democrats have yet to find the 60 votes they need to stop Senate Republicans from blocking President Barack Obama’s signature domestic issue. House Democrats got their end of the job done over the weekend by passing landmark legislation.

Clinton’s presidency was overshadowed by his own failed bid to reform the healthcare system in the 1990s. But NBC said he could help sway Democrats wavering in the current debate, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln of his home state, Arkansas. 

A big obstacle that Clinton, Obama and Senate Democrats face seems as old as human nature: people who will cooperate — if they get their own way.

This time, a small clutch of moderates want their own way on the so-called public option, a proposal to offer government supported low-cost health coverage that is anathema to Republicans and the insurance industry.

Some senators are categorical about what they want.

For independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — a state long associated with insurance interests — opposition to the public option is a moral issue. “If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” he said at the weekend on Fox News.

But his independent neighbor to the north, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, sounds like Lieberman’s polar opposite: “It would be outrageous to me, that when you have an overwhelming majority of Americans wanting a strong public option, that we do not deliver that.”

Others are not so categorical — until you get to the nitty gritty.

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska told NBC he could back a public option, but not if states have to make the effort to opt out. Why? Because he doesn’t want them in the system unless they want to be there.

“I don’t think there is anything to be gained by opting out,” Nelson said. “I would look at the ability of the states to opt in, so that the states could make the decisions themselves.”

It seems a small distinction but may prove important. Reform advocates fear their adversaries could easily defeat healthcare reform at the state level, where small numbers of health insurers can sometimes hold a near monopoly.

Obama hopes to sign a healthcare reform bill by the end of the year.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Chip East (Clinton); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Lincoln); Reuters/Mike Segar (Lieberman); Reuters/Chris Helgren (Sanders); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Nelson)

Like it or not, the healthcare debate has turned into a fracas over abortion rights.

U.S. House Democratic leaders had hoped to avoid just that in their push to expand healthcare coverage and reform the health insurance market.

But getting the votes to pass the historic legislation on Saturday boiled down to settling a dispute between pro-choice and pro-life forces over abortion.

Abortion foes won. The House passed an amendment restricting the availability of insurance policies that include elective abortion services even though many medical plans currently offer such coverage.

The debate over abortion highlights broader questions surrounding the government’s reach in healthcare.  Once the government starts subsidizing insurance premiums, it will dictate what can and cannot be included in that coverage.

Democrat Congressman Louis Capps underscored that in arguing the amendment “will mean more women will have their reproductive health choices made by politicians and anti-choice zealots in Washington, DC, instead of by themselves and their doctors.”

With abortion-rights supporters vowing to strip the amendment out of the bill as it moves through the legislative process, the debate now shifts over to the Senate.

Senate Democratic leaders are struggling to build enough support for the healthcare overhaul to overcome procedural hurdles that stand in the way of major legislation.

The biggest point of contention has been whether the government should offer a new health plan option.  But the abortion debate will likely prove impossible to avoid.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, acknowledged the issue will come up when the Senate takes up healthcare reform possibly as early as next week.

“It is an issue that we are going to have to deal with over here,” he said. “Senator Reid will need to talk to his caucus about how to proceed.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas ( U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi following House vote on healthcare reform legislation)

As a drippy day dawns in Washington, Team Obama is suiting up for a full-court press on climate change. Three cabinet secretaries — from Energy, Transportation and Interior departments — the head of the EPA and the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Five — are headed for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the first of three full days of hearings.

As those hearings go forward, President Barack Obama is announcing a $3.4 billion program to build a “smart” electric grid, which would among other things carry solar and wind power, which are free of carbon emissions.

It’s all meant to convince international climate negotiators that Washington is serious about tackling climate change. A global gathering set for Copenhagen in December aims to set up a system to curb climate-warming carbon emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. For months, environmental activists have looked to the Copenhagen meeting as a deadline for action. But now, the deadline is looking a bit blurry.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appeared to acknowledge this when he told business leaders in Seattle on Monday, “We will do our best and try to have a substantive agreement (in Copenhagen) … After Copenhagen we may not expect … to agree on all elements. But we should have a broad agreement.”

Ban’s climate adviser made clear the secretary-general was planning for “post-Copenhagen” talks.

The international environmental community has said repeatedly that the United States needs to take the lead in forging a global climate agreement. But what would show U.S. leadership? Does a climate change bill have to come to a vote in the Senate? Does it just have to get out to committee? Does it need to land on the president’s desk before the Copenhagen meeting? Is it enough that legislation seems to be moving forward?

And an even more basic question: do you agree that the United States needs to lead on this? If so, would it make a difference if Obama attends the Copenhagen meeting? (He’s going to be in the neighborhood anyway to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize.)

Let us know what you think.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Jason Reed (President Barack Obama looks at a model of a wind turbine at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 23, 2009)

REUTERS/Ray Stubblebine (University of Pittsburgh Panthers guard Antonio Graves fights a full-court press by Louisville Cardinals guard Andre McGee in Big East Tournament game in New York’s Madison Square Garden, March 8, 2006)

The sweeping legislation unveiled in the U.S. Senate today aims to curb climate change, arguably one of the biggest tasks ever undertaken on this planet. But it's a bill that runs to more than 800 pages, and hidden in its folds is a provision that could turn a noted symbol of New York City -- the yellow taxicab -- green.

And it wouldn't just be in New York. Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and other major U.S. cities would be able to create taxi fleets made up entirely of hybrid vehicles under the proposed Green Taxis Act of 2009.

Offered by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who now fills Hillary Clinton's former seat in the Senate, the measure aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 296,000 tons in New York City alone, which its sponsors say would be like taking some 35,000 cars off the road and save drivers $4,500 annually in gas costs.

“By creating an all hybrid taxi fleet, we can improve air quality and lower carbon emissions," Gillibrand said in a statement. "As a mother with an asthmatic child, I believe this is a win-win for our children and our efforts to combat climate change.”

That has to be a good thing, and it's not exactly unheard of. A quick search for "green taxi" turns up nearly 70,000 hits. But will New Yorkers say "Fuhgeddaboutit"? Will the Taxi and Limousine Commission oppose it? WIll preservationists balk at changing what has become a durable talisman of life in the Big Apple? Or will New York residents (and other residents of other cities where this law could apply) embrace their inner environmentalists?

Let the debate begin!

Photo credits: REUTERS/Eric Thayer (Taxis drive past carbon counting sign on Deutsche Bank building in Manhattan, June 18, 2009)

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (New York City skyline, Sept 2, 2009)

Former Democratic Party Chairman Paul Kirk has a few months in his new job to help accomplish what his friend, the late Senator Edward Kennedy, devoted much of his life to: Trying to provide affordable healthcare to all Americans.

Kirk was sworn in on Friday to take the Senate seat held for 47 years by Kennedy, his party’s liberal lion and leading advocate for healthcare reform.

The ascension of Kirk again gives Democrats, provided they stick together, the 60 votes needed in the 100-member Senate to clear Republican procedural roadblocks.

This could be critical in a pending Senate floor fight over efforts to expand healthcare, which Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.”

Kirk was sworn in a day after Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick named him as Kennedy’s temporary successor until voters elect a new senator in January.

Kirk took the oath just hours after a judge in Massachusetts rejected a request by Republicans for an injunction to prevent him from taking office.

Kirk was administered the oath in the Senate by Vice President Joe Biden.

“Congratulations senator,” Biden told a smiling Kirk after he officially joined the Senate, often referred to as “the world’s most exclusive club and deliberative body.”

Kirk shook hands and exchanged hugs with a number of lawmakers, including Kennedy’s son, Patrick, a member of the House of Representatives who came to the Senate to witnesses the swearing in of his father’s successor.

Kirk, who served as Democratic Party chairman from 1985 until 1989, is seen as a somewhat of a natural to take over the Senate seat.

An eloquent speaker who was master of ceremonies at a memorial service for Kennedy last month, he has in-depth knowledge of Washington politics.

Kirk also supports Democratic efforts backed by President Barack Obama to overhaul the nation’s $2.5 trillion healthcare system.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Hyungwon Kang (Kirk takes oath of office from Biden)