Romney goes after Obama on healthcare, contraception
Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney on Monday joined a battle over a part of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law that has outraged Catholic bishops.
Under new provisions outlined by Obama’s administration, Catholic hospitals, schools and charities will be required to provide health insurance for their employees covering contraception even if though it violates the church’s teachings.
Catholic bishops’ complaints about the law have filtered onto the Republican campaign trail to find a challenger to Obama in the presidential election next Nov. 6.
Newt Gingrich has declared the policy a war on America’s religious freedom and Rick Santorum has spoken out against it as well.
Romney told a large crowd in Centennial, Colorado:
“Think what that does to people who are in faiths that do no share those views. This is a violation of conscience. We must have a president who is willing to protect America’s first right, our right to worship God.”
The Obama administration has come under heavy criticism for the move but has strongly defended the new policy, saying it does not force any one to use contraception and that it will save Americans millions of dollars.
Washington Extra – Oppo on steroids
Welcome to the new era of opposition research — one that is supercharged by SuperPACs and flung far and wide by Twitter. YouTube is soooo 2008.
In his Special Report “The golden age of oppo research”, our correspondent Tim Reid tells us that the combination of abundant money (post-Citizens United decision ) and great technology will take opposition research to a new level in 2012. Karl Rove’s SuperPAC American Crossroads alone plans to spend $240 million on this election cycle, mostly attacking Democratic candidates.
For all those thinking about new job opportunities in this growth industry, think again. As a 32-year-old retired researcher tells Tim, this is a young person’s game, and “the hours are brutal.”
That said, old opposition research has incredible stamina. A dossier assembled by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s campaign when he was challenged by Mitt Romney in 1994 remains a rich source on Romney’s career at Bain Capital, where some of his takeover deals resulted in layoffs and benefit cuts. Count on the Democratic strategists to give new life to that old yarn if Romney wins the GOP nomination.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
The golden age of oppo research “The hours are brutal,” but the rules are simple: Define your opponent early. Work as many hours as it takes. Get whatever you can on the other guy – as long as it’s legal and won’t come back to haunt you. “This is a golden age” of opposition research, said Jeff Berkowitz, who dug dirt on Democratic candidates for the Republican National committee from 2002 to 2010. The sort of search tools that discovered presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plagiarism in 1987 have become more sophisticated and the outlets to shop damaging information are now virtually unlimited.
For more of this special report by Tim Reid, click here.
Mitt Romney launches 2012 presidential campaign
It was supposed to be Mitt Romney’s day in New Hampshire, but the presidential hopeful ended up sharing the spotlight with a potential rival.
Sarah Palin’s “One Nation” family bus tour just happened to roll into the Granite State on Thursday — the same day as Romney’s big announcement. The former Alaska governor says the timing of her arrival was just a coincidence.
Romney formally tossed his hat into the ring to compete for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination under clear blues skies at a New Hampshire farm. The main event was an informal cook-out where the candidate served up chili and charges that “Barack Obama has failed America.” The former Massachusetts governor blamed the Democratic president for high unemployment, home foreclosures and other economic woes, highlighting Obama’s main weakness.
The early frontrunner in a Republican field seen as weak, Romney has some vulnerabilities including his own version of health care reform.
Shortly before Romney launched his second bid for the White House, Palin weighed in saying he’d be a great candidate and then she brought up his health care problem.
“In my opinion, any mandate coming from government is not a good thing, so obviously … there will be more the explanation coming from former governor, Romney, on his support for government mandates,” Palin said during a stop in Boston, on the way to New Hampshire.
As governor, Romney signed a measure that expanded health coverage in Massachusetts through a system of subsidies and mandates – a model for the Obama health care overhaul despised by many Republican voters. Romney has defended the state law while attacking the federal version.
As GOP regroups on healthcare, new poll questions its priority
The new House Republican majority may be about to do what President Barack Obama did a year ago — assign the top priority to healthcare at a time when Americans really really want action on the economy and jobs.
That’s what a new Gallup poll suggests. Pollsters found that a clear majority of U.S. adults (52 perecent) think it is “extremely important” for Congress and Obama to focus on the economy in the new year. Next in importance come unemployment (47 percent), the federal budget deficit (44 percent), and government corruption (44 percent).
Healthcare and education are tied at 40 percent. But when Gallup looked more broadly at what people said were either “extremely important” or ”very important,” education edged ahead of healthcare.
That seems ironic. Republicans, fresh from their electoral sweep in November, have made a vote to repeal Obama’s healthcare reform their first act in the House because, they say, it’s what the People want. They say that knowing the move will likely be a dead letter, given Democratic opposition in the Senate and the threat of an Obama veto.
More ironic is that Gallup’s Jan. 7-9 survey produced results generally in line with what the polling organization found before the November election.
It’s not as if Republicans are listening only to Republican voters. The data show healthcare to be a higher priority for Democrats (who tend not to want it repealed) than for Republicans, who ranked it behind terrorism as well as the economic and fiscal issues as topics in need of action.
So who are Republicans in Congress listening to? Hard to tell.
The vast majority of Americans are not on board with the Republican effort, nor should they be — passing repeal means forcing vulnerable seniors to pay thousands of additional out-of-pocket dollars for their medication, allowing insurers to discriminate against children with pre-existing conditions, higher taxes on small businesses, forcing young people off their family’s insurance plans, and making care more expensive for everyone. Even the business community that backs the GOP is making it clear — it doesn’t back repeal.
And what about jobs? Naturally, Republicans have the story backwards. Since the immediate impact of the measure will be to allow 30 million more Americans the chance to buy drugs and medical services from doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, it’s hard to imagine a more effective way to reduce employment in the one sector that is actually adding jobs.
The GOP says it needs to gut America’s health care system in order to create jobs. But were they to succeed, it would cost America jobs. Republicans just have to hope the public isn’t paying any attention to reality at all. Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, the private sector has added 1.1 million jobs. Roughly a fifth of that total — more than 200,000 — were jobs created in the health care industry.
If health care reform is bad for job creation, how did this happen?
Washington Extra – No Refuge
Not only does Barack Obama face a united and hostile Republican Party at home, he cannot easily take refuge in foreign policy in the second half of his term. From Afghanistan to Russia and the Middle East, from climate change to nuclear weapons, there are more problems than easy solutions out there.
But if all that wasn’t bad enough, the president is facing a few problems even keeping his fellow Democrats on side. As we report today, the Dems are in disarray about what to with the expiring tax cuts, and there is a distinct feeling of post-election disappointment with the president. As one aide told Reuters, many congressional Democrats felt they got their fingers burned for backing Obama’s healthcare plan and are wary of getting hurt again.
“Our guys aren’t sure what comes next,” the aide said. “Will Obama help them in 2012, or will just be focused on getting himself re-elected?”
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
US seeks trust, not caps, in Cancun climate talks
The Obama administration, weakened by political setbacks, will likely limit its role in global climate talks this month to building trust with other big polluters rather than blazing an ambitious path on binding carbon emissions cuts. The Senate failed to pass a climate bill this summer and Republicans won control of the House, putting out of reach any big moves by President Obama to tackle global warming until at least 2013.
For more of this analysis by Timothy Gardner, read here.
“Obamacare” could help Democrats in 2012
Republicans are aiming their guns at health reform as they campaign to win midterm control of Congress on Tuesday, and many Democrats are ducking the issue.
But come 2012, the overhaul pushed through by President Barack Obama could help him and his fellow Democrats get re-elected.
Republicans accuse Democrats who voted for “Obamacare” of supporting a government takeover of healthcare. Many promise to repeal the reform passed in March after contentious debate and extended medical insurance to millions of Americans have none.
But public opinion on the law has improved — according to Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake — and will work for Democrats in the presidential and congressional elections two years down the road.
“Every day that passes, healthcare gets more popular,” Lake said at a forum hosted by Health Affairs magazine.
“Candidates have changed their rhetoric from repeal to repeal and replace. They’ve noticed, as we have, that voters don’t want to start all over again,” she said.
Listen to audio from the forum, provided by Health Affairs.
You must be joking. Premiums in CT up by 47%, CA up by 30%. And the full effect will not be felt until 2014. We will not know just how much additional premiums will cost till then. The elimination of high deductible policies is going to produce premium increases in triple digits.
Then Medicare will be cut by $500 billion, and 23 million new patients will be added with no increases in numbers of doctors, nurses, or hospitals. This is going to make people wair months, or even years just to see a specialist. Then a Government bureaucrat will have to deny treatment to the elderly because the budgets will be cut. That is, unless a member of Congress pressures the decision makers in return for campaign contributions. Some call this a bribe.
And compounding the problem is that several of my Doctors have said they did not enter into medicine to be overruled by an administrator who is not a Doctor. So, they will retire, or be forced out of practice by the combination of an unrealistic fee structure and crushing paperwork and reporting requirements.
So, costs will go way up, fees paid to medical practitioners will be subpar like today’s Medicare payments, there will be many Doctors who will retire or quit medicine making waiting lines unnaceptabie, or even impossible. This is the situation today in Hawaii where there are islands which just do not have Doctors in high risk specialities.
What a deal! Higher costs, less choice, rationing of health care, long waiting times, unavailability of Doctors, crowding out of senior citizens with immigrants who will vote for the Democrats and will demand even more services.
And we are expected to like this. Wrong.
Voters may like the healthcare plan after all, poll shows
Pundits may want to reconsider the conventional wisdom that U.S. voters are sour on President Barack Obama’s sweeping healthcare overhaul, at least according to a new survey released Tuesday.
A majority — 54 percent — of all voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported the healthcare overhaul, the Public Religion Research Institute found in its American Values Survey of more than 3,000 voters.
Among women voters, 60 percent said a candidates’ support for the new healthcare law made them more likely to vote for that candidate, Dan Cox, the institute’s research director, said.
Women surveyed were also keenly interested in healthcare, with 25 percent saying they considered it the most important issue in the Nov. 2 election. Sixteen percent of men rated healthcare the most important issue, Cox said.
“Women who say healthcare is the most important issue for them are leaning toward Democratic over Republican candidates by 56 to 34 percent,” Cox said.
Obama’s fellow Democrats are facing a tough battle to hold their majorities in Congress on Nov. 2.
With the public angry over the sputtering economy, a growing budget deficit, a perceived failure of government in Washington and skepticism about big new programs like the healthcare overhaul, Republicans are expected to cut into or possibly eliminate the Democrats’ majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate.
No matter how you slice it, Obama’s on a roll
What does he do for an encore?
President Barack Obama started the week with a victorious end to the healthcare angst. And ended it with a win on START.
For a president who entered his second year with a Nobel Peace Prize but scrounging for a mega-accomplishment to put in the Democrats’ corner in an election year, this week handed him a pair of major victories.
But there is still plenty of time for things to go awry before November — think Kansas in the NCAA basketball tournament. Or for things to go even better than hoped — think Butler.
On Tuesday, he signed the healthcare bill. On Friday he announced an agreement with Russia on a new START Treaty.
White House and other administration officials have been visibly gleeful and basking in the glow of the sun coming out this week on the president’s agenda.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a moment of levity at the podium in the White House press room, responded to a question about the START Treaty having to be ratified by the U.S. Congress and the Russian Duma by saying:
Conservatives used to go to great lengths to reject the notion of governing based on polls. The very idea was mocked and dismissed as unworthy of true leaders. When policymakers choose to confront a great challenge, they shouldn’t just take the public’s temperature and base their judgment on shifting whims and attitudes.
President Bush boasted repeatedly that he was a president who governed “based upon principle, and not polls and focus groups.” Conservatives rejected the idea that polls should dictate policy decisions. Such an approach is fundamentally weak and unprincipled.
Until now, anyway. Conservatives have now decided that polls are all that matters, and to approve legislation that polls poorly is some kind of un-American act, betraying the consent of the governed.
By conservative standards, wouldn’t President Obama deserve credit for standing tall and delivering on his campaign promises, even in the face of discouraging polling data? Isn’t it more important to do what’s right than what’s popular? I thought conservative principles were not negotiable.
from Photographers Blog:
Obama signs historic health care bill: An easy assignment?
The White House East Room has been, through the decades, the site for countless ceremonies, speeches and historic moments. I have lost count of the number of times I have covered events in there, but on Tuesday, the most historically important moment in the young presidency of Barack Obama unfolded in the most packed working conditions I have ever seen in that grand room. Hundreds of invited Congressmen and women, who each had a hand in bringing about the health care reform bill, sat shoulder-to-shoulder and right up against the stage. Along with dozens of photographers, journalists and television crews, there wasn’t room to breathe and this presented a rare challenge for those that regularly cover the White House – the chance that you may not even see the event taking place!
With the front row of the audience about 3 feet (one meter) from the signing desk, it was almost impossible to see the Presidential Seal and that important document that President Obama was about to sign. Even on step ladders, which normally elevate us sufficiently above the audience, it was touch-and-go, and that’s before camera phones, the new nemesis for any working photographer shooting over a crowd, would inevitably start popping up. Not to mention the audience members standing up themselves to see over the rows in front. I even had to negotiate a compromise with one Congresswoman from New York that if she would refrain from pulling out her cell phone and blocking us behind her, I would ensure that she would receive a copy of one of my pictures as a trade off. She thankfully obliged and I emailed her a jpeg file later in the day for her private collection, for which she was grateful. Other congressmen in the audience were not as considerate, and anticipating this (hey, even elected officials can’t resist pulling out their cameras too), I set in place an “insurance policy”, because news photographer’s never get a second chance at capturing history.
My insurance policy was a Canon 5D camera and 24-105mm lens clamped high above my head on one of the towering light stands, atop of which is enough illumination to set an exposure of 400th sec @ f4, at 1000 asa. They do light White House events well, as administrations past and present recognize the power of the well-crafted image. I know a lot of photographers who shoot indoor events and would dream of soft, plentiful light rather than messing with high ISO speeds or the dreaded flash/strobe. With one dedicated radio transmitter attached to the hotshoe of my handheld camera, and a radio receiver connected to remote camera on the light pole, I could wirelessly fire the remote every time I pushed my shutter button. After editing the pictures from the remote camera for the Reuters wire shortly after the event ended, I thought it would be cool to put the entire sequence together with some sound to give you a sense of being in that room on this historic occasion.
One peculiar quirk you will quickly notice that has become a standard at President Obama’s signing ceremonies are multiple pens to sign just one document. He starts his signature by making one pen stroke, replaces that pen with another, signs another part of his signature with that one and carries on writing his name until all the pens are used. That ensures that all the important participants on the stage, in this case key congressmen who helped pass the bill in the House of Representatives, receive a ceremonial pen that actually was put to paper. You can see Obama reaching for the pens in this time lapse sequence.
Don’t forget to thank Joe Biden for doing the impossible: somehow persuading Gary Coleman not to hog the camera throughout the entire episode.
Reid to Republicans: healthcare reform is now law of the land
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proudly proclaimed on Wednesday that the “historic healthcare reform is now no longer a bill it is the law.”
Someone please tell Republicans.
They are planning a flurry of amendments to try to stall a package of changes being considered by the Senate that Democrats want to make to the legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama.
House Democrats demanded the changes, which among other things would close the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap for the elderly.
Republicans want to change the new law too. They want to repeal it. Some of their amendments would do just that. It is unlikely Senate Democrats will reverse course and undo the hard fought victory for Obama.
But other proposed Republican amendments could force Democrats to take politically unpalatable election-year votes on measures such as one that would strike Medicare spending cuts from the bill.
The GOP has yet to put a single piece of legislation on the table that benefits anyone but big business. They have staked their future on blocking the agenda of the elected administration and tied themselves to the insurance and financial industries over the interests of the American public. So far, they have lost every legislative confrontation with the majority, and the defeat they have just been dealt in the healthcare fight is historic on many levels. Negative messaging can only go so far in an improving economic environment. Eventually, people realize that one side is putting their political goals above the goals of the nation as a whole.
Many existing laws and regulations apply specifically to pregnant women. Several provisions of the Affordable Care Act offer new benefits for expecting mothers. Search online for “Penny Medical” if you need affordable insurance for yourself or your wife.