The Memo

Aravosis: Bill Kristol’s 1993 Memo Calling For GOP To Block Health Care Reform

Greg Sargeant over at The Plum Line has gotten his hands on a memo Bill Kristol wrote to his party in 1993, urging them to oppose Bill Clinton's health care plan because - well - it might work. And then all the newly healthy people might like government and see that it could actually do something good for them. Ben Smith summarizes the long memo:

The memo warns that a successful Clinton plan could badly damage the GOP by improving Americans' relationship with government, and makes the case for total, uncompromising opposition based on what would become the "Harry and Louise" campaign, focused on the damage the changes could do to citizens' relationships with their doctors.

The only way that the plan would improve America's relationship with government would be if it worked. Think about that. The GOP ultimately opposed major legislation that would have benefited every American because the legislation might have actually worked.

sgw: The Taxes On Charitable Giving Cannard. OMB Director Peter Orszag breaks down why its a bunch of baloney.

Third, there’s a question of fairness. Non-profits play a critical role in our society (indeed, I have worked at several of them in the past). But let’s look at how the tax code treats two different contributors to a non-profit. If you’re a teacher making $50,000 a year and decide to donate $1,000 to the Red Cross or United Way, you enjoy a tax break of $150. If you are Warren Buffet or Bill Gates and you make that same donation, you get a $350 deduction – more than twice the break as the teacher.

This proposal walks that difference back some of the way – it would limit the tax benefit for Buffet or Gates to $280. In other words, we are not eliminating the deduction – just reducing it to 28 percent (or $280 on the hypothetical $1,000 contribution) for the 5 percent of families at the very top of the income distribution. That is the same tax benefit that they would have enjoyed at the end of the Reagan Administration.

E.J. Dionne: The Re-Redistributor

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Starting with this week's congressional budget hearings, it will be imperative to recognize the extent to which President Obama's fiscal plan and the direction he set in his foreign policy speech on Friday have transformed the terms of the nation's debate.

The central issue in American politics now is whether the country should reverse a three-decade-long trend of rising inequality in incomes and wealth.

...

But his overall approach to taxes is frankly redistributionist: Even as much of the middle class gets a tax cut or no increase, the well-off will pay more. And before the howling on the right gets too loud, consider that we have just gone through a long era involving a far less frank form of redistribution -- upward.

"Over the past two or three decades, the top 1 percent of Americans have experienced a dramatic increase from 10 percent to more than 20 percent in the share of national income that's accruing to them," said Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. Now, he said, was their time "to pitch in a bit more."

Do we want to be a moderately more equal country or not? This is the question Obama has put before the nation. Let's debate it without the distracting rhetorical sideshows designed to obscure the stakes in the coming battle.

• C&L: Brit Hume Has a Snit Over Obama's Tax Plan "Squeezing the Rich"
  

• Brit Hume was positively fuming over the Obama tax increases on this morning's Fox News Sunday. For once Juan Williams was actually the voice of reason.

  Hume: Well it's just so dishonest because the top what, 2% of tax payers in this country pay something on the order of 40% of the taxes already. The top 5% pay 60% of the taxes already, income taxes. And the top 50% pay all but, you know they pay like 95% of the taxes. So most of the people in this country, most of the people pay almost, either no income taxes at all or almost none. That's like half the income brackets. So the idea that the playing field is somehow tilted in favor of the few is bosh!

  ...

  Williams: Let me give you an alternative point of view. An alternative point of view is that 40% that you're talking about, those people earn about half of all the money that's earned in America. They're blessed to be in this country and to have the opportunity and why shouldn't they be responsible and pay their fair share of taxes?

Benen: DEPARTMENT OF POTS AND KETTLES....

For all the recent Republican talk about wasteful spending and unnecessary earmarks, the GOP is more than pulling its own weight when it comes to the very practice they claim to hate.

Drinking water and wastewater projects, mosquito-trapping research and beaver management and control, are just a few of the pet priorities -- known as earmarks, that catapulted Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, to the top of the charts for earmarks in the $410 omnibus spending bill, according to a spreadsheet released on Monday by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington advocacy group.

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Given the makeup of the Senate, I'd expect to see four of the top 10 as Republicans, since the GOP caucus is 41% of the overall body. That six of the top 10 earmarks are Republicans suggests the minority party is especially ambitious when it comes to these spending measures. (Indeed, "red" states do surprisingly well in the omnibus bill.)

It's one of the reasons I find Republican hyperventilating over the earmarks more than a little disingenuous. McCain was ranting on the floor yesterday, blaming President Obama for earmarks McCain's fellow senators stuffed into the bill. Perhaps, before McCain castigates the White House, he can spend some time talking to his own Republican colleagues about their notion of fiscal responsibility.

He can start with his fellow Arizonan, Sen. Jon Kyl (R). It was Kyl who complained bitterly about spending in the stimulus package, which he described as "billions of dollars of earmarks and pork." It's the same Kyl who requested $118 million in earmarks in the omnibus bill.

Asked about the hypocrisy, Kyl told Fox News over the weekend, "I would suggest that they're not earmarks under the definition, because we have a specific definition."

Of course he does. How convenient.

Benen: OVER BEFORE IT STARTS....

President Obama nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) this afternoon to head the Department of Health and Human Services, but political observers have known for a while this was likely. Indeed, several conservative groups and high-profile activists have reportedly been gearing up to fight Sebelius' nomination.

Jane Hamsher noted two weeks ago that there are "concerns" in the White House that Sebelius may prompt "a backlash" among abortion-rights opponents. The Washington Post reported last week:

[C]onservative religious activists have already launched a preemptive campaign against [Sebelius].... The Kansas Democrat and Roman Catholic is "the most rabidly pro-abortion governor" in the country, according to the effort being waged by Operation Rescue through its Web site, which calls her and President Obama "birds of a feather." The group is encouraging antiabortion activists to write Congress to oppose her.

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Donohue doesn't have to "walk away," but by all appearances, the fight is already over.

For example, Operation Rescue, a hardcore pro-life group, thought they could pick up Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) as an opponent of Sebelius' nomination. Almost immediately after her nomination was announced, however, Brownback issued a statement, expressing his enthusiastic support for the Kansas governor.

What's more, when the president introduced Sebelius today, they were joined on the stage by, among others, prominent Kansas Republicans Sen. Pat Roberts and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Around the same time, Sebelius' nomination was endorsed by the American Medical Association and the AFL-CIO.

Now, I suppose it's possible there's something damaging in Sebelius' background that could imperil her nomination. It's exceedingly unlikely -- she was already vetted for the Obama ticket last summer -- but crazy things happen.

That said, if Bill Donohue, Operation Rescue, and other culture warriors think they can derail this nomination because Sebelius is an ardent supporter of reproductive rights, they're likely to be very disappointed.

Ezra Klein: SEBELIUS AS INSURANCE COMMISSIONER.

Sebelius's tenure as insurance commissioner in Kansas seems to have been both successful and fairly quiet: She is not defined by the battles and struggles of that period. She was not at the center of any tremendously controversial initiatives. Rather, she seems to have been a politically skillful and administratively competent commissioner. In 2001, Governing magazine named her one of the top public officials in the country and gave a nice summary of her approach to the office. You can read it here.

Benen: MEET NANCY-ANN MIN DEPARLE....

As expected, President Obama nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) this afternoon to head the Department of Health and Human Services. For all the reasons we talked about over the weekend, this strikes me as an encouraging move.

Sebelius will not, however, be stepping into the role envisioned for Tom Daschle. This morning, the president also introduced Nancy-Ann DeParle, who will serve as Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office for Health Reform.

DeParle, a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School grad, is coming to the White House from the business world, but she has a real background in healthcare policy. She managed Tennessee's Medicaid program, and caught the eye of the Clinton administration, who brought her to D.C. to run the OMB's healthcare team, and later, the Health Care Financing Administration.

Jonathan Cohn argues today that as important as Sebelius will be, DeParle's role is "likely to be even more important" when it comes to "crafting a reform plan and then enacting it."