Sunday Morning: Health care happening Edition

Sudbay: Obama playing hard ball on health care to prevent GOP filibuster

Congress will take up health care reform under the reconciliation process. That's very good news. It means the Republican Senators can't filibuster the legislation -- and that Obama doesn't have to sell out his proposal to get votes of Republicans or even those conservative Democrats. The bill needs 51 votes, not 60.

The New York Times reports that Obama was the driving force for using reconciliation:

At the prodding of the White House, Democratic Congressional leaders have agreed to pursue a plan that would protect major health care legislation from Republican opposition by shielding it from last-minute Senate filibusters.

The aggressive approach reflects the big political claim that President Obama is staking on health care, and with it his willingness to face Republican wrath in order to guarantee that the Democrats, with their substantial majority in the Senate, could not be thwarted by minority tactics.

While some Democratic senators were reluctant to embrace the arrangement, Mr. Obama made clear at a White House session on Thursday afternoon that he favored it, people with knowledge of the session said.

Mr. Obama has given way in some battles with Congress, but the new stance suggests he may be much less willing to compromise when it comes to health care, his top legislative priority, even if it means a bitter partisan fight.

The no-filibuster arrangement is fiercely opposed by Republican leaders, who say health care is too important to be exempted from the Senate rules that usually mean major bills must win support from 60 senators.

At the White House meeting this week, Mr. Obama told senators from both parties that he did not want a health care overhaul to fail if it came up a vote shy of the 60 needed to break filibusters, the people with knowledge of the session said. Republicans have used the procedure themselves in the past, but Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, told Mr. Obama in the meeting that that approach was likely to heighten partisan tensions in Congress.

Several points:

First, good for Obama. That's the kind of leadership we need to pass health care reform.

Second, from what I hear (and as Senator Kent Conrad indicated to the Times), several Democratic Senators really didn't want to go along with this reconciliation plan. I wrote a post on this yesterday. It's mind-boggling that Democratic Senators still worry about bi-partisanship. They act like bi-partisanship is the ultimate goal. That's so wrong. It may come in handy sometimes as a tactic, but, the goal is good legislation. (Plus, this move also takes power away from those conservative Democrats who could play games if 60 votes were needed. Even the votes of some Democrats are expendable here.)

Finally, Mitch McConnell says the Republicans are going to be mad. The NY Times thinks Obama may face GOP 'wrath." Whatever. They already are mad and Obama's been facing their wrath since he got elected. How many voted for the stimulus in the middle of an economic crisis? Three. How many voted for the budget? None. The same day McConnell was at the White House whining about the Democrats using reconciliation, he was leading a filibuster against Kathleen Sebelius' nomination to be Secretary of HHS. The traditional media has been obsessed with the topic of bi-partisanship, but fail to see it as a two-way street.

This is an important move by the president. Clearly, he is committed to passing the agenda of change upon which he was elected. Health care reform is at the top of his agenda. Let's not forget, the titular head of the GOP wants Obama to fail. It's unfortunate that so many Democratic Senators were idiotic enough to fall into the GOP trap -- again and again and again.

It's probably good that Obama served in the Senate -- and served only for a short time. He has a sense of how insular and out-of-touch many of those people are -- and wasn't there long enough to become one of them. If any of the Democrats in the Senate looked around, they might notice there are a lot more of them than in 2006. They've been winning elections by promising change and among other things, health care reform. It's time to use the power to deliver. On this issue, Obama gets that.

Now, the challenge is to get real health care reform. If it gets screwed up now, it's because Democrats screwed up their signature issue -- and gave too much power to the health insurance industry and its lobbyists.

• Krugman adds: Health care happening
  

  OK, it looks as if major health care reform is actually going to happen. Democrats have agreed that if Republicans try to block reform in the Senate, they will use the reconciliation process to bypass a filibuster.

  Republicans will, of course, scream that this is a terrible, terrible thing — something they themselves would never have done — except, of course, to cut food stamps, pass both major Bush tax cuts, and more.

  We’ll still have to see what the reform looks like — especially whether the public plan survives. But kudos to the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership: this is the big one, and so far it looks very, very good.

Benen: THEY'RE GOING TO NEED MORE TEA BAGS....

Chances are, White House officials are going to be pleased with the results of the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, which shows President Obama with a surprisingly-high 69% approval rating.

Some of the highlights of from the poll:

* Right Track/Wrong Track: Respondents were asked, "Do you think things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track?" 50% said we're going in the right direction, up from 8% in October, and the highest number in six years.

* Congress: Asked about the parties' performances in Congress, 45% approve of the way congressional Democrats are doing their job. For Republicans, it was 30%.

* Institutional confidence: Respondents were asked who leaders' ability to "make the right decisions for the country's future." Just 21% are confident in congressional Republicans. For congressional Democrats, it was 36%. For President Obama, it was 60%.

* Presidential support: In addition to a 69% approval rating, 73% said Obama "understands the problems" of people like them; 77% see him as a strong leader; 73% said he can be trusted in a crisis; 90% said he is "willing to listen to different points of view"; 74% said he's honest and trustworthy; 60% said he shares the values of the poll respondent; 63% credit him for bringing needed change to Washington; and 56% said he is a good commander-in-chief.

* The handshake: Respondents were asked, "Obama has met or said he's willing to meet with leaders of foreign countries that have been hostile toward the United States. Do you support or oppose his approach to dealing with such countries? Do you support/oppose this strongly or somewhat?" To the disappoint of Fox News and Republican activists everywhere, 71% support the president's approach.

* Torture: If there's one area of disappointment in the poll, it relates to the renewed debate over torture. Americans support Obama's decision to release the torture memos, but by a narrow margin, 53% to 44%. Asked about whether the U.S. government should or should not torture, the public was largely split -- 49% are opposed, 48% said "there are cases in which the United States should consider torture against terrorism suspects."

Asked about investigating Bush administration officials who may have broken laws related to detainee abuse, 51% said the Obama administration should investigate, 47% disagreed.

Yglesias: Still True Today: If You Don’t Count the Failures, Bush’s Anti-Terror Policies Were a Huge Success

Under the administration of George W. Bush, the United States of America suffered by far the worst terrorist attack in its history. Bush responded to this with policies that led to the deaths of substantially more innocent Americans than died on 9/11, to say nothing of orders of magnitude more foreign civilians. Meanwhile, the perpetrators of 9/11 remained at large, and hundreds of other innocent civilians were killed by terrorists in allied nations. This, according to conservatives, is success. Thus Noemi Emery in The Weekly Standard saying the record proves the need to torture:

Let’s tell the truth about Bush’s conduct of the war on terror, which is that it’s been a success. His ultimate legacy hasn’t been written–Iraq is improved, but not out of danger–but the one thing that can be said without reservation is that the country was kept safe. He delivered on the main charge of his office in time of emergency, in a crisis without guidelines or precedent. Attacks took place in Spain, and in London, in Indonesia and India, but not on American soil, which was the obvious target of choice. Bush couldn’t say this before he left office, for obvious reasons, and after he left, attention switched to the new president.

This is via Matt Duss. I find this whole line of argument truly and deeply baffling. The overwhelming majority of Americans to ever be killed by foreign terrorists were killed during Bush’s presidency. And even if you give him a pass on 9/11 itself it’s still the case that his conduct of the “war on terror” led to the deaths of thousands more Americans.

Anonymous Liberal: Wanker of the Decade: Ben Nelson

Apparently Democratic Senator Ben Nelson has announced that he will vote against Obama's supremely qualified nominee to head the OLC, Dawn Johnsen:

"Senator Nelson is very concerned about the nomination of Dawn Johnsen, based on her previous position as Counsel for NARAL. He believes that the Office of Legal Counsel is a position in which personal views can have an impact and is concerned about her outspoken pro-choice views on abortion," said spokesman Clay Westrope.

Give me a break. Nelsen's going to vote against Johnsen because, like most Americans, she's pro-choice? Isn't the same thing true of virtually every Obama nominee for any position? And it's not like Johnsen was nominated to be Abortion Czar. She's been nominated to head the OLC, the office responsible for assessing the legality of various executive actions. I'm curious what OLC legal opinions Nelson believes Johnsen's pro-choice views will even be relevant to.

I'd be curious to see what position Nelson took on past OLC nominees like Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, who so distinguished themselves in the office. I bet he had no problem with them. But, hey, while they might have committed war crimes, at least they didn't express support for a woman's constitutionally protected right to choose. Johnsen was one of Obama's most inspired choices for any office and if her nomination gets torpedoed because of the epic wankery of a Democratic Senator, I won't even be able to put into words how furious I will be.

Benen: BRODER'S OTHER MISTAKE....

Yesterday, Hilzoy explained very well why it's a mistake for David Broder to assume he knows what Bush administration critics are thinking when it comes to taking torture seriously. Sure, Broder argues, those who support the rule of law have a "plausible-sounding rationale," but he just knows that we're really motivated by "an unworthy desire for vengeance." As Hilzoy asked, "[W]ho died and made David Broder Sigmund Freud?"

But before we leave David Broder's column behind, there was one other claim that warrants some attention.

The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places -- the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department -- by the proper officials.

How Broder reached this conclusion is unclear -- he didn't point to any evidence of a "deliberate, and internally well-debated" process -- but based on what we've learned, this is shockingly wrong.

Consider this jaw-dropping report that ran in the New York Times on Wednesday (presumably before Broder's deadline).

The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of methods used on Americans during military training. How could that be torture?

In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.

This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved -- not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees -- investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.

These policies weren't the result of a "deliberate" and "internally well-debated" process, they were thrown together, without any thought to the techniques' history or even effectiveness. "Internally well-debated" makes it sound as if there a spirited discussion among administration officials. There wasn't -- as was too often the case in the Bush administration, decisions were made without dissenting voices.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective.

A former C.I.A. official told the NYT the process was "a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm."

If Broder thinks this in any way resembles a "deliberate, and internally well-debated" process, he would do well to reference a dictionary.

• Sully adds: Mr Broder Wants Us To Move On

  Well, of course he does. But the idea that this is about vengeance is a piece of fantasy. Or as Hilzoy nicely puts it,

  Who died and made David Broder Sigmund Freud?
  

  
  If I had one belief in politics, it would be that the freedoms secured by the modern West are worth fighting for. Absolutely central to those freedoms is barring the executive branch from torturing people. No power is more fatal to freedom and the rule of law than torture. It is like Tolkien's ring: no society remains free, if its rulers use it. Its power is banned because it is a solvent to the rule of law, the establishment of truth, and the limits of government. For an administration to secretly and illegally unleash this weapon - against citizens and non-citizens alike - and to demand that it not be subsequently called to account, that it be allowed to get away with it under some absurd notion that it's too divisive to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes is and was an outrage. Punishing those responsible for war crimes is not "scapegoating". You know what scapegoating is? It's throwing Lynndie England in jail for following orders given by George W. Bush, while leaving him to the luxury of a Texan suburb.

  The precedent of a torturing American president must be reversed. That means it cannot be allowed to stand.

  There is no way the American experiment can continue while legal and historical precedent gives the president the inherent authority to torture. It is the undoing of the core idea of the founding - protection against arbitrary, lawless, cruel and despotic rule. And the impact on the entire world of America allowing this to stand would be profound. The world looks here for moral leadership. Those who endure real political oppression, imprisonment, torture and abuse at the hands of despots look to America for leadership, for guidance, for hope. If America - America - discovers that its own president has illegally tortured and decides that it simply won't do anything about it, that it doesn't matter, that it's too polarizing to restore the rule of law ... then what hope do those people have? To whom will they look when they fight far more pervasive tyranny, buttressed by the same absolute power to coerce the truth and break the human soul?

  We don't want vengeance. We want America back. And we are going to fight on and on until we get it back.