Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) now leads both his Democratic primary challenger, Rep. Joe Sestak, and Republican Pat Toomey, in a general election match-up, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday..
Specter's lead over Sestak stands at 53 to 29 percent, while his lead over Toomey is now 49 to 42 percent. A similar poll in mid-December had Specter and Toomey deadlocked at 44 percent.
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March 2, 2010
February 19, 2010
State Pensions Plans Face $1 TRILLION Shortfall: Pew Center
HARRISBURG, Pa. ( BY MARK SCOLFORO, AP) -- States may be forced to reduce benefits, raise taxes or slash government services to address a $1 trillion funding shortfall in public sector retirement benefits, according to a new study that warns of even more debilitating costs if immediate action isn't taken.
The Pew Center on the States released a survey Thursday of state-administered pension plans, retiree health care and other post-employment benefits in all 50 states that blamed a decade's worth of policy decisions for leaving them shortchanged.
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The Pew Center on the States released a survey Thursday of state-administered pension plans, retiree health care and other post-employment benefits in all 50 states that blamed a decade's worth of policy decisions for leaving them shortchanged.
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December 17, 2009
Her Brother Dead For Lack Of A Battery, Pittsburgh Woman Returns To Washington
Since she lost her brother in March, Georgeanne Koehler's vocation has been to tell people how he died: slumped over his steering wheel because his defibrillator battery ran out.
William Koehler, who worked as a pizza deliveryman and would have turned 58 in the spring, couldn't afford to replace the battery because he lost his insurance when he lost his job as an electronics technician in 2003. No insurer wanted anything to do with his arrhythmia. That's why Georgeanne Koehler, a 63-year-old hospital worker in Pittsburgh, found herself standing in front of the Capitol steps on a frigid Thursday in Washington, D.C. -- her third visit in three months.
"I'm here to talk about my brother," she said, holding a small piece of poster board with his photo. "Without health insurance, he couldn't get necessary cardiac care to keep him alive. This is the face of uninsured Americans whom we loved most dearly. Without meaningful reform, there will be many more. We just don't know their names yet."
After her brother died, Koehler started building walls from paper bricks, which she planned to tear down after the president signed reform into law. Then she began attending rallies, to which she always carried a bag filled with her brother's EKG charts. She told the Huffington Post that she'll talk to anyone about health care reform, that she goes door to door in her Pittsburgh neighborhood and even chats up strangers at bus stops.
Koehler first traveled to Washington in October, when she attended a labor-organized rally outside a conference for industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. She returned on Dec. 7, to attend a press conference with Senate Democrats.
She visited Washington on Thursday to promote her own "No More Empty Chairs" holiday health care campaign. An empty folding chair at her side, Koehler made a brief speech in front of the Capitol before an audience of just 10 health care and labor activists and one reporter.
"This Christmas we're going to have an empty chair at the dinner table," she said.
Koehler didn't seem to mind that so few people came to her event, or that the Capitol Police wouldn't let her unfold the chair. She focused on telling her story and the stories of people she's met since she became a health reform activist.
"Once this is all done we'll see where I'm at with the grieving," she told HuffPost after personally delivering a bag of letters to the office of Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), where a staffer encouraged her to keep telling her story.
"I'm very appreciative of Mrs. Koehler's visit to Washington to share her family's heartbreaking story and to deliver so many messages from Pennsylvania in support of health care reform," said Schwartz in a statement to HuffPost. "Mrs. Koehler's advocacy, and the advocacy of so many other Pennsylvanians, is invaluable and it is stories like hers that compel us to pass meaningful, affordable health coverage for all Americans."
And Koehler met with Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in his office, dropping off a letters in a bag decorated with a snowman in a green jacket.
"I know what happened to your brother," said Specter, a former Republican just like Koehler. "I'm really sorry. It's a tragedy."
William Koehler, who worked as a pizza deliveryman and would have turned 58 in the spring, couldn't afford to replace the battery because he lost his insurance when he lost his job as an electronics technician in 2003. No insurer wanted anything to do with his arrhythmia. That's why Georgeanne Koehler, a 63-year-old hospital worker in Pittsburgh, found herself standing in front of the Capitol steps on a frigid Thursday in Washington, D.C. -- her third visit in three months.
"I'm here to talk about my brother," she said, holding a small piece of poster board with his photo. "Without health insurance, he couldn't get necessary cardiac care to keep him alive. This is the face of uninsured Americans whom we loved most dearly. Without meaningful reform, there will be many more. We just don't know their names yet."
After her brother died, Koehler started building walls from paper bricks, which she planned to tear down after the president signed reform into law. Then she began attending rallies, to which she always carried a bag filled with her brother's EKG charts. She told the Huffington Post that she'll talk to anyone about health care reform, that she goes door to door in her Pittsburgh neighborhood and even chats up strangers at bus stops.
Koehler first traveled to Washington in October, when she attended a labor-organized rally outside a conference for industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. She returned on Dec. 7, to attend a press conference with Senate Democrats.
She visited Washington on Thursday to promote her own "No More Empty Chairs" holiday health care campaign. An empty folding chair at her side, Koehler made a brief speech in front of the Capitol before an audience of just 10 health care and labor activists and one reporter.
"This Christmas we're going to have an empty chair at the dinner table," she said.
Koehler didn't seem to mind that so few people came to her event, or that the Capitol Police wouldn't let her unfold the chair. She focused on telling her story and the stories of people she's met since she became a health reform activist.
"Once this is all done we'll see where I'm at with the grieving," she told HuffPost after personally delivering a bag of letters to the office of Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), where a staffer encouraged her to keep telling her story.
"I'm very appreciative of Mrs. Koehler's visit to Washington to share her family's heartbreaking story and to deliver so many messages from Pennsylvania in support of health care reform," said Schwartz in a statement to HuffPost. "Mrs. Koehler's advocacy, and the advocacy of so many other Pennsylvanians, is invaluable and it is stories like hers that compel us to pass meaningful, affordable health coverage for all Americans."
And Koehler met with Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in his office, dropping off a letters in a bag decorated with a snowman in a green jacket.
"I know what happened to your brother," said Specter, a former Republican just like Koehler. "I'm really sorry. It's a tragedy."
November 25, 2009
Battle Between David Broder And Harry Reid Heats Up: Broder Comments ‘Mind-Boggling’
David Broder simply doesn't understand the way that today's Senate operates, Jim Manley concluded on Wednesday. Manley, the senior communications adviser for Majority Leader Harry Reid, said that the longtime Washington Post columnist's charge that Reid pales in comparison to former Senate leaders misunderstands the way the contemporary Senate works.
"It's all fine and dandy to pine for the golden days of yesteryear, when politics was practiced differently, but that's not the reality we're dealing with," Manley told HuffPost. "What David fails to understand is that Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate are being pulled along by the so-called birthers, the Tea Party movement and other far right fringe groups that are completely at odds with the views David claims to hold."
Manley said that Broder's failure to see the GOP for what it is today is common among Washington-based pundits.
"David might be one of the worst examples, but he highlights a myopic, inside-the-belt phenomenon that is at odds with the views of many Americans," said Manley. There's even a term for such thinking: Broderism.
The Broder-Reid spat broke into the open on Saturday night when Reid dismissed him as "a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while." (Broder has taken a buy-out from the Post but continues to write two columns a week on a contract basis.) Reid was peeved at a column Broder had written accusing the Senate bill of not cutting costs adequately.
It may seem petty, but the Reid-Broder battle is a proxy fight between two competing approaches to politics. Reid, by attacking Broder, puts himself on the side of those attacking the Washington politico-media establishment.
"Maybe I have an idealized view of what a Senate leader ought to be," Broder told Politico Wednesday for a story headlined: "David Broder: Harry Reid's no Mike Mansfield." "But I've seen the Senate when a leader could lift it to those heights...I wish it had that kind of leadership now."
That's not possible, said Manley, because Mansfield and Lyndon Johnson, revered Senate leaders, had a Republican Party willing to work across the aisle.
"LBJ had Robert Taft [R-Ohio], William Knowland [R-Calif.] and Everett Dirksen [R-Ill.]. Mike Mansfield had Dirksen and Hugh Scott [R-Pa.]. What David fails to acknowledge is that the current Repub leadership is betting on the president to fail," said Manley.
"Why he can't understand that is mind-boggling."
"That's an interesting argument and certainly there are differences between the people now and the people then and the environment that was there," Broder told HuffPost. "But if that's their effort to explain why Senator Reid has chosen the tactics that he's chosen, that doesn't strike me as an adequate explanation."
Broder disputed Manley's contention that the GOP blocks everything. "It is not a fact that the Republicans have refused everything. At least we don't have much evidence of that so far. If he's talking about a specific reaction to the pieces of the Obama agenda that have come up so far, then he's in effect saying Obama is so frustrated that he's about to abandon everything. I don't suspect it's the case. When the first measure relating to Afghanistan comes to the floor that generalization will collapse."
Broder is probably right that the GOP will back Obama in his effort to expand the war in Afghanistan, but Manley was arguing more on the domestic policy front.
He references the fight to pass an unemployment insurance extension, which the GOP eventually supported but slowed down for several weeks.
"How David can make this kind of comment after UI bill is beyond me. It took more than four weeks to pass a bill in the senate that it took the House an hour to pass on the suspension calendar," said Manley.
Broder acknowledged the unemployment point. "It's a good argument as it implies to the unemployment extension. There have been many occasions where I have been very critical of the Republican stance."
"It is a different Senate now and if I were writing on that topic -- Mansfield, Baker, LBJ and so on -- we might very well agree. But that was not the subject of that column and in my mind, that is not a particularly powerful or relevant rebuttal to the subject I was talking about, which is whether or not the potential savings everybody knows are needed are there in the bill Senator Reid brought to the Senate floor."
Manley had specific gripes about Broder's health care column, in which he cited deficit hawks to make the case that the Democratic Senate bill might not reduce costs.
Manley said that Broder's column was discussed by "puzzled" Democrats in the Senate cloakroom. "No one could understand it," said Manley. "We had the self-described gold standard of analysis - the CBO - highlighting that the bill reduces the deficit. And David utterly failed to acknowledge that was the case."
Broder often refers to the Congressional Budget Office with the highest praise, but relied mostly in his column on "experts" who proclaim themselves "bipartisan" but whose goals are to dismantle Social Security, Medicare and other vestiges of the New Deal.
Broder's argument was dismissed by his colleague at the Post, Ezra Klein. Broder, however, said he didn't have to look far to find people who agreed with him - which is, in fact, one of the biggest problems the blogosphere has with his type of writing and thinking. "It was hardly a unique viewpoint," Broder said accurately.
If Broder thinks that the GOP is genuinely willing to work with Democrats, the only centrist position between he and Reid might be in agreeing to disagree. "We have a Republic leadership betting on the president to fail," said Manley. "David's problem is he thinks this is all on the up and up."
"It's all fine and dandy to pine for the golden days of yesteryear, when politics was practiced differently, but that's not the reality we're dealing with," Manley told HuffPost. "What David fails to understand is that Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate are being pulled along by the so-called birthers, the Tea Party movement and other far right fringe groups that are completely at odds with the views David claims to hold."
Manley said that Broder's failure to see the GOP for what it is today is common among Washington-based pundits.
"David might be one of the worst examples, but he highlights a myopic, inside-the-belt phenomenon that is at odds with the views of many Americans," said Manley. There's even a term for such thinking: Broderism.
The Broder-Reid spat broke into the open on Saturday night when Reid dismissed him as "a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while." (Broder has taken a buy-out from the Post but continues to write two columns a week on a contract basis.) Reid was peeved at a column Broder had written accusing the Senate bill of not cutting costs adequately.
It may seem petty, but the Reid-Broder battle is a proxy fight between two competing approaches to politics. Reid, by attacking Broder, puts himself on the side of those attacking the Washington politico-media establishment.
"Maybe I have an idealized view of what a Senate leader ought to be," Broder told Politico Wednesday for a story headlined: "David Broder: Harry Reid's no Mike Mansfield." "But I've seen the Senate when a leader could lift it to those heights...I wish it had that kind of leadership now."
That's not possible, said Manley, because Mansfield and Lyndon Johnson, revered Senate leaders, had a Republican Party willing to work across the aisle.
"LBJ had Robert Taft [R-Ohio], William Knowland [R-Calif.] and Everett Dirksen [R-Ill.]. Mike Mansfield had Dirksen and Hugh Scott [R-Pa.]. What David fails to acknowledge is that the current Repub leadership is betting on the president to fail," said Manley.
"Why he can't understand that is mind-boggling."
"That's an interesting argument and certainly there are differences between the people now and the people then and the environment that was there," Broder told HuffPost. "But if that's their effort to explain why Senator Reid has chosen the tactics that he's chosen, that doesn't strike me as an adequate explanation."
Broder disputed Manley's contention that the GOP blocks everything. "It is not a fact that the Republicans have refused everything. At least we don't have much evidence of that so far. If he's talking about a specific reaction to the pieces of the Obama agenda that have come up so far, then he's in effect saying Obama is so frustrated that he's about to abandon everything. I don't suspect it's the case. When the first measure relating to Afghanistan comes to the floor that generalization will collapse."
Broder is probably right that the GOP will back Obama in his effort to expand the war in Afghanistan, but Manley was arguing more on the domestic policy front.
He references the fight to pass an unemployment insurance extension, which the GOP eventually supported but slowed down for several weeks.
"How David can make this kind of comment after UI bill is beyond me. It took more than four weeks to pass a bill in the senate that it took the House an hour to pass on the suspension calendar," said Manley.
Broder acknowledged the unemployment point. "It's a good argument as it implies to the unemployment extension. There have been many occasions where I have been very critical of the Republican stance."
"It is a different Senate now and if I were writing on that topic -- Mansfield, Baker, LBJ and so on -- we might very well agree. But that was not the subject of that column and in my mind, that is not a particularly powerful or relevant rebuttal to the subject I was talking about, which is whether or not the potential savings everybody knows are needed are there in the bill Senator Reid brought to the Senate floor."
Manley had specific gripes about Broder's health care column, in which he cited deficit hawks to make the case that the Democratic Senate bill might not reduce costs.
Manley said that Broder's column was discussed by "puzzled" Democrats in the Senate cloakroom. "No one could understand it," said Manley. "We had the self-described gold standard of analysis - the CBO - highlighting that the bill reduces the deficit. And David utterly failed to acknowledge that was the case."
Broder often refers to the Congressional Budget Office with the highest praise, but relied mostly in his column on "experts" who proclaim themselves "bipartisan" but whose goals are to dismantle Social Security, Medicare and other vestiges of the New Deal.
Broder's argument was dismissed by his colleague at the Post, Ezra Klein. Broder, however, said he didn't have to look far to find people who agreed with him - which is, in fact, one of the biggest problems the blogosphere has with his type of writing and thinking. "It was hardly a unique viewpoint," Broder said accurately.
If Broder thinks that the GOP is genuinely willing to work with Democrats, the only centrist position between he and Reid might be in agreeing to disagree. "We have a Republic leadership betting on the president to fail," said Manley. "David's problem is he thinks this is all on the up and up."
November 24, 2009
Pelosi Sees Unrest Among Dems: ‘Can We Afford This War?’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Tuesday that every dollar President Obama decides to spend on the war in Afghanistan is one less that's available to help bring about an economic recovery, improve the jobs situation and bank away political capital for Democrats leading up to the midterm elections.
"I think we have to look at that war with a green eyeshade on," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday on a conference call with financial reporters and economists who blog. "There is unrest in our caucus about: Can we afford this war?"
Pelosi qualified her remarks by noting that cost is not the top concern. "I think the American people believe that if it's something that's in our national security interest," she said, then the investment is worth it.
But it still has to be paid for, she said. "Everything else has to be paid for. It must be fiscally sound. We have to hold it to the same standard, as well."
Most Americans, however, do not believe that the war is worth waging any longer, according to polls. Under President Bush, wars and occupations were paid for with long-term debt; Obama campaigned under the principle that war should mean shared sacrifice.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) warned Obama recently that he would hold him to that promise.
"There ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan," he said. "If they ask for an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan, I am going to ask them to pay for it."
Pelosi backed him up.
"As you know, the chairman of our appropriations committee, Mr. Obey, as well as Mr. Murtha, have both said the war must be paid for," she said, referring to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), a Pelosi ally who chairs the subcommittee overseeing war spending. "It is obviously part of the debate, as Mr. Obey insists that it be."
In the 1960s, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson oversaw a full-scale war in Vietnam and, simultaneously, an expansive domestic project at home known as the Great Society -- the so-called "Guns and Butter" approach.
The war took the lives of nearly 60,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. It also sapped enough government treasure and Democratic political capital that the Great Society foundered, Johnson dropped his reelection bid and Richard Nixon was elected, finally smashing the New Deal coalition that had dominated American politics for generations.
Even if Obama attempts to repeat history with a troop escalation in Afghanistan, Democrats in Congress, as Pelosi and Obey's comments indicate, might be there to save him from himself by withholding funds.
The lesson from Johnson's example was that Democrats can't have guns and butter at the same time. Pelosi lamented the trillions of dollars wasted in the failed Iraq war and suggested the lesson should be remembered this time around.
"What did we decide, that Iraq was at least $2 trillion? And for what? I mean, God bless our soldiers for their courage and their sacrifice and that of their families. But $2 trillion for what?" said Pelosi. "Think of the opportunity cost when you break it down, when we talk about cancer, for example. We spent in two weeks in Iraq what we spent in a year on cancer research. With all that scientific opportunity that was available to us, we couldn't afford to do more. But we certainly could afford -- or so they told us -- to be in Iraq."
Ultimately, she said, taking cost into consideration should make for a more sober decision-making process.
"We need to know what the mission is, how this is further protecting the American people and is this the best way to do that, especially at a time when there's such serious economic issues here at home," Pelosi said.
"I think we have to look at that war with a green eyeshade on," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday on a conference call with financial reporters and economists who blog. "There is unrest in our caucus about: Can we afford this war?"
Pelosi qualified her remarks by noting that cost is not the top concern. "I think the American people believe that if it's something that's in our national security interest," she said, then the investment is worth it.
But it still has to be paid for, she said. "Everything else has to be paid for. It must be fiscally sound. We have to hold it to the same standard, as well."
Most Americans, however, do not believe that the war is worth waging any longer, according to polls. Under President Bush, wars and occupations were paid for with long-term debt; Obama campaigned under the principle that war should mean shared sacrifice.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) warned Obama recently that he would hold him to that promise.
"There ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan," he said. "If they ask for an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan, I am going to ask them to pay for it."
Pelosi backed him up.
"As you know, the chairman of our appropriations committee, Mr. Obey, as well as Mr. Murtha, have both said the war must be paid for," she said, referring to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), a Pelosi ally who chairs the subcommittee overseeing war spending. "It is obviously part of the debate, as Mr. Obey insists that it be."
In the 1960s, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson oversaw a full-scale war in Vietnam and, simultaneously, an expansive domestic project at home known as the Great Society -- the so-called "Guns and Butter" approach.
The war took the lives of nearly 60,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. It also sapped enough government treasure and Democratic political capital that the Great Society foundered, Johnson dropped his reelection bid and Richard Nixon was elected, finally smashing the New Deal coalition that had dominated American politics for generations.
Even if Obama attempts to repeat history with a troop escalation in Afghanistan, Democrats in Congress, as Pelosi and Obey's comments indicate, might be there to save him from himself by withholding funds.
The lesson from Johnson's example was that Democrats can't have guns and butter at the same time. Pelosi lamented the trillions of dollars wasted in the failed Iraq war and suggested the lesson should be remembered this time around.
"What did we decide, that Iraq was at least $2 trillion? And for what? I mean, God bless our soldiers for their courage and their sacrifice and that of their families. But $2 trillion for what?" said Pelosi. "Think of the opportunity cost when you break it down, when we talk about cancer, for example. We spent in two weeks in Iraq what we spent in a year on cancer research. With all that scientific opportunity that was available to us, we couldn't afford to do more. But we certainly could afford -- or so they told us -- to be in Iraq."
Ultimately, she said, taking cost into consideration should make for a more sober decision-making process.
"We need to know what the mission is, how this is further protecting the American people and is this the best way to do that, especially at a time when there's such serious economic issues here at home," Pelosi said.