The administration had hoped enactment of a domestic cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions would send a strong signal to its negotiating partners, and enable it to strike a global-warming deal that's acceptable to both houses of Congress.
Officials are eager to avoid repeating the experiences of the Clinton administration -- which backed the Kyoto pact but never submitted it for ratification to the Senate after the chamber in 1997 passed a resolution stating it would only sign a deal that included commitments to cut emissions levels from developing countries like China and India.
The White House is in a real bind. On one hand, it can't really come up with a coherent negotiating position without concrete emissions targets. And if negotiators in Copenhagen fail to reach any substantive agreement, Congress will probably be more reluctant to move cap-and-trade legislation next year, right before the mid-term elections. The House in June narrowly passed a bill (HR 2454) that would limit emissions at 17 percent below current levels in 2020, 42 percent in 2030 and 83 percent in 2050.
]]> Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the best-case scenario would be for negotiators to sketch out guidelines for a treaty that can be filled in over the next couple of years. Key points of contention that would need to be addressed include how much aid industrialized nations are willing to extend to developing nations to help meet targets, developing a verification system to ensure carbon emissions actually are being reduced and clarifiying what fast-growing nations like China are expected to do."If you set some basic parameters, outline the division of labor between the developed and the developing world, it could evolve like successive rounds of trade talks. That would bring the greatest chance for eventual success," Levi said.
The administration will get an opportunity to weigh in at a U.N. climate change summit Tuesday in New York. But signs are Team Obama could be upstaged by China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, whose premier, Hu Jintao, is expected to announce policy measures his country is willing to undertake to cut emissions -- including an a "carbon intensity" target that caps emissions produced for each dollar of national income.
"This suite of policies will take China to be the world leader on addressing climate change," Yvo De Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters on Monday. "It will be quite ironic to hear that tomorrow expressed in a country (the United States) that is firmly convinced that China is doing nothing to address climate change."
]]>At a business forum in the Black Sea city of Sochi, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised Obama's decision to cancel plans to deploy interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic "correct and brave," then pressed for U.S. trade concessions -- particularly the repeal of the so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment to a 1974 trade bill (PL 93-618) that links exports to human rights. The measure -- a long-running source of friction in Washington-Moscow relations that's named for its sponsors, former Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash. and Rep. Charles Vanik, D-Ohio, -- was enacted to pressure the Soviet Union to liberalize Jewish emigration.
The Bush missile plan had been viewed as a threat by the Russians. Officials there hope Obama's turnabout is part of a larger thaw in relations between the countries that they can turn to their economic advantage.
]]> Obama administration officials say they are reconfiguring defenses to focus on the threat of medium-range missiles from Iran.Russia, which is working in tandem with Belarus and Kazakhstan to join the World Trade Organization, wants the United States to axe remaining trade barriers and give its go-ahead to a WTO expansion. But many in Congress believe Russia should first join U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear program. And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton figuratively threw some cold water on Putin's linkage of the issues during an appearance at the Brookings Institution on Friday, saying the missile decision "was not about Russia. It was about Iran and the threat that its ballistic missile program poses.
"Because of this position, we believe we will be in a far stronger position to deal with that threat, and to do so with technology that works and a higher degree of confidence that what we pledge to do, we can actually deliver," Clinton said.
]]>All without committing much money.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced her department would award $25 million in grants to states and health care systems to test new patient safety and medical liability measures and review existing state laws that discourage malpractice suits, by channeling claims through screening panels or out-of-court mediation.
At a White House briefing, Sebelius echoed the administration's line, by saying she didn't think malpractice suits were really driving health costs off the rails -- as some conservatives in Congress claim. But she allowed that the threat of litigation was chilling professionals in specialties like obstetrics and neurosurgery, by forcing them to order more diagnostic tests and take other potentially costly precautions.
]]> The comparatively paltry sum the administration committed raised immediate questions about whether it's using tort overhaul as a lever in the broader health debate and trying to entice congressional Republicans to come on board with the implied promise of more funding. Quite the opposite, argued Sebelius, who said the administration was removing medical malpractice from the tumult on Capitol Hill so it could be dealt with in a non-political and analytic manner. She even chided the administration of George W. Bush for not launching similar evaluations through HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality."I don't think it counteracts anything (on Capitol Hill). I do think it captures some of the legislative intent," Sebelius said.
It's hard to imagine this will make GOP members and senators roll over and sign on to the nearest available health overhaul. But the administration's posture is worrying some consumer groups, who contend medical malpractice discussions already are taking up too much bandwidth in health care discussions.
"The only safe and effective way to reduce medical malpractice claims and lawsuits is to reduce injuries and deaths," said Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy. "It is wrong to try to solve the epidemic of medical malpractice and doctors' insurance problems on the backs of patients who are injured through no fault of their own."
]]>The EPA on Wednesday said it would reverse a Bush administration policy and propose new national smog standards by December to ensure that the benchmarks are scientifically sound and protect public health.
The action comes on the heels of Tuesday's unveiling of new mileage and tailpipe emission standards for cars and trucks and amounts to a rejection of 2008 EPA decision to tighten air pollution standards for smog -- also known as ground-level ozone -- to 75 parts per billion from the old standard of 84 ppb.
]]> Critics at the time charged that the Bush administration ignored the advice of EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which recommended the agency lower the primary ozone standard further, to 70 ppb or lower."This is one of the most important protection measures we can take to safeguard our health and our environment," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "Smog in the air we breathe can cause difficulty breathing and aggravate asthma, especially in children. Reconsidering these standards and ensuring acceptable levels of ground-level ozone could cut health care costs and make our cities healthier, safer places to live, work and play."
The notice came in the form of a filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in which the EPA cited concerns that Bush administration policy did not adhere to federal air pollution laws. Eleven states, joined by health and environmental groups, had sued to overturn the Bush standards, citing the advisory panel's tougher recommendation.
Jackson said EPA will conduct a thorough review of the science that guided the 2008 decision, including more than 1,700 scientific studies and any public comments from that rulemaking process. The agency will also review the findings of the advisory panel.
The news was cheered by green groups, who are sensing more energetic advocacy on environmental issues from the White House. Frank O'Donnell, president of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said if the EPA takes an unbiased look at the scientific evidence, it will surely propose tougher smog standards.
]]>But there were several important political statements embedded in the several hundred-page proposal.
The first is that even more sweeping regulations addressing global warming are on the way. Within weeks, the EPA is expected to issue an "endangerment finding" that would trigger a requirement for the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act (PL 101-549) -- even without new legislation. This wouldn't just cover emissions from "mobile sources" like cars and trucks, but from power plants, factories and other large facilities. That puts pressure on the Senate to begin moving a climate change bill and protect its favored industries, or watch from the sidelines while the EPA writes new rules.
]]> The agreement also intensifies pressure on states that have been slow to promote clean energy alternatives. Put succinctly, if Michigan lawmakers are willing to acquiesce and place their largest industry under a regulatory regime conceived in California, holdouts will have a tougher time arguing for business as usual. Sure, it's difficult for automakers, their unions and representatives in Congress to resist this kind of change when the government owns a big ownership stake in two of Detroit's Big Three, but ... well, you get the idea.Finally, the regulations on Tuesday give the Obama administration more credibility heading into December's U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, where the United States and nearly 200 countries will try to agree on terms for a new climate change treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Even if the Senate fails to finish work on climate change legislation, the regulations give the United States more credibility at the bargaining table, by demonstrating it's been aggressive regulating emissions within its borders.
Of course, the biggest sell job might still be persuading U.S. businesses they won't be harmed under a new global accord that goes easy on developing nations like India and China. But we're fairly certain some in Congress will remind the White House of that.
]]>A report issued late last week by the Brookings Institution projects that the national poverty rate will continue to climb because of the recession, peaking at 14.4 percent in 2011 or 2012 — up from 12.5 percent in 2007 — as more people are thrown out of work. That means another 8 million people could be thrown into poverty, in addition to the 37 million people who were poor in 2007.
Don’t look to Brookings for any “light at the end of the tunnel” rhetoric. “This recession will cast a long shadow on those at the bottom of the ladder — a group that was not doing well before the recession arrived and which will be disproportionately affected long after it has ended,” the report stated.
]]> The stimulus bill, of course, was full of measures to strengthen the safety net during the worst of the recession: more money for Medicaid, food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), as well as the Make Work Pay tax credit for people farther up the income ladder. All of those measures were temporary, though, since the stimulus wasn’t supposed to ramp up social spending forever. The Medicaid, food stamps, and TANF spending is supposed to phase out starting in fiscal year 2011, and the tax credit expires at the end of 2010.The result, according to Brookings, is that most of the safety net spending will fade away before the poverty rate has even peaked.
If the report is right, Obama and congressional Democrats may well face pressure to extend some of the measures if it’s clear that the ranks of the poor are continuing to swell over the next few years. In fact, Brookings may have even understated the case. It appears to have been finished before last week’s news that the 2008 poverty rate shot up to 13.2 percent in 2008 — well beyond the report’s projections, and a likely sign of worse things to come.
The reality is that there probably won’t be much willpower in Congress to keep ratcheting up the safety net spending, particularly with all the public anxiety about how much Congress has spent already in responding to the financial crisis. Still, Obama said in today’s speech that “I will never be satisfied while people are out of work and our financial system is weakened.” If the poverty rate continues to rise, it’s a good bet that at least some Democratic lawmakers will remind him of those words.
]]>The president has a health care rally in Minneapolis Saturday, and our colleague Emily Cadei reports state Republicans are ready.
Rep. John Kline plans to offer a "prebuttal" to the president at a 10:30 a.m. press conference. And the Republican Party of Minnesota is spending $25,000 buy local TV ads urging the president to take time developing a common-sense health care reform plan, instead of rushing a partisan plan through the Congress.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama plans to use the rally to reiterate key points from Wednesday night's speech to a joint session of Congress. And there's more to come. The president will hold another health care rally on Sept. 17 at the University of Maryland in suburban College Park, Md. and is likely to discuss the issue at the AFL-CIO convention on Sept. 15 in Pittsburgh, and at a fundraiser for Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., that night in Philadelphia
Local TV stations who've lost money during the recession must be quietly hoping this debate will drag on.
]]>Obama will appear at Federal Hall, on Wall Street, to discuss the need for new rules governing the trading of financial derivatives and new structures that protect consumers by approving mortgage products and imposing new disclosure rules. He'll also likely repeat his pitch to give the Federal Reserve the power to regulate systemic risk, a proposal that's aroused substantial ire from Fed critics in Congress.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs on Friday said Obama was using the occasion to remind Americans how close the economy came to the abyss, and to sell a series of steps "to ensure what happened a year ago won't happen again." He declined to say who'll be in the audience at the site, where George Washington took the oath of office as the first president and where the first Congress, Supreme Court and executive branch offices were located.
]]> Work on a financial overhaul has all but stalled in the Senate, which remains consumed by the health care debate. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., was noncommital about a timetable this week, saying he's more concerned with getting it done right than completing work by an arbitrary deadline.Administration officials say they're confident that lawmakers can vote out of a package this fall. "Too often, we forget the pain ... we don't want to lose sight of what we've been though," said Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
Beyond financial regulations, the administration also has important decisions ahead about provisions in the economic stimulus package (PL 111-5) that are set to expire. These include an $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit, a health insurance subsidy for laid-off workers that applies only to those who lose their jobs before the end of the year, and a provision that makes the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits tax-free in 2009. Officials aren't committing to anything yet, saying they're still studying the effectiveness of the initiatives.
"There are a number of things we're thinking about ... and will need to have serious policy discussions with Congress," Romer said.
]]>So Boehner did what any congressional leader does in that position: He faced the music, clung to his talking points, and never admitted he was embarrassed. Even though he certainly looked embarrassed.
After a lengthy delay caused by some drawn-out House votes, Boehner walked into the press conference and cited his litany of policy objections to President Obama’s health care speech last night. If it had been any other week, the reporters might have asked him some policy questions. But not the day after Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., disrupted Obama’s speech, shouting “You lie!” when Obama claimed the health care bill wouldn’t extend coverage to illegal immigrants.
]]> Boehner tried to answer the first Wilson question as narrowly as possible. “As Mr. Wilson said last night, his behavior was inappropriate. I think it’s why he apologized to the president, and I’m glad the president accepted his apology.”Not good enough. Another reporter pointed out that other Republicans shouted out other things, too. So Boehner tried a kind of backhanded defense. Health care is an emotional issue, he said, as last month’s town hall meetings proved.
“I believe that people ought to be respectful, that we ought to have civil discourse in America. But don’t underestimate the amount of emotion that people are feeling,” Boehner said. Throw in a stimulus bill that is adding to record deficits and a climate change bill that would hurt the economy, Boehner said, and “Americans are frustrated. They’re angry. And most importantly, they’re scared to death that the country that they grew up in is not going to be the country that their kids and grandkids grew up in.”
So another reporter asked: As a Republican leader, was he embarrassed by Wilson’s behavior?
Nice try. “I think that Mr. Wilson summed it up best when he said his behavior was inappropriate.”
And that’s about as much of a scolding as Wilson is going to get.
]]>The panel that oversees another big and controversial government initiative — the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) — says the taxpayers probably won’t get a lot of their auto bailout money back, and no one can say for sure that that’s a failure because the Treasury Department was so unclear about what it was trying to achieve in propping up the nation’s failing automakers.
That’s a bit of a problem, given that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has been spending so much time arguing that the federal government is making an overall profit off of the TARP program.
According to the latest report from the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was set up to monitor the bailout program, about $23 billion in loans probably will have “much lower recoveries” than expected — out of the $81 billion the taxpayers are expected to pay for the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler — and about $5.4 billion in loans to the old Chrysler company probably won’t be recovered at all, out of the $14.3 billion Treasury is spending on that company alone.
]]> It doesn’t sound like a runaway success, but the panel didn’t come right out and say so. And that’s where the importance of clear goals comes in. If Treasury had put out one set of clear and consistent goals for the auto bailout, the panel said, it would have been easier to measure how well or how poorly the bailout is going. But since Treasury has given lip service to three different goals at different times, the panel basically threw up its hands and said it can’t tell whether the record is better or worse than overseers should have expected it to be.The three possible goals, according to the panel, were to prevent a broader threat to the economy because of the companies’ collapse; to advance social policy goals, such as preventing greater job losses or stabilizing retirement benefits; and/or to keep the U.S. auto industry alive at a respectable level.
But while Treasury has talked about all three goals at one time or another, “it is unclear which objective, or combination thereof, Treasury deems most important — or if all three carry equal weight,” the panel concluded. “As such, in the absence of a clearly articulated unifying strategy, it is difficult for outside observers to determine which metrics are the best indicators of Treasury’s performance.”
Of course, it could be that the panel just didn’t want to take a stand and that blaming Treasury for a lack of transparency was a convenient way to avoid the issue. Still, taxpayers generally do like to have clear goals when their money is being spent. And it can’t just be one presidential speech that sets out those goals. The department that’s in charge of the program has to be able to explain those goals too, in a clear and consistent way.
So when President Obama makes his case tonight for a critical but potentially expensive makeover of the health care system, he’ll be under pressure to explain exactly what he wants. But the same will be true for the lawmakers writing the bill and the agencies that would implement the new law, too. The clearer the goals are, the easier it will be for the overseers to measure how successful the overhaul is.
And it wouldn’t hurt if the public knows what to expect, either.
]]>During a 20-minute question and answer period with 32 students on Tuesday before his national back to school address at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., President Obama took a query from a student who identified himself as Sean.
Why, Sean asked from what appeared to be a prepared question, does the United States lack universal health care when 36 other countries have such a system?
]]> Surely, this was the kind of moment administration critics feared when they protested Obama's public school address, charging it could politically indoctrinate impressionable young children.Obama, however, did not quite take the bait, instead putting the onus on Congress. He said Sean's question was the very one he is asking the House and Senate "because we think we can do it."
The president said he would dwell on the subject tomorrow night during his prime-time address to a joint session of Congress. He then launched into an explanation of how health insurance in the United States has its roots in an employer-based system that on occasion leaves some people - the self-employed, small business owners, among others - falling through the cracks.
He said his goal was to enable people who have health insurance through their jobs to keep it, to give those who don't have coverage an opportunity to get it and to save money over time.
No students appeared to have been harmed in the making of the sound bite. But the president got to rehash a favored talking point and deliver a prod to the legislative branch. Not bad for a morning's work.
-- Adriel Bettelheim
]]>The White House until now had adhered to the policies of previous administrations and kept visitor logs secret. That antagonized good government types, who've long suspected that lobbyists and former government officials wield outsize influence helping formulate policies. The matter reached a crescendo during President George W. Bush's first term, when environmentalists and watchdog groups unsuccessfully tried to gain access to the records of an energy task force chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.
"For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis," President Obama said in a statement. "We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process."
The administration said each month it will release online records detailing visits from the previous three to four months. It will withhold a small group of appointments deemed confidential for national security reasons, as well as confidential visits from figures such as possible Supreme Court nominees.
CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan called the decision "an important step in restoring transparency and accountability to our government."
The group had sued after the administrations of George W. Bush and Obama denied Freedom of Information Act requests for a series of records. Among other things, CREW was seeking details of visits to the Obama White House by health care and coal industry executives to determine the degree of their influence on health care and energy legislative proposals.
]]>And no, he’s not happy about it.
In a question-and-answer session after his speech on the stimulus at the Brookings Institution this morning, Biden revealed a bit of irritation with Congress for writing the law in a way that gives the governors a large say in how the money is spent. Biden said he would have preferred to design it more like the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, created by the 1994 crime bill he co-sponsored in the Senate, in which the mayors could apply for the funds directly — making it easier for local officials to pressure the mayors directly to address their biggest needs.
]]> “The fact is, the Congress, in its wisdom, decided that the governors should have a bigger input,” Biden said. The result, Biden complained, is that “just like you should never volunteer to negotiate a marriage difficulty,” he has found himself in the middle of disputes “about whether or not the off ramp that’s needed in a particular part of town should be funded versus 140 miles of highway in rural Missouri that is needed but is arguably, from the mayor’s standpoint, not needed as badly.”Since he’s in charge of monitoring the stimulus, Biden would be the natural person governors and mayors would turn to when they can’t settle their own fights. “I had no authority to tell the governor or the mayor,” Biden said, “but I would get them together on the phone and I’d say, ‘Guys, can’t you work this out? Can’t you work this thing out?’”
That’s probably one more reason for Biden to regret taking on the stimulus as his assignment. Biden likes to tell the story of how he got the job, after telling President Obama over lunch one day that the administration should closely monitor the spending for waste, fraud and abuse. “I said, ‘Boss, I think you should do this.’ He said, ‘Good. Do it,’” Biden said.
It’s a good bet Biden hasn’t mentioned Middle East peace to Obama in a while.
]]>Obama will travel to Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. on Sept. 8 and deliver an address that will be aired on C-Span and the White House web site, whitehouse.gov. The White House says the message is intended to stimulate a discussion about persisting and succeeding in school. In a recent letter to school principals, Education Secretary Arne Duncan provided more details, stating, "The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens."
Sounds pretty innocuous. But the Education Department's decision to distribute lesson plans to accompany the address and essentially require students to watch the speech is sparking an outcry from commentators and officials on the political right, who accuse the president of staging a political rally disguised as a civics lesson.
]]> Particularly out front is Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, who has condemned the administration for using taxpayer money to "indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda.""As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," Greer said in a statement. "The idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."
Greer said the format doesn't promote healthy debate and could prompt dissenting students to be ostracized by their classmates and teachers.
What is prompting such fierce pushback? A pre-kindergarden-grade 6 lesson plan from the Education Department suggests teachers promote discussion in their classrooms about key points, such as citizenship, personal responsibility and civic duty. Other ideas include having students write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president; write about their goals in poems, songs or personal essays, and participate in schoolwide incentive programs or contests for students who achieve their goals.
The grade 7-12 lesson plan can be found here.
]]>Not singing it, but at this rate, that could be next.
On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Alexander, the mild-mannered Senate Republican Conference chairman from Tennessee, warned Democrats that the nation would not sit still if they try to pass their health care bill through the reconciliation process, which would allow them to bypass a filibuster and approve the overhaul without any Republican support. If one party tried to rewrite the health care system on its own, Alexander said, “there would be a minor revolution in this country.”
]]> “I think that would wreck our health care system and wreck the Democratic Party if they did that,” said Alexander. The intensity of emotions at Republicans’ town hall meetings on health care over the recess, he said, has been “like nothing I’ve ever seen.”Of course, it’s not like the Finance Committee Republicans who have been negotiating with Chairman Max Baucus of Montana have made life easy for President Obama and the Democrats either. So Democrats and their supporters will argue that they’ve already tried everything they could to offer concessions to Republicans — even though, as they’ll remind everyone, the Republicans lost two elections in a row.
Still, Alexander was acknowledging a genuine set of obstacles for Democrats if they go the reconciliation route. When any social change on the scale of the health care overhaul happens — especially something as personal to all Americans as health care — and one party is pushing it while the other is telling the country to be scared of it, you can bet it won’t go down easily. And whenever the first thing goes wrong with the overhaul, as it inevitably will, Democrats could pay a heavy price if the nation doesn’t have leaders from both parties saying this was the right thing to do.
“When you’re considering a once-in-a-generation accomplishment of the magnitude of health care, it should be expected, it should even be desired, that you have to get a buy-in from the public,” Ralph Neas, chief executive officer of the National Coalition on Health Care, said recently.
The White House and Senate Democrats may decide to use reconciliation because they have no other choice — because Republicans refused to join them. But if so, the long-term success of the overhaul could depend on whether they have a backup plan for getting that public buy-in — and being able to bank on it when things go wrong.
]]>