You often hear conservatives say that if alternative energy sources were feasible, they’d be cheaper. And many conservatives favor an approach of subsidizing every energy source through tax breaks, as opposed to making a conscious choice to limit or at least boost the price of the fossil fuels that contribute so much to climate change while perpetuating our dependence on unstable global oil markets.
That’s why it’s important to understand that producers of fossil fuels current benefit from a large variety of federal subsidies that are much more extensive than anything offered on behalf of clean and/or renewable energy sources. Via Grist’s David Roberts, there’s a new study by the Environmental Law Institute and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that puts a price tag on U.S. subsidies for various energy sources during the years 2002-2008.
It’s a pretty bad picture. Over this period, fossil fuels received $79 billion in federal subsidies, while renewable fuels received $29 billion. And among the renewables, over half the subsidies actually went to just one politically connected source, corn ethanol, which is controversial because of its impact on agriculture, and because its production typically requires extensive use of fossil fuels.
As Roberts notes, the figures for fossil fuels subsidies are conservative:

It did not include any number of things that could be considered indirect or implicit subsidies. It didn’t include military spending to defend oil in the Middle East, spending on the electricity grid, or transportation spending. Those things don’t go exclusively to fossil fuels, but if there was a way of including the share that goes to fossil fuels, the fossil subsidy number would go way, way up. Infrastructure spending has more or less exclusively supported fossil fuels for decades now.

Just yesterday, President Obama told the United Nations that subsidies for fossil fuels around the world need to come to an end. That’s certainly a goal that needs to be embraced by the United States.

Mike Lux is a very pragmatic and unity-minded member of the self-conscious progressive wing of the Democratic Party. So it certainly got my attention when he published a post at OpenLeft today threatening that adoption by Senate Democrats of Sen. Olympia Snowe’s “public option trigger” would create a “Democratic Civil War.”
Mike’s primary substantive argument is that Snowe’s “trigger” involves a Catch-22 mechanism whereby the “affordability” of private health insurance that would avoid a public option in any given state is judged according to prices that include federal subsidies defined as making coverage “affordable.” Thus, he reasons, there will be no public option anywhere private insurance is offered. I doubt that’s right, but not having seen any actual legislative language for the Snowe “trigger,” I can’t say with certainty it’s wrong, either. This may be a case where perception matters as much as reality, particularly if progressives suspect they are being sold a pig in a poke.
The general “insider” view on the end-game for health care reform has been that in the end, public option advocates would unhappily accept a “trigger” as far preferable to the co-op structure embedded in the Baucus bill. Indeed, the main appeal of the “trigger” idea, as Ezra Klein has explained, is that it accomodates the wildly different empirical assumptions that supporters and opponents of a public option hold about what would happen to the price and availability of private health insurance in a competitive system. If progressives are right that effective competition would not occur–one of the main arguments for a public option in the first place–then a public option would arise, at least in theory.
Now Mike is saying that’s all a sham, and you’d have to expect that many public option opponents would say the same thing from the opposite perspective, arguing that the “trigger” will always be pulled. As Ezra Klein also noted in his piece on the “trigger,” there’s not much of a constituency for compromise on this issue. And that’s why offers of a legislative “fix” for the flaw that Mike is focusing on won’t be very warmly welcomed.
But here’s the realiity: As a practical matter, if Senate Democratic leaders reject both co-ops and a “triggered” public option, then they probably have to move health care reform legislation via the budget reconciliation route. It’s not just a matter of giving up the pursuit of Olympia Snowe (and perhaps the one or two Republicans she might be able to bring with her); enough “centrist” Democrats have heartburn over a “robust” public option, over a purely partisan bill, or over what will eventually emerge from a conference committee, to all but guarantee that Democrats will fall short of the 60 votes necessary to kill a filibuster, even now that Massachussets is supplying Democrats with a 60th senator.
As I noted earlier this week, there are legitimate concerns about how the use of reconciliation would play out. Maybe that really is the way to go, and maybe it will produce a 50-plus-one vote margin for a bill that not only has a strong public option, but that’s pretty close to what the House is likely to pass, which simplifies this whole process considerably.
But in cases like this, a Plan B would be advisable, and public option supporters might want to give some serious thought as to whether there is a version of the “trigger”–in which “affordability” is better defined, and a larger scale for competion is provided than the state-by-state approach Snowe is promoting–that might be acceptable if push comes to shove. This really isn’t a great time for a “Democratic civil war.”

So what’s going on with the House Republican leadership, the hard-core conservative base probably wants to know. Are they going soft and moderate?
First we learn that House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of VA participated in a very civil discussion of health care policy with Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, sponsored by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. According to Dana Milbank’s account of the event in the Washington Post today, it was a very tepid affair:

No talk of death panels. No complaints about illegal immigrants. Nothing about killing Grandma, no mention of socialism, nobody calling anybody a Nazi. And at no point during the 90-minute forum on health care did Cantor, or anybody else, call President Obama a liar.
The Richmond area lawmaker wouldn’t have had any trouble riling up the people in the audience, many of whom wore “Tea Party” or “9-12 Project” T-shirts. But “what use is that?” he said after the session. In fact, he came away with some advice for his colleagues: “Stop the revival stuff and let’s talk.”

I was wondering what Glenn Beck would say about that when I got an email from Richard Viguerie, the legendary hard-right organizer and scourge of all things moderate, with the subject line: “Are you kidding? Boehner says Obama Not a Socialist!” Seems that on Meet the Press Sunday, David Gregory specifically asked if the House Republican Leader thought the President was a socialist, and he finally allowed as how he didn’t think so. Boehner has in the past called Obama’s agenda “a socialist experiment,” but never mind.
As you can imagine, Viguerie’s pretty upset at this backsliding, so he’s put out a poll of his internet readership to find out whether they think Obama is a socialist, or maybe a Marxist, a traditional liberal, or even a “centrist.” He promises to pass the results on to Boehner and others when they are in. I figure it will be “Marxist” in a landslide.
Ah, can’t trust these weasely Washington Republicans. It’s probably time for another Tea Party to stiffen their spines.

This item is cross-posted from the Progressive Policy Institute site.
The long-running campaign to make inclusion of a “public option” a progressive litmus test for Democrats on health care reform has entered a new and potentially dangerous phase: growing demands that congressional Democrats use the budget “reconciliation” procedure to avoid a Senate filibuster and lower the effective threshold for enactment of a bill to 50 votes.
As Brian Buetler explains at TalkingPointsMemo, two major new grassroots initiatives–one sponsored by Democracy for America (and headed up by Howard Dean) and another by a new group called CREDO Action–are asserting that reconciliation can easily be used for health reform. The clear implication is that any failure to go this route is proof of Democratic irresolution if not betrayal.
The temptation to insist on the reconciliation route is certainly understandable. Aside from making enactment of a bill by the Senate much easier, reconciliation, if successfully pursued, might make Republicans irrelevant to the process, while vastly reducing the influence of those Democrats who are obdurately opposed to the public option. It could also narrow the gap between House and Senate bills, which currently makes approval in either House of the ultimate conference committee report a difficult challenge.
But unfortunately, use of reconciliation isn’t the no-brainer it’s sometimes made out to be.
There are two major risks to the use of reconciliation which have nothing to do with fear of Republican shrieks about “cramming through a bill” or with fading hopes of bipartisanship.
The first involves the arcane budget provision called “the Byrd Rule,” which creates a point of order in the Senate against material in reconciliation bills that is not germane to budgeting. If the Senate parliamentarian (to whom the chair invariably defers on such matters) rules in favor of such a point of order–and Republicans will raise them constantly–it requires 60 votes to override such a ruling, which eliminates the entire advantage of taking this route to begin with. Nobody seems entirely confident that, say, creation of health care exchanges would be judged as germane.
The second problem is that it’s almost impossible to enact permanent changes in law via reconciliation; provisions can only operate within limited-time “windows.” This problem is best illustrated by the consequences of the GOP decision to enact the big Bush administration tax cuts via reconciliation. The “limited window” requirements of the Budget Act explains why there is still a federal estate tax, even though Congress voted in 2001 to phase it out; and why the remainder of the Bush tax cuts haven’t been made permanent. Creating an elaborate new system for health care on a temporary basis could be more than a little hazardous.
There’s a deeper problem, too, which is reflected in the evolution of the “Byrd Rule,” named after the famously imperious appropriator, the senior senator from West Virginia: non-Budget Committee senators in both parties naturally resist the routinization of reconciliation as a way to bypass the authorizing and appropriating committees. This isn’t a matter of party or ideology, but of institutional prerogatives that are zealously defended even by senators who might favor the kind of health reform legislation that reconciliation would be designed to enact.
It’s entirely possible that the potential payoff of using reconciliation is worth all the risks, particularly if hard-core Republican opposition to health reform makes it the only viable option, and/or if Democratic opponents of a public option refuse to vote for cloture to allow an up-or-down vote. But the key point right now is this: the decision isn’t easy, and the White House and congressional leaders may decide against reconciliation for reasons that should not expose them to angry charges of timidity or subservience to the health care industry.
UPDATE: The indispensible Jonathan Cohn has a post up at The New Republic on reconciliation and health care that makes a similar warning about its perils.

If you are confused about the state of public opinion on health care reform, check out an exhaustive post at pollster.com by the respected nonpartisan observer Charles Franklin. Looking at every poll from virtually every available perspective, here’s what he concludes about recent trends:

[T[he big picture is that opposition ramped up significantly through June or July but has recently slowed or stopped. Support fell less precipitously but has been working back up for a month (despite or perhaps because of the circus coverage in August.) We could pick a chart to fight over the details, but we shouldn’t. It is the big picture of public opinion that is important here. Within a couple of points, opinion is evenly divided. The White House has gained a bit of momentum, but will be challenged to lower the opposition numbers, not just raise the support numbers.

All the data that Franklin analyzes was gathered before the President latest media blitz. It will take a while to assess its effectiveness, particularly since it is ongoing. But it does not look like the administration or congressional Democrats are bucking an adverse trend any longer. And it also appears the townhall meetings and the associated conservative hysteria may not have changed much of anything, and might have even backfired a bit.

It’s been a big week for anti-anti-racism. Virtually the entire conservative world has waxed indignant about Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that racism is responsible for the unusual virulence of anti-Obama sentiment.
Listening to it all, you’d think the so-called “race card” was a much bigger problem in American society than racism itself, and that does seem to be what a lot of conservatives think. But it’s getting to the point where the argument seems to be that if anti-Obama protesters have any non-racial motives for their behavior, then mentioning race as any sort of factor (hard to avoid given the revival of screaming about “welfare” and the preoccupation with the marginal organzing group ACORN) is a terrible insult.
Witness David Brooks’ unintentionally hilarious column in the New York Times today. David jogged through last Saturday’s Tea Party demonstration on The Mall, and can assure us all that there were no racists there:

[A]s I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands. They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

Now David is a Yankee, so perhaps he can be forgiven for believing that mingling with black folks, listening to their music, and allowing them to prepare one’s food are things no racist could possibly do. If that’s the case, of course, there’s never been any racism in the Deep South, and neo-Confederate sentiments really are and were just about abstractions like “states’ rights.”
Unfortunately, the Brooks column never much rises above this sort of superficial argument that if there’s any evidence of non-racism among Obama opponents, then even mentioning racism is an outrage.
His main contention is that the Tea Party movement reflects an authentic all-American populist tradition dating back to Jefferson that is “ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.” So it’s “not race,” says Brooks. “It’s another type of conflict, equally deep and old,” and it’s mainly about Obama’s “elitism” and a “producerist” revolt against redistributionist policies. Nothing to see here, folks, it’s just good old-fashioned American populism.
You’d think maybe his own reference to Father Coughlin as an example of right-wing populism would alert Brooks to the folly of his argument. Was Coughlin solely motivated by anti-semitism? No, almost certainly not. Does that mean the anti-semitism he stimulated wasn’t real and dangerous, leading eventually to his suppression by his own bishop? Absolutely not.
Lord have mercy, David, think about it: the Ku Klux Klan wasn’t just “about race;” it was about hostility to immigrants and to some extent to capitalism; early twentieth-century Kluxers, in alliance with William Jennings Bryan, thought of themselves as “progressives.” That was rather cold comfort to the people they tormented and threatened.
No, I am not comparing the Tea Party folks to Klansman; I am simply noting that every racially tinged political movement in American history has, of course, had other, non-racial motivations, so simply citing such motivations doesn’t address the possibility of racial motivations.
It makes you wonder: what if Jimmy Carter had simply said that Obama’s angry opponents were “ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top.” I suspect the overall conservative reaction would have been just about as wounded and self-pitying, but I doubt David Brooks would have agreed with him.
Indeed, this column concludes with the signature Brooks assertion of the equivalency of right-wing craziness and the reaction to it:

What we’re seeing is the latest iteration of that populist tendency and the militant progressive reaction to it. We now have a populist news media that exaggerates the importance of the Van Jones and Acorn stories to prove the elites are decadent and un-American, and we have a progressive news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout and the opposition to the Obama schools speech to show that small-town folks are dumb wackos.

So if you object to Glenn Becks’s ravings, you’re as guilty as he is of extremism, and moreover, you think small-town folks are dumb wackos.
That charge is at least as offensive as any over-attribution of racial motives to Obama-haters.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Suzy Khimm’s post at The Treatment about Howard Dean’s latest remarks on health care reform strategy shows the perils of the obsession with the public option on both sides of the barricades. After a fiery demand that progressives refuse to relent on the public option, the good Doctor allowed as how if we can’t get that, he’d be fine with legislation that just regulated health insurance abuses.
Ironically enough, Dean seems to be embracing the same fallback position as his old adversary Joe Lieberman, who’s said regulate-only legislation is all he’d be willing to support if a public option is included in a comprehensive reform bill. The problem, of course, is that absent an individual mandate to bring healthier people into the risk pool, or significant subsidies to lure them in, imposing a national system of community rating or guaranteed access to insurance on behalf of less robust Americans will likely boost private insurance premiums for everybody–not exactly an ideal outcome.
Now it’s likely that Dean is really just engaged in a tactical effort to keep progressives fired up for the public option in order to keep pressure on Senate Democrats and the White House to insist on some competitive mechanism–perhaps a “triggered” public option, perhaps strong national or regional co-ops–that’s significantly stronger than the weak state co-ops in the Baucus bill. And perhaps the reconciliation route means a “robust” public option can still be passed by the Senate. But at some point, when you keep urging people to say “my way or the highway,” you have to look down that highway to see where it leads. And if the end-point is going to be a regulate-only bill, both Dean and Lieberman need to acknowledge that may actually be no better than the status quo, and could possibly be even worse.

The announcement today that the administration is scrapping a Bush administration program to create a ground-based missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland is eliciting predictable howls from neoconservatives.
You can understand why. A big missile defense system has been a hobby horse for conservatives going all the way back to the Nixon administration, despite constant signs that it would cost far too much, might not work, and would be exceptionally destabilizing if it became a true centerpiece of our national security strategy. But the particular system in question has become an even bigger obsession for conservatives who favor military confrontation with both Russia and Iran.
Here’s National Security Network’s assessment:

[N]ot only do the cancelled missile defense systems have significant technological shortfalls, but they would also fail to protect against Iranian missiles because of both their location and technological advances in Iranian missile technology. Furthermore, from a geopolitical perspective, the European missile defense was a disaster. It worsened relations with Russia without even providing a credible defense against their nuclear arsenal, further undercutting nonproliferation efforts. Because there is no strategic benefit to maintaining the program – either militarily or diplomatically – the Obama administration has wisely has decided to eliminate this program and to develop a more adaptable missile defense system that better protects Europe.

Indeed, much of the negative reaction from the Right isn’t about the actual national security implications of this as opposed to alternative (probably sea-based) missile defense systems, but just psycho-babble about the alleged pleasure the step would give to Russia and/or Iran.
Funny, isn’t it? Neocons who are outraged by any consideration of diplomatic concerns in the development of national security policy nonetheless think we should perpetually let nations like Russia control our actions. If Putin doesn’t like something, we absolutely have to do it, even if it makes no real sense.

If you’re puzzled about why everybody thinks Max Baucus’ new health care blueprint is a big step forward in the debate even though pretty much nobody likes it, it’s important to understand the dialectical nature of the process. For health care reform to happen in the Senate, it needs to get out of the Finance Committee, which even on the Democratic side, is not a terribly progressive group. It also represents the last chance to lure a couple of Republicans across the line, and although none have stepped up yet, the relatively positive reaction of health industry groups (in itself not the most wonderful thing) could make it a lot easier for that to ultimately occur.
Once the Baucus bill is out of committee, the Senate Democratic leadership will design a floor package composed of elements of the Finance and (more progressive) HELP Committee bills. That’s also the point at which Senate Democrats and the White House will make the fateful decision of whether to go for broke on a cloture vote (which requires 60 Senators), or move towards use of reconciliation, at least for the more controversial elements. And all along, Democrats will be acutely aware of the need for a health reform design that can produce a conference committee report able to survive close votes in both House and Senate. And that means, for example, that the Baucus bill’s exceptionally weak state-by-state co-op system will have to be eventually revised or the whole effort could go down thanks to opposition from House Democrats.
So Baucus’ bill represents just one piece of the puzzle. Ezra Kleiin has an excellent summary today of five steps that could make Baucus’ proposal significantly more acceptable to progressives; none really does much violence to the basic scheme.
There’s one wrinkle to the Baucus plan, however, that probably will have “legs”: its back-door attack on the tax deductibility of high-end employer sponsored plans via an “excise tax.” Modifying the deduction for employer-sponsored plans is one of those things that policy wonks from all sides of the ideological spectrum tend to favor, but it’s quite unpopular. Baucus’ approach might be doable because it’s indirect, and is phased in very slowly through a threshold that will be adjusted by a consumer price index, not a health care price index (which means more and more high-end plans will be exposed to it over time). And this last feature, most significantly, means that the overall Baucus plan is not only deficit-neutral, but actually begins reducing the federal budget deficit in the “out-years.” This makes it pretty attractive to the many people who worry that we simply can’t afford health care reform.
At present the main visible opposition to the “excise tax” idea is coming from the labor movement, which has many members who have negotiated very good health plans. But if only because the threshold for future exposure to the excise tax could be changed down the road, union leaders probably won’t make this a litmus test for final support.
In any event, the significance of the Baucus plan can’t really be captured by up-or-down (mostly down) assessments of its content. There are a lot of moving parts on health care reform, and this is just one of them, albeit the final basic piece to fall into place.