The ad isn’t very good in my opinion, but that’s not really the point. this is something big that I think Democrats can really start to push. Branding the Republicans the “party of no” has been relatively successful — well, this gives the Dems license to ratchet up that criticism by an order of magnitude.

The message is simple: The GOP isn’t just the party of no. They don’t even care enough to think about their constituents’ needs. They said “no” back in early 2009, and they haven’t given any policy so much as a passing thought since then.

Seems like a good reason to support reform. What’s the GOP’s argument against it now? Chairman Michael Steele claims the CBO is lying.

1. It didn’t just arise spontaneously as the result of policy differences; it was a calculated political strategy by minority leader Mitch McConnell.
2. McConnell decided on the strategy before Obama was ever sworn in.

I find that really outrageous. The die was cast by McConnell before he ever knew what sort of proposals Obama and the Democrats would be making. It never mattered; he and the Republicans would have voted against any proposal en masse. It doesn’t even matter if the Democrats propose policies the Republicans support: They’ll vote against them just to deny the Democrats a legislative victory.

I really don’t know what to say here. Why do the Republicans even bother showing up to the Capitol? If they don’t even care what’s in any of the bills, they may as well just stay home.

Let’s compare that with the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of health care costs under health reform. The CBO estimated health care costs in 2016, so we’ll use the RWJF study’s estimates for 2015, instead of 2020. The RWJF study estimated that without reform, premiums could increase by 34 percent by 2015. The CBO estimated that with reform, they would increase by 10 to 13 percent, and that’s before subsidies that would be extended to millions of recipients.

Opponents of health reform are arguing that the system doesn’t need fixing. Whatever insurance plan they’re on, I want it, because the reality is that health care costs are out of control and nobody is doing anything about it. After more than a year of debate, and after nearly a century of attempts by various presidents, it’s time to finally pass health reform.

It used to be that the filibuster was reserved for matters of great principle. Today, it has become a way to run out the clock.

I’ll take it a step further than Franken. The filibuster used to be reserved for situations when Senators were strongly in disagreement with a proposed policy. Now, it’s used to stop Congress from enacting policy at all. The endless filibusters are a Republican effort to paralyze our government, so they can then claim that Obama has been ineffective.

Watch Franken’s speech below:

At that point, they’re not opposing health-care reform and instead opposing small, popular changes that make the bill better. They’re literally obstructing good government that fits with their recent rhetoric.

For instance, Alexander himself has railed against a deal in the Senate health bill made to gain Sen. Ben Nelson’s support, which he likes to refer to as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” Democrats will remove that kickback through reconciliation, but Alexander and his fellow Republicans will oppose reconciliation anyway. When asked to explain, Alexander’s answer was really quite shocking:

…basically, the Senate Republicans are not going to bail the House Democrats out by fixing a bill we all voted against.

Let me see if I understand that. Republicans voted against the bill, ostensibly because they opposed a number of policies in the bill. Now Democrats want to make fixes — even Republicans acknowledge that they are fixes — but Republicans don’t want to let them because they don’t want the bill improved.

I thought policymakers were supposed to fight for policies they believed in. Now, we have the exact opposite — a party that is fighting against what they believe is good policy, because they hope keeping certain provisions in the bill will improve their prospects in the next election. This is what happens when you’re no longer interested in legislating, but in scoring points.

But Obama established the commission anyway, because it looks highly unlikely that Congress will be able to put aside its bickering enough to do the work we will desperately need once the economy is righted. Here’s how The Hill describes the work of the commission:

[The commission will] produce a package of proposals aimed at bringing the deficit down to a sustainable level by 2015.

The panel may consider tax increases, spending cuts and entitlement reforms. As Obama has said, “everything is on the table.”

Except now, a whole lot of things aren’t on the table. Republicans have almost exclusively appointed hard-line, reactionary conservatives to serve on the budget panel, suggesting that they are only willing to consider slashing services and not raising revenues. Sounds like the same old story: Democrats want to put everything on the table, with the full understanding that they will have to make major concessions, while Republicans refuse to move an inch.

The appointments include Tom Coburn, a fringe right-wing Senator also known as “Doctor No,” and Paul Ryan, whose Republican “shadow budget” would eventually end Medicare, privatize Social Security, and use those changes to give billions of dollars to the wealthiest without balancing our budget. At least five of the six Republican appointments could be called extreme right-wingers. Judd Gregg could possibly be considered a moderate, although in the past year he has not been acting like one.

The Democrats’ appointments, on the other hand, include Senators Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, who are both quite moderate. Only one of the Senate’s appointments — Dick Durbin — is a strong liberal vote. The House has not yet made its appointments.

“We’ll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week,” Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Gibbs added that those on next week’s Sunday talk shows “will be talking about healthcare not as a presidential proposal but I think as the law of the land.”

I’m sure that yet another arbitrary deadline will really help Nancy Pelosi pick up the votes she needs.

I’m certainly willing to admit that the Republicans’ ideas would eliminate our deficit, eventually. There are only two problems:

1. I don’t really think we can wait 50 to 60 years to balance the budget.
2. Even if it does balance the budget, is it really worth it if we have to destroy Social Security and Medicare

Well, it turns out the shadow budget won’t reduce the deficit — not even over 50 years. Here’s the thing. When he asked the Congressional Budget Office to score his proposal, Ryan made what could charitably be called a major assumption: He asked the CBO to assume that revenue under the plan would stay exactly the same as it is now. But an analysis by the non-partisan tax policy center shows that’s not even close to reality:

Federal revenues under the Roadmap would decline substantially as a percentage of GDP. Assuming taxpayers choose their preferred tax system, revenue would average 16.1 percent of GDP between fiscal years 2011 and 2015, rising to 16.6 percent by 2020, compared with 20.2 percent under CBO’s January 2010 baseline.

A plan that would have taken 50 years to balance the budget assuming revenues were 20 percent of GDP will lead to major deficits with revenues at only 16 percent of GDP. And in exchange for large deficits, Ryan’s plan will privatize social security and slowly eliminate Medicare.

So if it’s not going to solve our budget problem, why the dramatic overhaul of our budget? Well, for the same reason Republicans always propose things like this: To give as much money as possible to the rich.

After-tax income would rise by 1.5 percent for households in the bottom quintile (the 20 percent with the lowest incomes) but change little for the next two quintiles and go up just 0.6 percent for the fourth quintile. In sharp contrast, the top quintile would see their after-tax income jump 11 percent. Within that group, the top 1 percent would gain an average of 26 percent and the top 0.1 percent a whopping 36 percent. The share of total taxes paid by the bottom 80 percent would rise from 35 percent to 42 percent, while the share paid by the top 1 percent would fall by nearly half from 25 percent to 13.5 percent. [Tax Policy Center]

So in reality, it turns out that Ryan’s plan is simply a vehicle for ending Medicare and depositing that money directly in the bank accounts of the richest 1 percent. I don’t know about you, but I’m not on board.

[via Talking Points Memo]

Reconciliation was intended to be a narrow procedure to bring revenues and spending into conformity with the levels set in the annual budget resolution. But it quickly became much more. The 22 reconciliation bills so far passed by Congress (three of which were vetoed by President Bill Clinton) have included all manner of budgetary and policy measures: deficit reductions and increases; social policy bills like welfare reform; major changes in Medicare and Medicaid; large tax cuts; and small adjustments in existing law. Neither party has been shy about using this process to avoid dilatory tactics in the Senate; Republicans have in fact been more willing to do so than Democrats.

See the whole thing here.

By the way, a quick note for those of you who would love to stop hearing about reconciliation: So would I, but the fact is, this is the most important subject in national news right now. Let’s hope the Democrats will get this thing done so I can stop writing about it.