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:

This isn’t a political issue, or at least it shouldn’t be. This is about complying with our constitution and making sure our government has the information it needs to make decisions. It’s particularly important in Minnesota this year; any undercounting could easily lead us to lose a seat in Congress. Please do your civic duty and make sure very Minnesotan is counted.

You may be a bit confused because the definition has changed. Under Republican rule, it was known as Democracy.

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.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to any raw data to determine how many jobs the bonding bill will create. What I do have is access to a number of estimates by people who do have the data. Here are a few numbers I received from a source at the legislature.

According to an analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America, the bonding bill would have produced 21,000 to 27,000 jobs. Let’s peg it at 24,500 — right in the middle. That works out to about 24 jobs per $1 million spent.

A couple of other analyses have directly estimated the number of jobs that are created per $1 million spent. MnSCU estimated that the last bonding bill created 20 jobs per $1 million spent on their projects. The U of M, on the other hand, estimated about 5 jobs per $1 million. Finally, state economist Tom Stinson says a good “rule of thumb” is to estimate 10 jobs per $1 million spent.

Pawlenty slashed $330 million from the bonding bill. That will cost us anywhere from 1,650 to 7,920 jobs, depending on which estimates are more accurate. Most likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle, at around 5,000 jobs lost.

[Budget Commissioner Tom] Hanson replied that a $725 million bonding package is the governor’s “current position,” adding, “To come to an agreement we have to agree on size and scope. I’m not foolish enough to think that in the end it’s going to be $725 million.

So how in the world did it come to pass that Pawlenty cut the bonding bill down to $686 million? Was he simply lying when he appeared to be negotiating? Did something change his mind? Or, worst of all, did he do it because he’s angry with the DFL, and he decided to put our state citizens in the middle?

But let’s not lay all of the blame on Pawlenty. As usual, the DFL leadership didn’t appear to make an effort to keep our Governor accountable. Pawlenty had certain priorities he wanted funded, and the DFL could have used those priorities to bargain with. I’m sure they did make an effort to do so, but they gave up on it quickly.

When I saw the DFL’s second attempt at a bonding bill, I was flabbergasted. The total cost of the bill did not help to move DFLers toward a compromise with the Governor. However, the new bill did include many of the projects Pawlenty wanted. DFLers were practically begging Pawlenty for a slew of line-item vetoes, and he was more than happy to comply.

All in all, it seems that none of our state leaders understand how negotiation works. Pawlenty can’t be taken at his word when negotiating, and the DFL doesn’t even appear aware of how to negotiate in the first place.

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.