Grassley, Moynihan, Health Care and the Missed Opportunity
If you care about health care, you have to care about the Senate Finance Committee. It's the choke point for any health care legislation. Make it work there in a bipartisan way and you'll get health care. Fail there and kiss it goodbye--again.
One of the tragedies of the Clinton-era effort to reform health care is that Pat Moynihan, then the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over health care, was eager to promote some kind of health care deal with Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader at the time, who had expressed interest in finding a deal. That's why it is so encouraging at the moment that Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, is working on a health care proposal with Max Baucus, the committee's chairman.
If they can come up with something health care has a much better chance of passage. If they can't, it's hard to imagine health care passing. Such is the importanxw of the Senate Finance Committee.
So I was surprised to see last week, after the health care summit with all its bonhomie and the president's encouaging words for the Baucus-Grassley effort, this item on March 5 about the administration canceling an effort at collecting back taxes. The effort used private companies to collect back taxes and was fought heavily by the union representing Treasury workers. TIm Geithner called Grassley on Friday evening to announce that he was putting the kibosh on the program which happened to cost 60 jobs in Iowa. A source close to Grassley says he's still "very unhappy" about the cancellation although, thank goodness, Geithner, understaffed and overwhelmed, managed to make the call. Grassley would surely had been more angry if he'd read it in the papers.
Leaving aside the merits of the debt collection program, one would think that with so much at stake on health care, the administration would be going out of its way to court and soothe Grassley. Granted, Grassley is not the vindictive sort who would hold up health care because of 60 jobs in Waterloo, but a move like this can't help relations. (Some senators are more mercurial. In 1993, the Clinton administration punished Sen. Richard Shelby, then a Democrat, for not supporting it on a number of issues by moving some NASA jobs from Huntsville, AL to Houston. It was one of the factors in Shelby converting to the GOP in 1994.)
Let's hope the administration is working a charm offensive on Grassley in other ways. Grassley and Baucus are working on their bill now and hope to have some kind of mark up by June although that's not realistic, one staff member told me. So let's see where it goes from here.
For those who want to follow Grassley, I highly recommend his Twitter account. Note the entry complete with original misspellings and abbreviations: "Geithner call to tel me he's cancling 60 jobs in Wloo. No renewal of contract to collect bk taxes. Vry disapted"
Let's hope he doesn't stay dissapointed
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Fuck Grassley and the horse he road in on (which is probably smarter than he is). If Mr. "Fiscally Responsible" wasn't such a stinking hypocrite, he'd be in favor of killing these Bush-era privatization boondoggles.
And health care reform should be rammed through as part of the budget reconciliation process. Find 51 votes without either Grassley or the equally worthless Baucus and you'll end up with a better plan.
March 9, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look, I don't want to encourage people to NOT pay their taxes, but maybe trying to collect from a lot of very hard up people in a depressed economy is not the best use of our resources right now. I'd like to believe that a man of integrity won't kill health care reform because of this. Perhaps there is something else not too earmark-piggy that will come Iowa's way.
March 9, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Given the Davis Bacon Act the contractor "debt collection" services probably cost more than having federal employees fulfill the function.
Let's be fair, Steve LaBonne. While I share you disdain for the "Bush-era privatization boondoggles", the serious privatization boondoggling began in earnest during the Carter administration and has continued under each president since. Clinton-era deregulation of the financial services industry played a very prominent role in enabling the investment banks and hedge funds to run the general economy into the ground.
March 9, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, I absolutely agree. All the deregulation crap really started with Carter (who in his time and context was much more conservative than most people now realize) and simply accelerated (to be fair, greatly) under Reagan. And I got a lot of Clintonbots mad during the primaries by expostulating on Big Dog's major role in the financial clusterfuck. Which is why it was so disheartening that Obama was so quickly captured by Summers and his gang.
March 9, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Last week, Time magazine had a lineup featuring the perpetrators of the current economic crisis. They put Clinton (at *16 if I remember correctly) one or two before GWB.
March 9, 2009 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a quote from Grassley at the health care policy summit, so you can decide for yourselves whether he should be courted by the administration:
en. Grassley, who thanked the President and then laid down the gauntlet on the public insurance option: "So the only thing that I would throw out for your consideration -- and please don't respond to this now, because I'm asking you just to think about it -- there's a lot of us that feel that the public option that the government is an unfair competitor and that we're going to get an awful lot of crowd out." (quoted in Roger Hickey's article on Huffpo)
This is the crux of the matter. As Hickey and others point out, there is de facto lack of competition in most states, which means insurers can set prices wherever they like. But more fundamentally (preaching to the choir, I know), the whole PREMISE that health care delivery should be governed by the profit motive is not only unethical but now proven to be fiscally irresponsible.
Grassley admits that it is not "big government" that he fears but rather an incursion on the license to print money, to siphon money from patients to stock holders and insurance execs rather than paying health care providers (especially those providing basic health care services).
There is no "principled" opposition to the single payer system (which study after study shows to be more efficient and cost effective) by so-called conservatives. This is just more protectionism for big business. Someone needs to call them--and LOUDLY--on their greed. Placate Grassley? Bury him as the lackey to big insurance that he is.
March 9, 2009 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is going to find that leaving health care to Baucus and Grassley is going to be as big a disaster as leaving banking policy to Summers and Geithner is turning out to be. Obama can and must do better than this.
March 9, 2009 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, Roger Hickey's essay is here on TPM Cafe. I realize that my response and Hickey's article are not exactly on the point of this article, but it is important to note that Grassley is in favor of throttling competition to the insurance companies.
March 9, 2009 10:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
If we had any reporters in this country who had half a brain and weren't just right-wing shills, they'd be asking idiots like Grassley exactly why, if private health insurance is so fucking awesome, they're so worried that it wouldn't be able to compete. I thought conservatives were all for competition? Hypocrites and crooks.
March 9, 2009 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with Steve on this, and think Coop is spouting Standard MSM Bipartisan Meme.
We don't need a watered down Health Care Plan. We need a good one. If Grassley wants to come along, let him. But having him and Baucus driving this boat is as insane as Moynihan and Dole driving it in the 90s.
Sadly, we are going to get a watered down plan that blows the massive opportunity now at hand. Bold Moves is as much of a bullshit meme out of the Administration at this point as Bipartisan is out of the MSM.
John
March 9, 2009 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tax Collection Outsourcing has negative return
Matt has a valid point and as a former Hill staffer I understand it, but the Secretary's action was amply justified.
The real problem with the program is that it has a negative return. The cost of hiring the debt collectors is more than what they have been bringing in. It is a major rip off of the Teasury. Governmental employees have had a significant postive returns for years. Bush wanted to do two things: reduce the number of Federal employees; and, bust the NTEU which has vigorously represented these employees for years and can be a pain in the backside. The other problem is the insecurity of tax data by allowing very low paid (and not very carefully screened) private employees access to the IRS data bases. It is much easier to insure that Federal hirees are screened and monitored--and to take punitive action if they reveal IRS data. They go to jail rather quickly--and with the support of NTEU.
Sen. Grassley got to the Senate by attacking waste, fraud and abuse in the Pantagon--he went to Hechingers (now defunct) and bought and equipped a red tool box for about $30.00 that the Pentagon purchased via "bids" for somewhere around $800.00. He ran around Iowa with that for years and ended up in the Senate. He makes a very big deal about being against waste, fraud and abuse. The program he is defending makes him look for than a little hypocritical.
March 9, 2009 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink