While not perfect, like Medicare and Social Security before it, it will be improved and people will learn to rely on it; they will elect politicians who will fight to protect it. That was the genius of FDR and LBJ.

If presented with this deal, we could see where both parties’ real priorities lay.

Update: I would probably add votes on the DREAM Act and a 1-2 year payroll tax holiday.

To those who defend this unprecedented grab of power, I have a few questions:  What if it turns out that we are wrong?  What if KSM did not mastermind the attacks on NY and Washington in 2001?  What if the man in Gitmo is not KSM?  Would we stand for indefinite detention of American citizens whether captured here or abroad?  Our history and constitution teach us that the executive branch has no right to indefinitely hold people.  In fact, the only individual right specifically enumerated into the original constitution, before the Bill of Rights, was the right to habeas corpus–the right to force the executive branch to justify its detention of an individual.

At its historical core, the writ of habeas corpus has served as a means of reviewing the legality of executive detention, and it is in that context that its protections have been strongest.

See Ins v. St. Cyr. Furthermore, the bill of rights added the right to be free from deprivations of liberty without due process of law (5th Amendment), the right to a trial (6th Amendment), and the right to confront one’s accusers (6th Amendment).  All of these rights are being denied to those at Gitmo.    

First, let’s start with the tax cuts:  Obama and the Democrats are proposing to make the Bush tax cuts for people making $250K and less permanent and let the tax cuts on income above $250k / year expire.  The Republicans propose to make all of the tax cuts permanent. According to the Congressional Research Service (pp. 12-13), the cost of Republicans plan (over the cost of the Obama plan) will increase our deficit by $818bn ($678bn in  reduced tax revenue + $140bn in increased debt service)over the next 10 years alone

Personally, I think we should allow the tax cuts on the top earners to expire and extend the middle class tax cuts only temporarily.  Eventually, we should return to the Clinton-era tax rates.

Second, the Republicans are proposing to repeal the $500bn reduction in future Medicare spending included in the Health Care Reform bill.  It should be made clear that under the HCR Medicare spending won’t be reduced.  Rather, the increases in Medicare spending will be $500bn less than was the law before.  According to Politifact:

It’s true the federal government will reduce the growth of future spending on Medicare over the next decade. The reforms to Medicare will result in $500 billion in savings over 10 years. But the law does not eliminate $500 billion out of the current budget for Medicare. There are no cuts to guaranteed Medicare benefits.

In fact, spending on Medicare will actually increase over the next decade, reaching $845 billion in 2019, up from $499 billion in actual spending in 2009, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Without reform, Medicare spending in 2019 was projected to be $943 billion. . . .

The $500 billion in savings will come from a mix: Higher insurance premiums for wealthier seniors, reductions in payments for Medicare Advantage plans, a new panel to oversee reimbursement rates, and smaller-than-expected increases in payment rates to hospitals and other service providers each year.

So right off the bat, the Republican policies, if enacted, would increase our federal deficit by almost $1.4tn over the next 10 years and much more after that.  In the coming days, I will detail where we will need to cut if we want to reduce future deficits.  They are proposing only to reduce spending by $100bn / year.  Therefore, their policies, if all enacted (including the spending cuts), would still increase the deficit by $400bn over the next 10 years and that assumes their fanciful cuts of $100bn / year.  They have still not come forward with a credible proposal of where those $100bn are coming from.  It seems unlikely they will be able to do so since they have said that cuts to defense spending is off the table as are cuts to social security benefits and Medicare.

On Thursday, writing in the New Republic, Jonathan Cohn made the same recommendation:

Obama is having trouble with white, non-college educated voters, particularly in the industrial midwest. Whether that’s a function of the policy decisions Obama has made or the way Obama has explained them, [Ed] Rendell and [Tom] Strickland might be able to help. Both have proven track records of winning over precisely these sorts of voters in precisely that region. (Strickland came damn close to winning on Tuesday, despite the powerful Republican currents of the day. As my colleague Noam Scheiber observed, he did so with a brutally effective dose of populism.) I particularly like the idea of Rendell in the administration because he’s obstreperous. When he thinks the people around him are screwing up, he says so–loudly. That’s not exactly in line with the administration’s “no drama” motto but, right now, a little drama might be helpful.

Put Rendell in as Transportation Secretary and he will jump start one of the largest jobs programs we have seen since WWII and the New Deal.

Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

Writing on slate.com today, William Saletan said:

We’ve become so obsessed with who wins or loses in politics that we’ve forgotten what the winning and losing are about. Partisans fixate on punishing their enemies in the next campaign. Reporters, in the name of objectivity, refuse to judge anything but the Election Day score card. Politicians rationalize their self-preservation by imagining themselves as dynasty builders. They think this is the big picture.They’re wrong. The big picture isn’t about winning or keeping power. It’s about using it.

When Historians look back at this time, they will not remember that Nancy Pelosi was defeated in an epic landslide.  They will remember that she shepparded through HCR, Wall Street Reform and a Tax and Jobs bill.

Defeated Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, who considered a White House bid in 2008 and would be the most plausible candidate on Obama’s left flank, has “no interest” in such a challenge, his spokesman said today.

“While a lot of other Democrats ran away from their support for the Recovery Act and health insurance reform, Russ Feingold didn’t, he stood by those votes and President Obama’s effort to do the right thing,” said spokesman John Kraus in an email. “I would chalk up any Beltway chatter about Russ running against President Obama as simply Washington getting wee-wee’d up on the first day of new election cycle that is two years away.”

Feingold “has no interest in challenging President Obama in 2012,” Kraus said.

When I was an 18-year old in my freshman year of college, I started studying political science in school.  And the first theory of politics that I learned is what is the dominant theory today:  rational choice.  It is politics seen through the eyes of an economist.  At its core, the theory says that legislators act for one reason, and only one reason:  to get reelected.  I thought this was frightening and too cynical.  But after years of studying it and observing it, I saw little evidence to repudiate it.

That was until Nancy Pelosi came to power.  She got her caucus to support liberal versions of health care reform legislation, cap and trade and wall street reform.  She did this knowing her and her members would get killed for the votes and probably knowing the Senate would not vote for any of it or would water it down.

While this might be the definition of insanity, she made me any many other liberals proud to see someone stand on principle and act not out of self-interest but what she thought was in the best interest of the country.  Disagree with every vote she cast.  But no one can say she ascended to the speakership just to wield power and to keep it.  She went there to make a difference.  If you are going to have power, you might as well try to use to move the country forward.  If not, what is really the point.  I can’t believe it is just to have power.  But then again, I am a true believer.

I should note that LBJ did the same thing with the 1965 voting rights act and medicare.  He famously said to his aide, Bill Moyers, we just lost the South for a generation.  He was right and they lost it for more than taht.  But at least we got the VRA.  And at least we got health care reform and wall street reform.

And as important, he has been a loud and repeated voice for infrastructure spending during the recession.  Our road and bridges are in great disrepair.  Infrastructure spending would solve that problem and put millions to work like in the New Deal.  Additionally, it will stimulate (yes, I used that word) the manufacturing and raw materials sectors.