Health Care Reform Vote Not Until Easter
Republicans Embrace Fear Campaign
Why Washington Doesn’t Work

HuffPo: Mom Goes Blind So Her Daughters Can See

When Will Health Care Get Done? Maybe By Easter, Maybe

AP: WASHINGTON – House Democratic leaders are pushing to finish far-reaching health legislation and hold a climactic vote in the next three weeks, aiming to overcome reluctance from rank-and-file lawmakers. But they conceded Thursday they may not meet President Barack Obama’s challenge for swift action.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the Democrats would like to get a final vote by Congress’ Easter break, which begins March 29. But he also said “the world doesn’t fall apart” if that timeline isn’t met — a nod to the many missed deadlines that have characterized the health overhaul effort so far. [More here →]

• Bloomberg: End-of-Life Warning at $618,616 Makes Me Wonder Was It Worth It

“Terence and I didn’t have to think about money, allocation of medical resources, the struggles of more than 46 million uninsured Americans, or the impact on corporate bottom lines. Backed by medical insurance provided by my employers, we were able to fight his cancer with a series of expensive last chances like the one I asked for that night.

How expensive? The bills totaled $618,616, almost two- thirds of it for the final 24 months, much of it for treatments that no one can say for sure helped extend his life.

In just the last four days of trying to keep him alive — two in intensive care, two in a cancer ward — our insurance was charged $43,711 for doctors, medicines, monitors, X-rays and scans. Two years later, the only thing I know for certain that money bought was confirmation that he was dying.” [More here →]

• Why Washington Doesn’t Work: Senate Passes Jobs Bill That Experts Say Won’t Create Jobs

The Economic Policy Institute explains: $15 billion jobs bill not nearly enough

Congress has finally taken action to address the jobs crisis, but the $15 billion jobs bill passed by the Senate and the House is not nearly enough. The bill, which would give employers tax breaks for new hires, is likely to create only a couple of hundred thousand jobs at a time that the country needs 11 million jobs just to return to pre-recession levels of employment.

High unemployment could last for years

EPI President Lawrence Mishel emphasized the magnitude of the jobs crisis and the size of the response needed during a February 23 testimony to the House Committee on Financial Services. Mishel warned that unless Congress acted quickly and at a sufficient scale, “high and damaging unemployment will continue for years.”

The $15 billion Senate bill is less than one-tenth the size of an alternate $174 billion jobs bill that the House of Representatives passed last year, which itself fell far short of President Obama’s proposal to invest $267 billion to put people back to work. EPI’s American Jobs Plan proposes spending $400 billion to create 4.6 million jobs in one year.

One key problem with Congress’ response to the jobs crisis is that its last-minute extension of unemployment benefits for millions of long-term unemployed is only a 30-day extension. By the end of March, 200,000 workers will begin losing benefits each week. EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey issued a statement criticizing the Senate for failing to extend these badly needed benefits for the rest of 2010. The unemployed workers waiting on Congress, Eisenbrey said, had “lost their jobs not through any fault of their own, but because of the worst economic crisis in 70 years. Now they are unable to work because there are more than six job seekers for every job opening.” [More here →]

• Education Protests Sweep Nation

AP: BERKELEY, Calif. – Students staged raucous rallies to protest education funding cuts on college campuses nationwide Thursday, but some demonstrations got out of hand as protesters threw punches and ice chunks in Wisconsin and shut down a major freeway in California during rush-hour traffic. [More here →]

WASHINGTON PARALYZED

• Steven Jonas: Scuttled ships don’t float: Why Washington “Doesn’t Work”

“Washington doesn’t “work” because the GOP doesn’t want it to and is doing everything in its power to make sure that it doesn’t. “Washington working,” in the sense of major national problems like the failing health care delivery system, the crumbling infrastructure, and the rapidly declining education system being productively dealt with, significantly reduces the GOP’s political chances. After all, they have been, and are being so at ever-increasing volume, the party that is against “big government,” even though the big problems we face precisely require big government if they are to be dealt with. Every time that “big government” can do something positive reduces their chances of getting back into power so that they can, in the delightful Grover Norquist’s terms, “shrink it to the size of a bathtub and then drown it in the tub.” [More here →]

• Norm Coleman’s Calculated and Cunning Comeback

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision allowing an unlimited flow of corporate money into electoral politics, the former Minnesota Senator has launched two new ‘center-right’ political organizations focused on traditional conservative principles’ and dedicated to battling liberal think tanks.

When the long drawn out fight for the Senate seat from Minnesota between Democrat Al Franken and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman was finally decided – many, many months after Election Day – no one really expected the vanquished Coleman to ride off into the sunset.

And Coleman didn’t. These days Coleman is hoping to carve out some new political territory for conservatives that is just far enough away from the racousity of the Tea Party movement not to alienate them, and is a healthy distance from the Religious Right and their social agenda. [More here →]

• Politco reveals GOP Fear raising document:

WP: EJ DIONNE ON GOP TALKING POINTS

Republicans, however, don’t want to talk much about the substance of health care. They want to discuss process, turn “reconciliation” into a four-letter word and maintain that Democrats are “ramming through” a health bill.

It is all, I am sorry to say, one big lie — or, if you’re sensitive, an astonishing exercise in hypocrisy.

In an op-ed in Tuesday’s Post, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) offered an excellent example of this hypocrisy. Right off, the piece was wrong on a core fact. Hatch accused the Democrats of trying to, yes, “ram through the Senate a multitrillion-dollar health-care bill.”

No. The health-care bill passed the Senate in December with 60 votes under the normal process. The only thing that would pass under a simple majority vote would be a series of amendments that fit comfortably under the “reconciliation” rules established to deal with money issues. Near the end of his column, Hatch conceded that reconciliation would be used for “only parts” of the bill. But why didn’t he say that in the first place?

AFGHAN HOPES AND REALITY

• Encouraging Signs in Afghanistan By Iain Martin – Wall Street Journal

“What if the West’s war in Afghanistan is in the process of being won? It has become standard practice to presume that this isn’t possible and that immersion in a quagmire followed by ignominious retreat is guaranteed.”

• The Daily Times: Taliban bombs still a problem for US-led troops in Marjah

“Thousands of US-led troops engaged in a major offensive to secure a Taliban bastion in southern Afghanistan are still facing four to six bomb attacks every day, a NATO official said Thursday.Crude bombs known as improvised explosive devises (IEDs) are the main problem facing the 15,000 US, NATO and Afghan troops as they consolidate control of the Marjah and Nad Ali areas of Helmand province. Taliban insurgents, who for years controlled the opium poppy-producing area of the central Helmand River valley with drug traffickers, are still putting up (some) resistance.”

CNN: Monday Morning: Gunman in Pentagon shooting died early Friday, Pentagon Police Chief Richard S. Keevill says.