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Michael Kazin: As a history professor, I will have to give him an Incomplete. He failed to realize that the opposition party would, almost unanimously, oppose every one of his initiatives and did not understand how fearful many Americans continue to be of "big government"– even as they cling to every government program which directly benefits them. But he laid out an ambitious set of proposals and may yet see some of them become law.

You Vote:  

Obama grades himself B+. Is that(trends)

Darrell M. West: I would give President Obama a grade of B+ for making good progress in a situation of extreme political polarization and unusually large policy challenges. The ability of the U.S. Senate to pass legislation has been sharply limited by the de facto shift from majority to super-majority rule. If legislation could be passed in the Senate with 51 votes, most of the president’s top proposals would be law now and commentators would be comparing Obama to high-achieving presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson.
But because of the need for 60 votes to stop filibusters, the Senate has had difficulty enacting any kind of legislation. We need filibuster reform. In the 1960s, the Senate averaged seven filibusters a year with usage being limited to questions of moral conscience or high principle. During the last Congress, though, there were a record 137 filibusters on a variety of big and small issues. No Democrat or Republican president is going to be effective as long as we have a 60 percent threshold for Senate action.

Fred Barbash: Here’s the full question on healthcare, which would not fit in our bubble at the top:
Health Care: Is it, as Dan Pfeiffer says, "hard to imagine another president" taking on health care if it doesn’t pass now? Is this "the last train leaving the station?" (Sub-question: With Lieberman’s victory [on medicare] is there anyone left [or right or center] who considers the Senate bill "reform?"

Here’s the full Dan Pfeiffer comment: ""If President Obama doesn’t pass health reform, it’s hard to imagine another president ever taking on this Herculean task. For those whose life’s work is reforming health care, this may be the last train leaving the station."
 
 

>>Michael Kazin: A few months ago, Dr. Jerome Groopman, a shrewd observer of the health care reform shenanigans, argued that we will not get a universal system which keeps costs under control until most Americans believe the current system has completely broken down. That is not yet the case for most employed people, and so we anxiously await the latest whim of President Lieberman (Ind- unelected) to see what kind of temporary fix we will be allowed to have.

>>Michael Kazin: A few months ago, Dr. Jerome Groopman, a shrewd observer of the health care reform shenanigans, argued that we will not get a universal system which keeps costs under control until most Americans believe the current system has completely broken down. That is not yet the case for most employed people, and so we anxiously await the latest whim of President Lieberman (Ind- unelected) to see what kind of temporary fix we will be allowed to have.

>>Dean Baker: Senator Lieberman has performed a valuable service for the nation. Usually the lobbyist sleaze is somewhat concealed behind closed days and rationalizations. But, Senator Lieberman was kind enough to stand up in front of the whole country and say that he was prepared to reverse what he had said at prior points in his career — in fact reverse what he had said just a few weeks earlier — if it was necessary to protect the insurance industry’s profits. The country owes Senator Lieberman its gratitude for demonstrating so clearly the extent of corruption in our politics.
This battle is far from over. It is not clear that progressive members of the House will buckle. They may still refuse to back a bill that has little pretext of controlling costs. They may throw it back into the Senate’s court again. Maybe Lieberman will be shamed if he must yet again stand up and tell the country that he will not consider hurting the insurance industry’s profits to allow health care reform. Perhaps one of the moderate Republican senators will decide that affordable health care is more important than insurance industry profits.
And of course the underlying issue cannot go away. We have a whole gang clustered around Wall Street tax avoider Pete Peterson who insist that we have to cut Social Security and Medicare because the deficits that will be caused by exploding private sector health care costs are unsustainable. (Of course, the Peterson tax avoider crew are not that honest in acknowledging the course of the unsustainable deficits.) Will Lieberman and his business associates be prepared to tell the country that they are cutting Social Security in order to protect insurance industry profits? Perhaps, but this battle is very far from over.

>>Michael Kazin: A few months ago, Dr. Jerome Groopman, a shrewd observer of the health care reform shenanigans, argued that we will not get a universal system which keeps costs under control until most Americans believe the current system has completely broken down. That is not yet the case for most employed people, and so we anxiously await the latest whim of President Lieberman (Ind- unelected) to see what kind of temporary fix we will be allowed to have.

>>Dean Baker: Senator Lieberman has performed a valuable service for the nation. Usually the lobbyist sleaze is somewhat concealed behind closed days and rationalizations. But, Senator Lieberman was kind enough to stand up in front of the whole country and say that he was prepared to reverse what he had said at prior points in his career — in fact reverse what he had said just a few weeks earlier — if it was necessary to protect the insurance industry’s profits. The country owes Senator Lieberman its gratitude for demonstrating so clearly the extent of corruption in our politics.
This battle is far from over. It is not clear that progressive members of the House will buckle. They may still refuse to back a bill that has little pretext of controlling costs. They may throw it back into the Senate’s court again. Maybe Lieberman will be shamed if he must yet again stand up and tell the country that he will not consider hurting the insurance industry’s profits to allow health care reform. Perhaps one of the moderate Republican senators will decide that affordable health care is more important than insurance industry profits.
And of course the underlying issue cannot go away. We have a whole gang clustered around Wall Street tax avoider Pete Peterson who insist that we have to cut Social Security and Medicare because the deficits that will be caused by exploding private sector health care costs are unsustainable. (Of course, the Peterson tax avoider crew are not that honest in acknowledging the course of the unsustainable deficits.) Will Lieberman and his business associates be prepared to tell the country that they are cutting Social Security in order to protect insurance industry profits? Perhaps, but this battle is very far from over.

>>Timothy Stoltzfus Jost: I do not believe that we have seen the last of health care reform. First, remember that the bill the Senate is considering does not take effect until 2014, the House bill until 2013. It is almost unimaginable that Congress will not revisit the bill before implementation. If a Republican Congress is elected in 2010 or 2012 it will almost certainly repeal or significantly amend the bill, although it will certainly take 60 votes to do so. More ominously, if President Obama is not reelected in 2012, a Republican administration could simply not implement the bill, particularly if implementation is delayed until 2014, as in the Senate bill. Finally, the Senate bill must be implemented by the states, several of which have already evidence strong opposition to reform. Additional congressional action may well be necessary to assure implementation.

Even if the bill is implemented, however, further action will be needed to control costs. Republicans and conservative Democrats have succeeded in stripping much of the cost control out of the bill, and are still trying to remove more. If the bill is implemented in 2014 and costs continue to grow at present rates, but because of Medicaid expansions and premium subsidies for private insurance these costs have become federal government expenses, further legislation will be necessary to finally do something about cost control, like serious price or utilization controls. Finally, if, as seems likely, Joe Lieberman succeeds in stripping any semblance of a public option from the bill, why could Congress not revisit the public option next year or the year after through budget reconciliation? It will clearly be relevant to the expenditures of public funds.

As to whether the bill actually achieves health care reform, of course it does.It expands Medicaid to cover every citizen of the U.S. up to 133% of poverty, without categorical eligibility; gets rid of risk underwriting by insurers and preexisting conditions exclusions; provides reasonable coverage in the nongroup market instead of the junk that consumers now buy; provides affordability subsidies for over half of the uninsured that will cover over half of their costs; effectively requires large employers to provide health insurance for their employees; significantly increases the transparency of insurance coverage; provides a host of Medicare payment innovations that should save Medicare money and improve the quality of care provided to beneficiaries; contains a host of wellness, prevention, and workforce initiatives; and requires chain restaurants to disclose the calorie content of their menu items. A vigorous public option would have made for a stronger bill with much more effective cost control. It is a pity that the public will be denied this choice, which is favored by a clear majority of Americans and of their congressional representatives, because of the stance of one petulant and egotistical senator in the pay of the insurance industry. But this bill is far more than the public option, and if it passes, it is still real reform.