RSS FeedThe Headless Office of Legal Counsel
President Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Dawn Johnsen, has been held up in the Senate for as long as Barack Obama has been president. On January 20 of this year, a full year into his presidency, Obama re-nominated her for the position he’d first named her for before he even took office.
Democrats have been unable to muster 60 votes to get the nomination past a filibuster. Among the opponents of Johnsen’s nomination have been, on the Democratic side, Arlen Specter and Ben Nelson. And on the Republican side, you know, the Republicans. The issue spurring the opposition? Abortion.
The OLC is charged with formulating legal opinions for the president and the entire executive branch. It is the constitutional brain of the presidency. Its head is an Assistant Attorney General, and anyone who holds the post becomes a likely candidate for appointment to the federal appellate courts thereafter. William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia each ran the OLC for several years before being nominated for the Supreme Court. But the importance of OLC is not that it is a springboard to bigger things. Rather, it is itself arguably the most important active body of experts in constitutional law. Unlike the courts, which are inherently reactive, the OLC participates in the events that make constitutional law and executive precedents while they are happening. And in the gaping areas of constitutional law that are considered non-justiciable political questions by the courts, and in the ever-growing areas of deference to the executive, the OLC is probably the biggest game in town.
Dawn Johnsen was a strong critic of the Bush administration OLC, which is widely considered to have given substandard—”outrageous,” in Johnsen’s words—legal advice to the president, particularly on the issue of the treatment of suspected terrorists. She also has some of the best credentials one could have for the job: she’s already done it. She was Acting AAG in charge of OLC from 1996-98. Since then she has become a leading academic expert on the OLC.
But apparently she is just too controversial, having worked for NARAL from 1988-1993. Because, of course, nothing illustrates an uncontrollable legal bias like a record of advocating for women’s constitutional rights.
Many observers are disappointed that Johnsen was not among the 15 recess appointments announced last Saturday. Chris Geidner thinks the administration didn’t push Johnsen through with a recess appointment because it doesn’t want to subject the office to further politicization, having been so damaged by abuses in the Bush years. Sounds plausible to me. I only wonder how far the president and his justice department must go to restore OLC’s stature. Because at some point, avoiding the appearance of executive-branch politicization begins to allow legislative-branch politicization to prevent that restoration from ever happening.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
President Obama signed the Reconciliation Act today, making the healthcare bill fixes law. Health reform will still be tossed around on the political stage, but the focus of reform will now shift to implementation. To that end, the White House has said the president plans to nominate Dr. Donald Berwick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Background on Berwick here from Maggie Mahar.
Long live healthcare reform.
Recess Appointments
The White House announced on Saturday that the president will be making 15 recess appointments for various positions, mostly related to trade, labor, and finance. No judges (though NLRB commissioners perform an important adjudicative role), no Dawn Johnsen (would-be head of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel), and, alas, no Fed governors. These 15 appointments represent just about 7% of the total number of nominees (217) pending before the Senate.
The recess appointments clause raises a few questions of constitutional semantics. The clause states: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” Art. II, § 2 (emphasis added). The questions are: (1) does ‘happen’ mean ‘occur’ or ‘exist’? In other words, does the vacancy have to arise while the Senate is in recess, or is it enough that the Senate is in recess and a vacancy exists? And (2) does the term ‘recess’ include relatively short intra-session adjournments in addition to the longer inter-session breaks?
The short and practical answers to those questions are (1) the President can fill any vacancy with a recess appointment, regardless of when the position became vacant; and (2) any adjournment over three days is probably long enough. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge William Pryor’s 2004 recess appointment (to the Eleventh Circuit), made during a 10-day recess, the shortest on record for a judicial appointment. The current Senate recess will be 14 days. See this CRS Report (pdf) for the legal background.
Weekend Birdery: the Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Dendroica coronata
Of all the members of the Parulidae family, there’s a special place in my heart for the Yellow-rumped Warbler.
The name alone is the epitome of vibrant, mirthful birdness. And as you can see, they’re also high scorers on the cuteness scale. Soon they’ll be heading north for the summer. Till next winter it’s all rump, no yellow.
Weekend Wordery: “On the Table”
Here’s something to ponder.
When you are actively negotiating for or over something, that something is said to be “on the table.” But in the context of legislative business (in American English, at least), “tabling” something means removing that thing from present consideration. E.g., “Let’s table that amendment till next session.”
Conference table at Potsdam, 1945
I’m often confused by the latter meaning of ‘table’ because it clashes with the more the accessible mental image I associate with the former meaning: people sitting around a table, negotiating over some papers on the table between them. It seems to me that “tabling” the papers should mean laying them on the table, and that if you wanted to remove them from discussion, you would take the papers off the table .
Apparently I’m not alone in this confusion. Sanjay Srivastava suggests a way to keep the imagery straight: think of a second table in the corner where you place discarded items. Also, it helps just to be cognizant of the conflict.
Further complicating the matter, though, in British English ‘to table’ something means to propose it for consideration—a meaning which does comport with my mental image. I guess that makes ‘table’ a word that is an antonym of itself, a contranym. Like ‘sanction’: meaning both to permit and to punish. It’s also further evidence that George Bernard Shaw was right. Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language.
Constitutional Challenges to Healthcare Reform, Part 1
There’s lots of chatter out there about legal challenges to our new health reform law. On Tuesday, before the ink from President Obama’s signature on H.R. 3590 was dry, 13 states’ attorneys general filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, in Pensacola.
As I wrote a while back, there are two categories of possible constitutional challenges to the individual mandate. You can argue that the federal government does not have the power to impose it; and you can argue that the mandate violates individuals’ constitutional rights.
There aren’t many constitutional rights in play here. There is no recognized right to be uninsured. Nor, more generally, is there a right to be let alone. And in situations where the law would impinge on individuals’ rights that are recognized, the available remedy in court is to carve out specific exceptions in the law “as applied” to those individuals, rather than to strike down the law altogether.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is quite careful to provide exemptions from the mandate to several categories of people: those with “religious conscience” objections, illegal immigrants, incarcerated persons, people who can’t afford coverage (because a minimal plan would cost more than 8% of household income), earners whose income is below the tax-filing threshold, Indian tribes, people with only short gaps in coverage, and people with other qualifying hardships to be specified by HHS regulations. Due process does guarantee, in some sense, the “fundamental fairness” of the law. With all those exemptions, there just aren’t going to be many people for whom the mandate is fundamentally unfair.
So the real action here is in the argument that Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority. The relevant powers are the power to regulate commerce among the states and the power to levy taxes. Of these, it’s the commerce power that is most vulnerable to challenge. That is, if the ACA’s individual mandate is imposed by Congress under its authority to regulate commerce, there’s a reasonable case to be made that the mandate exceeds that authority. But even if it does, the taxing power is more than adequate authority to impose the mandate.
I’ll say more about the commerce and taxation arguments in part 2. Stay tuned….
Health Reform Reconciled
Today, both houses of Congress passed HR 4872, the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010, which now goes to the president. With the president’s signature, the reconciliation bill becomes law, amending the Affordable Care Act that President Obama signed on Tuesday.
Here’s Tim Jost explaining how the Reconciliation Act modifies the Affordable Care Act:
Slightly More Generous Premium Subsidies. Premium tax credits under the new House bill are slightly more generous than under the Senate bill. Individuals with a household income of between 133 percent and 150 percent of the federal poverty level will need to pay only 3 percent to 4 percent of household income for health insurance, compared to 4 percent to 4.6 percent in the Senate bill. At the upper end, individuals with household incomes of up to 400 percent of poverty will have to pay only 9.5 percent of their income, compared to 9.8 percent in the Senate bill. The percentages will increase over time to reflect the growth in health insurance premiums relative to income, so that the share of premiums paid by individuals will remain more or less constant. However, after 2018 a new inflation formula will kick in that will increase individual responsibility more rapidly if federal subsidies under the bill exceed 0.504 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a provision apparently necessary to assure deficit reduction after 2019.
Signficantly More Generous Cost-Sharing Subsidies. While the reconciliation legislation increases premium subsidies only slightly, it reduces cost-sharing responsibilities at the low end significantly as compared to the Senate bill. This will make health care itself significantly more affordable. Cost-sharing reduction payments will leave individuals from households earning 100 percent to 150 percent of poverty owing 6 percent in cost sharing rather than 10 percent; individuals from households at 150 percent to 200 percent of poverty owing 13 percent instead of 20 percent; and those from households at 200 percent to 250 percent owing 27 percent rather than 30 percent.
Penalties On Individuals For Failing To Purchase Coverage. The penalties for failure to carry insurance are increased for individuals with higher incomes and reduced for individuals with lower incomes. The flat dollar penalty is reduced from $750 to $695 after 2016 (and from $495 to $325 for 2015). The alternative percentage of income penalty, however, increases from 2 percent to 2.5 percent, but it applies only to income above the filing threshold (currently $12,050 for an individual and $18,700 for a couple). Moreover, individuals with household incomes below the filing limit are exempted from the penalty. Under the Senate bill, individuals with household incomes below the poverty level—which is lower than the filing threshold—were exempted.
Penalties On Employers For Failing To Provide Coverage. The penalty on large employers who do not provide health insurance and whose employees receive public subsidies is, on the other hand, significantly increased—from $750 to $2,000 per full-time equivalent (FTE). The penalty for employers who offer insurance but who have employees who receive premium assistance because they cannot afford the employer-offered insurance (with affordability now defined at 9.5 percent of income) is increased to $3,000 for each such employee. The first thirty FTEs of an employer, however, will be disregarded for calculating penalties, to ease the transition to large-employer status for growing businesses. Also, the penalty for imposing excessive waiting periods on employees is dropped from the reconciliation bill.
Enhancing The Senate Bill’s Insurance Reforms. The legislation enhances slightly the insurance reforms of the Senate bill, providing that the medical expenses of adult children up to age twenty-seven are deductible for income tax purposes, and extending to grandfathered health plans some of the insurance regulation protections of the Senate bill, beginning in the first new plan year after enactment—including provisions related to excessive waiting periods, lifetime limits, rescissions, and the extension of dependent coverage. It also extends to grandfathered group health plans the provisions relating to annual limits and exclusions for preexisting conditions.
A new definition of “modified adjusted gross income” is created for the use of all sections of the reconciliation bill where household income is significant, including Medicaid eligibility. This definition is less generous than the one now used for calculating Medicaid eligibility, which disregards certain income such as some child care or support obligations. However, the bill requires states to disregard a part—equal to 5 percent of the federal poverty limit—of the modified adjusted gross income in determining Medicaid eligibility.More Federal Assistance For Relatively Generous State Medicaid Programs. The reconciliation bill significantly increases federal funding for the expansion of state Medicaid programs to cover individuals with household incomes of up to 133 percent of the poverty level. States will receive 100 percent federal matching funds for this population for 2014, 2015, and 2016; 95 percent for 2017; 94 percent for 2018; 93 percent for 2019; and 90 percent for each year thereafter. States that have already expanded their programs to cover this population will receive a gradually increasing enhancement of the federal match for this population, so that in 2014 they will receive 50 percent of what expansion states receive, and by 2019 they will receive 100 percent. The “Cornhusker kickback” is eliminated, but special treatment is retained for Louisiana and other states, as in the Senate bill.
Short-Term Federal Help For Medicaid Primary Care Payments. In a very important move, the reconciliation bill increases Medicaid payments for family and general practitioners and for pediatricians providing primary care services, to 100 percent of Medicare payment levels for 2013 and 2014 with 100 percent federal match. As was pointed out by Republicans at the health care summit, Medicaid expansions mean little if there are no practitioners to care for Medicaid recipients, so this provision will play a vital role in making Medicaid work. Unfortunately, it is limited to two years. The bill also increases to $1l billion new appropriations for community health centers, which will also serve the new Medicaid recipients (as well as the immigrants excluded from the exchanges).
The legislation also reduces but moves forward to 2014 Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payment reductions, and provides disproportionate-share hospital (DSH) payments for a state that would otherwise have none after FY 2011—reportedly this would apply only to Tennessee. The Medicaid provisions also increase funding for the territories (and allow them to decide to operate an exchange); delays by one year the Community First Choice Option, which will cover community-based attendant care services and supports for persons who would otherwise be institutionalized; and narrows the definition of new formulations of drugs, subject to an additional rebate under the Medicaid drug rebate program to line extensions of the drugs in the form of a solid dosage.
Closing the Doughnut Hole. The biggest change in Medicare from the beneficiary’s perspective will be the provisions of the bill intended to close the doughnut hole. The legislation provides for a $250 payment to anyone who ends up in that hole in 2010, but will then begin closing the dougnut hole by gradually reducing the coinsurance amount paid by beneficiaries until, by 2020, it reaches the 25 percent level imposed prior to the doughnut hole. The bill delays the 50 percent discount program for name-brand drugs bought by beneficiaries in the doughnut hole to 2011.
Cutting Medicare Advantage Payments. The reconciliation bill reduces Medicare advantage (MA) payments by almost $14 billion from levels in the Senate bill. It shifts MA payments toward benchmarks that will vary from 95 percent of fee-for-service payment levels in high-spending states to 115 percent in low-spending states. These benchmark-based payment levels will be phased in over three, five, or seven years, depending on the initial disparity between MA payment amounts and the benchmark. After 2014, plans will be able to earn increased payments of up to 5 percent based on quality rankings. Higher quality plans will also be able to make up for a higher percentage of their premiums to beneficiaries via lowered cost sharing or increased benefits. The bill extends the authority of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to risk adjust scores for observed differences in coding patterns between MA plans and fee-for-service plans.
The legislation requires MA plans that have administrative costs in excess of 15 percent to pay the difference to CMS, prohibits new enrollments into any such plan after three consecutive years of excessive administrative costs, and requires termination of the plan after five consecutive years. Finally, with little fanfare, the bill repeals the Medicare Modernization Act provision requiring competition between MA plans and traditional Medicare that provoked so much controversy in 2003.
In other Medicare provisions, the legislation accelerates the Medicare DSH reductions, but reduces their amount. It increases reductions in market basket-based payment updates for inpatient hospitals, long-term–care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and outpatient hospitals by an additional $9.9 billion over ten years. The bill delays from August 1, 2010, until December 31, 2010, the date after which physicians are no longer allowed to own hospitals to which they refer patients, and it creates a new exception to allow grandfathered physician-owed hospitals to expand in counties in which they treat the highest percentage of Medicaid patients and in which they are not the sole community hospital. Finally, the bill creates an assumption of a 75 percent utilization rate for determining the practice-expenses portion of advanced imaging payments, which will reduce those payments for low-volume providers..
Fraud And Abuse Provisions. No health care legislation is complete without new fraud and abuse provisions, and the reconciliation bill is no exception. It requires community mental health centers to treat a significant number of patients who are not Medicare beneficiaries to qualify for Medicare payments. It eliminates limitations imposed on Medicare prepayment medical reviews and provides for data matches between CMS and the IRS to identify fraudulent providers. It increases funding for fraud and abuse control and allows CMS to withhold funding from new durable medical equipment (DME) providers for up to ninety days if there is a significant risk of fraud.
The Excise Tax On High-Cost Plans. The legislation changes significantly the excise tax imposed on high-cost plans. It delays the tax from 2013 to 2018 and increases the threshold of the tax from $8,500 to $10,200 for individuals, and from $23,000 to $27,500 for families—in both instances, adjusted for excessive intervening increases in the cost of health insurance and for the age and gender characteristics of the specific employer compared to the national workforce. It excludes from consideration the cost of dental and vision plans. The legislation also increases the enhanced thresholds allowed for high-risk occupations, but it eliminates the Senate’s transition rule for high-cost states.
Initially, the premium-cost threshold at which the excise tax kicks in would increase by the level of general inflation (the consumer price index, or CPI) plus one percentage point. However, beginning in 2020, the threshold would increase only at the rate of general inflation, which would extend the tax to more plans over time.
Revenue Increases. To make up for lost revenue, the reconciliation legislation extends the Medicare tax to cover net investment income for those earning more than $250,000 a year (on a joint return) or $200,000 (on a single return). The bill delays but increases the tax on brand-name drugs. It changes the imposition on medical devices from a fee to a tax; delays it; and exempts eyeglasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, and devices purchased by individuals at retail. The legislation also delays to 2013 the limitation on flexible spending account (FSA) contributions and the elimination of the deduction for expenses allocable to the Medicare Part D subsidy.
Sorry about the length of that quote. No time to do my own writing. Or editing.
Things I’ve Always Wondered About: Cooling-Saucer Edition
According to legend, George Washington explained the existence of the Senate with the metaphor of pouring coffee into a saucer to cool it. Popular passions holding sway in the House would be poured into the senatorial saucer to cool so that legislation would be tempered with the caution and wisdom of the country’s elite.
Okay, so I get the tenor of the metaphor, but the vehicle baffles me. How is this supposed to work exactly? You pour the coffee or tea out of your cup onto the saucer. Hmmm…already foreseeing problems. Ever tried to pour just a little bit of liquid from a full cup without a spout? Well, anyway, imagine you pull that off. Then what? You’ve got a saucer full of drink. Now where do you put the cup? Okay, say you have two saucers. You put the cup down on saucer no. 2, the dry one.
Time for a drink! But, well, er…the beverage—now admittedly cooler—is in a shallow pool on saucer no. 1. Seems like it might be difficult to pick up the saucer and bring it slowly to your lips for a sip without spillage. And surely President Washington will be horrified if you lean over and stick your face in the saucer. This is highly awkward. Moreover, Rule #96 of Washington’s forbidding Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation: a Book of Etiquette is clearly analogous here:
96th It’s unbecoming to Stoop much to ones Meat[.] Keep your Fingers clean & when foul wipe them on a Corner of your Table Napkin.
But say the father of our country is understanding of this predicament, and the bend-over maneuver is sanctioned by the ROCDB in these narrow circumstances. What’s the plan now? Slurp? Oh no. Definitely not. Rule #99:
99th Drink not too leisurely nor yet too hastily. Before and after Drinking wipe your Lips breath not then or Ever with too Great a Noise, for its uncivil [sic].
Lap it up with your tongue? Not while Rule #16 is in effect:
16th Do not Puff up the Cheeks, Loll not out the tongue rub the Hands, or beard, thrust out the lips, or bite them or keep the Lips too open or too Close. [sic]
Loll not out the tongue, you see. We’re swiftly running out of options here, Mr. President. Well, it turns out, according to the Memorial Hall Museum Online, there was a technological solution: deep saucers.
In the 1770′s and 1780′s it became fashionable to drink tea from the saucer, perhaps to allow the tea to cool. One consistent characteristic of tea wares at that time was the deep saucer, borrowed from China. Later in the century, cup plates became part of the tea set and allowed the tea drinker to “park” her cup on the small cup plate while she sipped tea from the saucer….
And there you have it. Deep saucer illustrated below. I’m still not sure how you’re going to negotiate the pouring from the cup to the saucer…unless you bypass the cup altogether and pour directly from the pot into the saucer. In which case: why the cup? But there are limits to one’s curiosity.
Cup and saucer, circa 1725
Health Insurance Reform Is Law in the United States of America
A few hours ago President Obama signed into law H.R.3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And it was good.
The law will be gradually implemented over the next four years, with the major coverage expansions coming online in 2014. Here’s a handy table, lifted and adapted from Igor Volsky, indicating what happens when:
| Insurance Reform | Effective Date |
|---|---|
| No lifetime limits on coverage | 6 months after enactment |
| Restricted annual limits on coverage (defined by HHS) | 6 months after enactment |
| No rescissions (insurers can’t drop you when you get sick) | 6 months after enactment |
| Coverage of preventive services (Medicare and new insurance plans: no copay or deductible for preventive care) | 6 months after enactment |
| Extension of dependent coverage (stay on parents policy until 27th birthday) | 6 months after enactment |
| No discrimination based on salary | 6 months after enactment |
| No pre-existing condition exclusions | 6 months after enactment for children
(2014 for adults) |
| Medical loss ratios (insurers must spend min % of premium revenues on care — 80% individual and small group market, 85% large group market — and must rebate to customers if they don’t meet ratios) | 2011 |
| Summary of coverage provided to applicants and enrollees | 24 months after enactment |
| No annual limits | 2014 |
| Community rating (no rating based on health or gender, 3:1 age rating) | 2014 |
| Guaranteed issue | 2014 |
| Guaranteed renewal | 2014 |
| No discrimination based on health status | 2014 |
| Coverage of essential health benefits | 2014 |
| Limits on cost-sharing | 2014 |
What’s Next
Healthcare reform passed the House and is headed to the President Obama’s desk. The Senate will take up the reconciliation bill on Tuesday, whereupon the Republicans will fight tooth and nail for the cornhusker kickback and against more deficit reduction and more coverage of the uninsured. Now, as President Bartlet would ask, what’s next?
What’s next is more politics. Here’s Jonathan Bernstein:
[T]he question becomes: what will the GOP run on this fall? Most of their arguments are basically knocked out by the passage of the bill; no one will care any more about reconciliation (well, no one cared about it in the first place, but it’s even less useful as time goes on). They could continue to complaint about spending and deficits (although not, I don’t think, about taxes going into effect right away but not benefits, since that won’t make much sense to most voters who don’t see it happening). Death panels and rationing and socialism and the rest? I don’t think so.
Here’s what they will do: Republicans will now run against the current health care system. Just as they blamed Barack Obama for every job lost in February and March 2009, they’re now going to blame Democrats for every insurance rate increase, every medical error, every complex insurance form, and basically anything that goes wrong with medical care or medical insurance, beginning March 22, 2010.
That’s what Democrats should be prepared for. Against it, Democrats have the list of changes that go into effect right away, and the sensible arguments that the various problems in the system weren’t caused by a bill that is only beginning to go into effect. I don’t know who wins that argument — and, of course, the effects of winning and losing that argument are only marginally important to 2010 and 2012 elections — but that’s the argument we’re about to hear. Bad things happen in health care all the time; I’ll be very, very surprised if we don’t hear conservatives blaming one of those bad things on the brand-new law some time before Easter.
Ready for it?
That sounds pretty scary, but it seems to me such arguments will be exactly as effective as the movable portion of the electorate is causally illiterate.
And while it’s true that people by and large aren’t keyed in to the fine detail of the political process—and therefore don’t necessarily have accurate perceptions of which party’s policies causally account for their favored/disfavored outcomes—people do generally have a handle on simple causality. They are unlikely to believe, genuinely, that all the healthcare system’s problems are the result of the Democrats’ healthcare bill, when they know all too well that those problems are “pre-existing.” Believing that would be like saying, “I bought this bottle of aspirin for my headache, and it gave me the headache that caused me to go buy the aspirin.”
Now you could believe something like this: “I bought this aspirin, and my headache got worse.” But the answer to that is easy: You have to take the aspirin; just buying it isn’t enough.
Fat Lady, Singing
Someone dump some Gatorade on this woman.
Spoiled Opposition
Ezra Klein makes a good point: Republicans caused the Senate Democrats to adopt the Nelson deal by filibustering the bill. And not only that, but the Republicans are now voting against the reconciliation bill that will remove the deal. How anyone can think that this is principled opposition, and not naked politics, is beyond me.
Mitch McConnell has admitted as much (h/t Yglesias). By withholding any bipartisan support for major Democratic measures, the Republicans have pursued a delegitimization strategy without any regard to the substance of the bill or to any number of concessions within it. Amazingly this has worked, and the public has been largely skeptical of reform, despite broad support among industries, even those that have opposed it in the past.
Once in a While a Moment Comes
President Obama gave a stunningly good speech to House Democrats on Saturday. This video is just 11 minutes, but the full video is at CSPAN.
Here is the last part of the speech, which was apparently delivered extemporaneously. Full text at Swampland.
Sometimes I think about how I got involved in politics. I didn’t think of myself as a potential politician when I get out of college. I went to work in neighborhoods, working with Catholic churches in poor neighborhoods in Chicago, trying to figure out how people could get a little bit of help. And I was skeptical about politics and politicians, just like a lot of Americans are skeptical about politics and politicians are right now. Because my working assumption was when push comes to shove, all too often folks in elected office, they’re looking for themselves and not looking out for the folks who put them there; that there are too many compromises; that the special interests have too much power; they just got too much clout; there’s too much big money washing around.
And I decided finally to get involved because I realized if I wasn’t willing to step up and be true to the things I believe in, then the system wouldn’t change. Every single one of you had that same kind of moment at the beginning of your careers. Maybe it was just listening to stories in your neighborhood about what was happening to people who’d been laid off of work. Maybe it was your own family experience, somebody got sick and didn’t have health care and you said something should change.
Something inspired you to get involved, and something inspired you to be a Democrat instead of running as a Republican. Because somewhere deep in your heart you said to yourself, I believe in an America in which we don’t just look out for ourselves, that we don’t just tell people you’re on your own, that we are proud of our individualism, we are proud of our liberty, but we also have a sense of neighborliness and a sense of community — (applause) — and we are willing to look out for one another and help people who are vulnerable and help people who are down on their luck and give them a pathway to success and give them a ladder into the middle class. That’s why you decided to run. (Applause.)
And now a lot of us have been here a while and everybody here has taken their lumps and their bruises. And it turns out people have had to make compromises, and you’ve been away from families for a long time and you’ve missed special events for your kids sometimes. And maybe there have been times where you asked yourself, why did I ever get involved in politics in the first place? And maybe things can’t change after all. And when you do something courageous, it turns out sometimes you may be attacked. And sometimes the very people you thought you were trying to help may be angry at you and shout at you. And you say to yourself, maybe that thing that I started with has been lost.
But you know what? Every once in a while, every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made in all those town meetings and all those constituency breakfasts and all that traveling through the district, all those people who you looked in the eye and you said, you know what, you’re right, the system is not working for you and I’m going to make it a little bit better.
And this is one of those moments. This is one of those times where you can honestly say to yourself, doggone it, this is exactly why I came here. This is why I got into politics. This is why I got into public service. This is why I’ve made those sacrifices. Because I believe so deeply in this country and I believe so deeply in this democracy and I’m willing to stand up even when it’s hard, even when it’s tough.Every single one of you have made that promise not just to your constituents but to yourself. And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine. We have been debating health care for decades. It has now been debated for a year. It is in your hands. It is time to pass health care reform for America, and I am confident that you are going to do it tomorrow.
Thank you very much, House of Representatives. Let’s get this done.
Time to make America a little bit better, House Democrats. You’re not bound to win reelection, but it wouldn’t hurt to win this vote.
Teddy’s Dream
Here’s an excerpt from the letter Teddy Kennedy wrote to President Obama in May 2009, delivered after Kennedy’s death in August:
When I thought of all the years, all the battles, and all the memories of my long public life, I felt confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the President who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society. For me, this cause stretched across decades; it has been disappointed, but never finally defeated. It was the cause of my life. And in the past year, the prospect of victory sustained me-and the work of achieving it summoned my energy and determination.
There will be struggles – there always have been – and they are already underway again. But as we moved forward in these months, I learned that you will not yield to calls to retreat – that you will stay with the cause until it is won. I saw your conviction that the time is now and witnessed your unwavering commitment and understanding that health care is a decisive issue for our future prosperity. But you have also reminded all of us that it concerns more than material things; that what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.
And so because of your vision and resolve, I came to believe that soon, very soon, affordable health coverage will be available to all, in an America where the state of a family’s health will never again depend on the amount of a family’s wealth. And while I will not see the victory, I was able to look forward and know that we will – yes, we will – fulfill the promise of health care in America as a right and not a privilege.
Need a hanky? Yeah, me too. The character of our country is about to get a lot better. Here’s looking at you, Teddy boy.
Weekend Birdery: The Strange Sex Life of Muscovy Ducks
We interrupt our usual programming for a quick note about the evolution of duck penises. Specifically, that of the Muscovy duck. A Muscovy drake’s penis is extraordinarily long and shaped like a corkscrew.
Muscovy ducks in flagrante
A brief aside: one will not fail to note that Muscovy ducks are rather ugly, to human eyes, primarily due to the bulbous caruncles they have around their faces. To relieve you of any unwanted mental images, I’ve also included a picture of a Muscovy chick below, which is suitably adorable.
Research by Yale’s Patricia Brennan (written up here by Ed Yong and here by Carl Zimmer) sets out to explain what you are no doubt wondering yourself: why corkscrew penises?
The answer: sex wars. Male and female Muscovies have been caught up in an evolutionary arms race of sex-organ development. Ed Yong:
Many ducks form bonds between males and females that last for a mating season. But rival males often violently force themselves onto females. To gain the edge in these conflicts, drakes have evolved large corkscrew phalluses, lined with ridges and backward-pointing spines, which allow them to deposit their sperm further into the female than their rivals. These extreme penises of ducks are even more unusual because 97% of birds lack any penises whatsoever.
But female ducks have developed countermeasures. Their vaginas are equally long and twisting, lined with dead-end pockets and spirals that curve in the opposite direction. They are organic chastity belts, evolved to limit the effectiveness of the males’ lengthy genitals. Two years ago, Brennan showed that duck species whose males have the longest penises tend to have females with the most elaborate vaginas. Now, she has found further evidence that these complex genitals are the result of a long-lasting war of the sexes.
The new evidence includes some amazing videos of the ducks’ ballistic penises. Definitely good for a “woah, dude!” moment.
Who’s winning the war of duck genitalia? Yong says it’s the females. Because of their convoluted vaginas, forced matings result in offspring only 3% of the time.
Suitably adorable Muscovy duckling